People talk about needing “mental health breaks,” and while “mental health” can be used as an excuse for obnoxious, antisocial, or perverted behavior, there is a reality in that the mind can only tolerate so many form of stress before it needs to rest or it ceases to function properly.
According to a recent study, half of Millennials and three-quarters of Zoomers have quit jobs for mental health reasons:
About half of millennials and 75 percent of Gen Zers have quit their jobs for mental health reasons, according to a new study conducted by Mind Shares Partners, SAP and Quatrics. It was published in Harvard Business Review.
That’s compared to just 20 percent of respondents overall who said they’ve voluntarily left a job in order to prioritize their mental health — emblematic of a “shift in generational awareness,” the authors of the report, Kelly Greenwood, Vivek Bapat and Mike Maughan, wrote. For baby boomers, the number was the lowest, with less than 10 percent quitting a job for mental-health purposes.
It should come as no surprise that younger generations are paving the way for the de-stigmatization of mental health. A Wall Street Journal article published in March labeled millennials the “therapy generation,” as todays 20- and 30-somethings are more likely to turn to therapy, and with fewer reservations, than young people in previous eras did. (source, source)
The comments to this article were equally interesting to read, most of which read something similar to “Millennials are weakling communist SJWs, they cannot handle the real world, they want participation trophies, they should just get tough and deal with life and if they work hard they will succeed just like me.”
It is this mindset, summarized above, that is even more problematic than the so-called “mental health” issues being raised.
Nobody can deny that there is a noted group of Millennials who want to work easy jobs, or who complain needlessly about ridiculous things, or are just lazy. However, and speaking from experience, one can say that many of the people who are doing the complaining or indulging in open laziness tend to be also from the three major “protected classes” in the employment- women, “minorities”, and sodomites -all who were encouraged and pushed into positions of power by the same Boomer generation who is largely making said complaints to the detriment many times of their own children. This is not to say that men, “whites”, or non-sexual deviants do not do these things, because this does happen. Rather, it is the tendency to resort to these kinds of behaviors, for one seldom finds a man running to HR to complain about something he may have overheard somebody say in the company breakroom, or to demand “more diversity training” because one feels “oppressed,” or to complain about “sexual minority representation” in the workplace.
The legalized discrimination that exists as a part of the contemporary American workplace in the name of “inclusion” and the immediate tendency to report people for minor or perceived infractions- something that started largely with women -has poisoned communication between people. When this is added to the existing work mentality where workers are encouraged to compete against each other directly, and workers are forced to fight over a decreasing pool of jobs amid an expanding labor pool and declining salaries, going to work sometimes is like going into a battle arena where one does not know if one will have his job at the end of the day. All of these things were encouraged by and developed under the same Boomer generation who did not have to deal with this culture when he started at his job several decades ago.
Contemporary corporate culture has always favored profits over humanity, but under the direct supervision of the Boomers, what existed before became executed with a ruthless efficiency whereby through expanding the labor pool by forcing women into the workforce, outsourcing domestic work, then refusing to hire local workers and instead demanding armies of H1B Visa workers from other nations while at the same time reducing the pools of available jobs as much as possible, profits were maximized as salaries were drastically cut and remained stagnant with no raises, and due to inflation of the money supply through monetary creation by the Federal Reserve Bank, has resulted in a salary reduction with each year. This is how it became that jobs for all of the 20th century up until about the mid-1990s when the full effects of all the poisonous changes that began in the late 1960s thanks largely to the Boomers were realized across the nation in their totality, where a job at a local store that a person could work at for thirty years and support a wife and two children on without state assistance became one of two jobs that he must work in addition to his wife working another job so they can barely afford an apartment in a questionable area, and still be unsure if they have enough money to afford basic necessities such as food, water, electricity, and a working car.
It is not a dignified or worthy way for a man to live in that he must work two jobs, frequently sleeping in his car, for a meager paycheck that he can barely pay his bills on because in spite of him having gone to college or attempted to better his life. This is not just the story of a few people, but of many millennials who have suffered gravely over the years including from my own experiences.
Likewise, there is the issue of job stability and health. Many jobs are openly hazardous to one’s health, and with declining wages, no sane person will want to stay in them because one does not want to earn meager wages at a job that he is unsure if he will come home from in one piece or alive, or if it will destroy his health so badly that he will pass away in his mid-50s or early 60s. Many of those jobs require that a person work inconsistent schedules, including rotating schedules so one never has a consistent day off to go to Church or spend with family, and when this is mentioned to the employers, their response to him is “Do you want this job or not?” or “I do not like your attitude, you should have thought about that before you applied.”, as though the humanity of their workers does not exist outside of utilitarianism. Those who work in offices are often reminded of how “lucky” they are, if not outright reminded how they could be “laid off” at any minute, and that they “need to be appreciative” of their job and company for hiring them.
