Recruiting generation Y

It seems pretty clear that there are worldwide hard times ahead. It also seems pretty clear that the Episcopal church in its present form is going to have a more and more limited role in shaping the path that our society takes in navigating the troubles of the future. The aging of the church – average age now 62 vs. the national average of 32 – unless it is reversed — is a clear indication of its diminishing influence. Dramatic changes in the church’s approach to ministry are the only thing that will prevent it from becoming essentially irrelevant. There are some stirrings, for example see “Seizing the Episcopal Moment.” In any case, inspiring and recruiting generation Y will be critical to forming any significant role for the church.

It should be noted that the problem is not confined to the Episcopal church – or to mainstream churches in general. Other organizations or movements – such as the traditional civil right movement – have similar issues though the causes might be quite different.

The question that needs looking at then is what drives the young. This post is not about providing a how-to-do-it list for motivating generation Y – much less about building new structures to involve them. Rather, it is an attempt to provide some basic understanding of generation Y, and the situation they’re in, so that we can think reasonably clearly about possible approaches.

Just as the world is at a unique point in history so is our social environment – and especially that of young people. Situations vary across the globe but a lot of the fundamental drivers stay the same. Let’s look at three areas for some insight: violence in the Muslim world, the retreat to fantasy worlds, and our society’s disconnect from the world of nature.

First Scott Atran, an anthropologist, just gave a statement to the Senate titled “Pathways to and From Violent Extremism.” Some important points, mostly as summarized by John Robb (blog: Global Guerrillas):

• The threat today is from a Qaeda –inspired viral social and political movement, which is particularly contagious among Muslim youth who are increasingly marginalized — economically, socially, politically — and are in transition stages in their lives, such as immigrants, students, and those in search of friends, mates and jobs.
• Economic globalization, which has led to greater access by humankind to material opportunity, has also led to a crisis, even collapse, of cultures, as people unmoored from millennial traditions flail about in search of a social identity. Today’s most virulent terrorism is rooted in rootlessness and restlessness.
• Individuals now mostly radicalize horizontally with their peers, rather than vertically through institutional leaders or organizational hierarchies. They do so mostly in small groups of friends — from the same neighborhood or social network — or even as loners who find common cause with a virtual internet community.
• Entry into the jihadi brotherhood is from the bottom up: from alienated and marginalized youth seeking out companionship, esteem, and meaning, but also the thrill of action, sense of empowerment, and glory in fighting the world’s most powerful nation and army.
• The boundaries of the newer terrorist networks are very loose and fluid, and the internet now allows anyone who wishes to become a terrorist to become one, anywhere, anytime.
• More and more, terror networks are intertwined with petty criminal networks: drug trafficking, stolen cars, credit card fraud, and the like.
• Although lack of economic opportunity often leads to criminality, it turns out that some criminal youth really don’t want to be criminals after all. Given half a chance to take up a moral cause, they can be even more altruistically prone than others to give up their lives for their comrades and cause.
• This is one indication — and our research reveals others — that economic opportunities alone may not turn people away from the path to political violence. (Indeed, material incentives, whether “carrots” or “sticks,” can even backfire when they threaten core values, as our recent research has shown for Israel, Palestine, Indonesia, and Iran). Rather, youth must be given hopes and dreams of achievement, and plausible means to realize such hopes and dreams.

As our economy stumbles along things may get a little better for a while. Not too many years ago there were good jobs – or perhaps more accurately jobs for people with limited skills – that payed decent wages. Mostly they were the union jobs, the factory jobs. Globalization will make sure that they’re not coming back! As we move further and further into economic disintegration, young people will be faced with an increasingly bleak future, a future that – especially in the US – they have not been prepared for. For them expect tomorrow’s conditions will be more like those in today’s Muslim world.

One response that can be expected is an increase in violence. We already saw flash mobs in Philadelphia, booby traps for the police in Hemet, CA, and then Hutaree came along (“Christian” Warriors building IEDs to kill cops at funeral processions for cops they’ve already killed). Read comments in the Reminder or listen to the tea partyers talk and you’ll find lots of anger. A lot – but not all of the anger and violence — is by an older generation. Given a suitable trigger, that anger can fuel the spread of a great deal more violence.

However, at this time a retreat from reality is the major escape route for many of the world’s young people. Thanks again to Global Guerrillas for some statistics and insightful observations:

“We’re witnessing what amounts to no less than a mass exodus to virtual worlds and online game environments.” Edward Castronova (an economist who studies online games)

• Active online gamers spend 10,000 hours of play by the time they are 21 (almost as much as the time spent in school).
• There are 500 million active online gamers worldwide (that will grow to 1.5 billion in the next 10 years).
• 3 billion hours a week are spent playing online games.

Here’s the big idea. For active online gamers real life is broken. It doesn’t make any sense. Effort isn’t connected to reward. The path forward is confused, convoluted, and contradictory. Worse, there’s a growing sense that the entire game is being corrupted to ensure failure. So, why play it?

They don’t. They retreat to online games. Why? Online games provide an environment that connects what you do (work, problem solving, effort, motivation level, merit) in the game to rewards (status, capabilities, etc.). These games also make it simple to get better (learn, skill up, etc.) through an intuitive just-in-time training system. The problem is that this is virtual fantasy.

