IT seems that many people born in the 1970s or earlier have the tendency to generalise those under the age of 30 as the strawberry generation.

That generation is defined by a news article in The Malaysian Insight recently as “the easily bruised nature of the (strawberry) fruit… that young people cannot withstand workplace pressures or work hard like previous generations”.

However millennials, strawberries, Gen X, Y and Z, and other terms of endearment are merely mass media constructs. It’s never meant to put things into perspective but rather, they confine our understanding in black and white, as good versus bad.

The reality is that almost all of those who are in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s today can still recall the days when they were young, when they were talked at, when they were told to shut up, they were chided by their elders for being soft, lazy, and entitled.

Allow me to use this media-invented term of millennials, and I’ll try to put it in context. Are millennials emotional, impatient and not hard-working? Or is this just a description for a certain group of lucky young people who managed to obtain university degrees and could speak some English?

Perhaps we’re focusing too much on middle-class young adults. Their moneyed families had enabled them better education. When some of them show off confidence, they’re seen as arrogant. With such confidence, they want to enjoy life, to travel, to try new things. They believe in working smart, not hard.

These are the people the media is talking about. So, when a middle class millennial expresses publicly his or her emotion, the media guides us towards a knee-jerk reaction, i.e. such young person is weak or easily hurt.

Perhaps there’s some truth in it. But sometimes we forget that these young people are innovators of current digital technology, designs, and many other changes that are happening in the work place, as well as of youth activism and ecological activities. Yet some of us are unhappy with their way of speaking, dressing, behaving, and socialising.

But what about the other half of millennials? Of Malaysia’s young population, half of them are living in rural areas. Even those who stay in towns and cities, quite a number of them are part of the working-class family and the urban poor.

They are the ones that some of us like to look down on. They are the ones with kapchai motorbikes breaking all traffic lights in their rush to deliver food and stuff to customers. They are the ones sweating and suffocating on crowded buses, LRT and commuter trains to go to work. They are the ones taking orders at fast food joints, and doing plumbing and wiring, and selling hotdogs and nasi lemak. Some are caring for their children at home.

Even young white-collar executives with university degrees who are from working class family or rural background find it difficult to settle their student loans and other debts as well as to buy a house, a car or start a family.   

By the next decade, most middle-class millennials will move on to better lives. But for the working-class poor, the struggle for mere existence will continue, and their children may share the same fate, too.

While some millennials can be arrogant or bodoh sombong, many of them are quite hardworking. They just don’t like to be dictated or pushed around. Some may be bad, lazy and clueless but most are good, decent people.

Our society is already divided by race, religion and region. To add age as a divisive factor will bring us nowhere. We are unhappy with a lot of things, and many of us believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Millennials or not, we are living in that same country, sharing the same fate. Except for the super rich and the ruling elite, in many aspects, we suffer the same economic maladies and social deprivation.

Our problems are beyond generational issues. Something needs to change. But the old adage is still true: evil triumphs when good, decent people do nothing. – December 1, 2017.

* Wan Hamidi Hamid is a veteran journalist with a deep love and knowledge of rock music

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.