Do you know what happens to a man when you:
-Make it very difficult for him to get a job
-Make it very difficult for him to earn enough money at his job to pay his bills
-Constantly change his schedule or other working conditions so there is no stability
-Constantly threaten him with job loss for even a small mistake
-Encourage an atmosphere of fighting and darwinism between one’s co-workers
-Force him to take extraordinary means outside of work to provide for himself, such as with a second job or gigs
-Burden him with more bills on those he already has and give him no real way to pay them off
-Continually erode the value of his wages and then demand that he “appreciate” it
-Force him by circumstances to take government assistance to do basic functions, such as feed himself
-Tell him that it is all his fault and he needs to shut up and work harder?
One of two things happens many times.
One, a person simply checks out completely. Depressed, frustrated, burdened, they seek to disappear from work and people into a world of their own self-creation and indulgence to numb the pain of their daily existence. Drugs, alcohol, video games, porn, movies, and food become their refuge from the misery that is all around them and from which they do not see a way to escape. Sometimes this leads to suicide or workplace violence, because a man does not believe he has something to live for so he would rather die.
Two, a man becomes extremely angry and starts to fight aggressively. If he his not careful he can become the first. The fighting I speak of here is not “getting tough” or “pulling himself up by his bootstraps,” but a fight against the ridiculous behavior he sees. This leads to personal discontent at work, attempts to find better jobs, sometimes insubordination at work, conflict with co-workers, and can cause him to be laid off, fired, or forced out of work by his employer.
There is a lot of talk about “workplace violence,” but workplace violence does not happen without causes. Yet nobody will address them seriously, because the main cause is not just job “anger” or “dissatisfaction”, but the erosion of a man’s mental state over a long time to a point where he breaks inside, and much of this is due to systematic psychopathic abuse from the employer himself that is presented as “good management”. Considering how at least 1 in 5 CEOs are considered “psychopaths” and psychopaths are actively sought for many “leadership” positions as well as thrive in abusive environments, it is natural that the average, normal man who is not such could eventually have a personal mental breakdown.
There have been issues at work in any time, but none of the Boomers had to deal with the compilation of circumstances and obstacles that exist in the modern American working environment. They were the generation during which many of these obstacles were erected.
There is a legitimate case to be made for “mental health” among Millennials, because there is only so much that a man can tolerate until he is no longer able to physically think, as his brain physically shuts down due to stress and runs on survival mode, neither being able to think or react coherently except for survival.
The recession of 2007, which started and affected hardest the older Millennials, never ended and it was this group within the Millennials that suffered the most. Many became nihilistic, but many are also very tough and understand the difficulties and nature of the modern American workspace. The Zoomers are just starting to come into this environment, and if they are seeing what the Millennials have experienced and are experiencing, it is natural they do not want to be around it, for who wants to be forced to spend a minimum of one-third of each day, at least five days a week, in a place that is miserable doing something miserable with people that are miserable for a pay that forces a person to take another miserable job with the same miserable circumstances and people?
A Boomer would not tolerate this. Yet so many a Boomer- and some among Gen X and Millennials who were fortunate enough to either have well-paying jobs or another series of circumstances that shielded them from the miserable realities that the majority of their fellow citizens have been forced to endure because they listened to the advice of their parents, grandparents, school counselors, and neighbors since the time they were children that later was revealed to be garbage -will call Millenials and now Zoomers people that are “weak.”
Is there any surprise why there is so much discontent with these two younger generations? If one kicks a dog long enough, it is only time before a day will come when the dog bites back.
Generational warfare must not be encouraged, as it is wrong and unhelpful. However, rhetoric that attacks people who have suffered serious losses and blames it on them only feeds their anger, and if done enough, will cause them to strike back. The Millennials and Zoomers have a duty to respect the older generations, to help them, and to listen to them in the context of sound counsel, advice, and stewardship in the workplace. The Boomers and Gen Xers have a responsibility to use their positions of power and what wealth and influence they have to help the Millennials and Zoomers move as far ahead in the mess that was created on largely their watch, for while the past cannot be changed, there is always time to change the future. It is this cooperation that will help people put away grievances, reconcile differences, and move towards making a better future with better decisions.
If this does not happen, the aging Boomers and Gen Xers will find themselves at the mercy of the younger Millennials and Zoomers, and will become the objects of their rage, sadness, and misery that screams in the closed silence of their souls at what they cannot have and what was taken from them. Since they cannot take their money or the time that was lost, then some of them will find perverse satisfaction in ending the lives of the people who they saw as those who prevented them from living their lives.
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