John Robb has some ideas:

So the really big idea isn’t figuring out how to USE online gamers for real world purposes (as in the dirty word: crowdsourcing — the act of other people to do work for you for FREE — blech!). Instead, it’s about finding a way to use online games to make real life better for the gamers. In short, turn games into economic darknets that work in parallel and better than the broken status quo systems. As in: economic games that connect effort with reward. n Economic games with transparent rules that tangibly improve the lives of all of the players in the REAL WORLD.

This isn’t tech utopian. It’s reality. The global electronic marketplace and the political system that currently dominates our lives is at root a game but with hidden rule sets. As a result, it’s a game that being run for the benefit of the game designers to the detriment of the players. The reason we keep playing is that we don’t have any choice. Let’s invent something better and compete with it. Let’s provide people with a choice.

A NY Times piece on web use in China reached rather similar conclusions. For China’s young, the web is their escape and their primary form of entertainment – though games are just a part of the mix.

Another factor to consider is our disconnect from nature and the resulting search for authenticity. The theory here is that our society’s disconnect from nature has left a void that people are trying to bridge via a search for the authentic. [There's a book on the subject (Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want). Lots of 5 star reviews. It seems to mostly be about marketing techniques that convey a sense of authenticity and therefore have lots of customers. The conclusion seems to be that the best way to appear authentic is to be authentic – which actually is not possible for a corporation within a corporate capitalist framework.]

I have no idea on whether this is a stronger or weaker effect among young people but definitely would expect it to be significant. Certainly, by the directions our society has taken, young people today are more disconnected from nature than previous generations were. Rebuilding the connection is critical to any movement towards a just and sustainable future.

Some thoughts on connecting with generation Y:

• Try to catch them at transition stages in their lives, before their troubles get too big, and before they take a plunge into violent or other destructive paths.
• Offer a believable better future – especially to the marginalized or about to be marginalized.
• An approach has to become a viral movement to become widespread (but how do you predict whether an approach has that potential?)
• It has to be bottom up, not top down, and if it works, spread will be in a horizontal not vertical path, with essentially peer to peer connections.
• A strong web component will be necessary and it must be consistent with the way gen Y uses the web (which changes regularly).
• Somehow, somewhere it must include at least the possibility of reconnection to the natural world.
• It should provide:

worthwhile non-material rewards,

some form of community that allows the development of roots,

opportunity for learning/growth/advancement.

• It must be:

transparent

honest

just

non-hierarchal

have a fluid, nonrigid structure

One possible model to look at for inspiration is the open source community: Large, much more powerful than generally acknowledged, growing rapidly. There are lots of different kinds of open source communities ranging from web based to warfare. Obviously, not all of them are good neighbors!

I’m thinking now of the web based open source movement that gives us creativity – eg the Wiki and Wikipedia – as well as powerful alternatives to Microsoft and Apple. This community represent a relatively young demographic. Creativity and hard work are valued as is sharing, openness, support for others. These virtues are rewarded with respect and a chance of making a living doing what you enjoy (but hardly a path to riches).

The world in transformation I

What we do today – as an individual, as the church, as our society, as our species – will have an effect on tomorrows world.  We leave our footprints; some will fade with time, others won’t.  It can take hundreds of years to replenish an over pumped ancient aquifer, thousands to restore a heavily damaged ecosystem – if it can be restored at all.  The crude oil converted to the gasoline that we’ll convert to carbon dioxide and water vapor is gone forever.  Every species that becomes extinct will diminish creation forever.  Therefore, though it’s difficult, we are obligated to think about the future and how our present lives will influence it.

Of course in the vast majority of cases our footprints will merge with millions of others and whatever we can do will have a negligible influence on the larger future.  However, there are those rare and unpredictable cases where some tiny step leads to another and another and in the end a major change occurs.  Chaos theory (also see) provides some very necessary insights into any consideration of the future.

God works through chaos.  Most real world dynamic systems (weather, the stock market, where we live, how a tree branches, the shape of a coastline, etc, etc) are chaotic.  Chaotic systems, though they may look random, are not.  They are fully determined, but their path is extremely dependent on initial conditions.  As a result of this dependence, our ability to predict the details of the future is very limited – no matter how powerful our computers get!  It’s the very often  misinterpreted butterfly effect: “Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”  Basically, very small actions can trigger changes that over time result result in major – but totally unpredictable -  changes and a dramatically different outcome.  Do you set off the tornado or stop it?

Though the future is not predictable, sometimes, for long time periods, it can be reasonably safe to assume that the future will be defined by an extension of the present or the recent past.  Obviously, this is not always the case.  Civilizations eventually collapse and sometimes populations crash.  However, there are lots of known forces at work, and though they can’t tell us the future, they can tell us a lot about limitations and possible directions.

I can envision little pieces of a future that is just and sustainable – and a lot different from today’s world.  I’ve also experienced little bits of that possible future.  The visions I’ve had or seen are not and cannot be universal – they are limited to particular regions, situations, and population density.  However, the biggest stumbling block I see is not where we’re going but how can we get there in the least painful and most loving and just way!