RE: [GRRN] Youth Attitudes

Cloutier, Chris (chris.cloutier@moea.state.mn.us)
Thu, 8 Apr 1999 15:10:05 -0500


Hmmm, methinks the Boomers are yet again being held up as an ideal that does not quite what reflect what they were and have become. But, even if you assume Peter's assumptions about his generation correct, clearly the need for "self-actualization" was long ago passed over for the desire to make money.

Maybe this generation will take the reverse approach - make the money and then seek fulfillment b/c they realize the first doesn't do what they want. Send them all a subscription to the "Utne Reader" and hasten that process along.

> ----------
> From: RecycleWorlds[SMTP:anderson@msn.fullfeed.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 08, 1999 1:46 PM
> To: multiple recipients of
> Subject: [GRRN] Youth Attitudes
>
> Following my posting of the article describing the latest UCLA study of
> entering freshman attitudes, I've been asked to keep sex out of the
> listserve and focus on environmental issues.
>
> I hope people read to the bottom -- and meat -- of that article,
> instead of stopping at the top where the editor -- as most editors do --
> frontended one of what was hundreds of questions, that dealt with sex.
>
> Because others might have stopped with the sex question and missed the
> substance, let me highlight the critical kernel, the point that should
> scare the bee-jees out of us, which is the reversal of attitudes in today's
> entering class concerning making money versus self actualization compared
> to the sixties and seventies. It was the fact that self actualization
> became predominant over making money by an entire generation, including
> most social classes as well, that led to the environmental awakening
> sometimes crytalized in the first earth day.
>
> Ultimately, recycling has succeeded not because it is being driven by
> market forces -- certainly that's not the case with falling landfill
> prices -- but by force of public opinion that led industry to cooperate in
> a coordinated way that made it possible for our new industry to expand
> beyond the scrappers that preceded us.
>
> Big shifts like UCLA's study (which has been running annually for more
> than 30 years) is picking up has the most portentious impacts on our
> industry if it is accurately describing the current mood and is not turned
> around by events in the future.
>
> Peter
> ____________________________________
> Peter Anderson
> RecycleWorlds Consulting
> 4513 Vernon Blvd. Ste. 15
> Madison, WI 53705-4964
> Phone:(608) 231-1100/Fax: (608) 233-0011
> E-mail:recycle@msn.fullfeed.com
>
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