Millennials, Now Label Free

So, John Della Volpe, Polling Director of the Harvard Institute of politics, reports that millennials have a strong dislike of political labels. 

I find this a very refreshing position. I don't like labels either. When people try to put a label on me and say,  "I know what you think because you're a fill-in the blank and they all think exactly the same way," I always say "Sorry, I don't fit in your nice little categories."

I find this so interesting regarding millennials.  They don't like to be called socialist, they don't like to be called capitalist. They prefer to look at the details and the hard realities. They want to know, is this working? Where has it failed? How can we make it work? They seek answers without regard to whether that answer is included in a given label which has been attached to them.  Their thinking is much more open and unconstrained than that of traditional political participants.

When you add to this that millennials also dislike belonging to a specific religion, and thus being labeled and categorized, I find reason for great hope for the future. Even in the area of their religion, millennials don't want to  mindlessly submit to authority, they prefer to think for themselves. In the 1950s, when I was young, a great deal of criticism by social observers was aimed at how rigidly society enforced a strict code of behavior. Everyone was expected to conform. We even spoke of "conformism" as a critical issue.  Not everyone was speaking of it in a negative way.

That millennials' minds are so generally open and unwilling to be shoved in rigid categories makes me feel that I may have been born in the wrong generation. Their attitude, in some ways, is much more similar to mine than mine is to so many of my generation. I am not alone in this.  I have friends my age with a similar mindset. We are the outliers of our generation, however.

Sadly, the guest also indicated that about half of millennials believe that the American dream is dead.  They are not terribly hopeful about the future. I find this ironic because I think the very reason that the future is so hopeful, and I find it very hopeful indeed, is because of those very millennials. It is they who will bring this country to a new level of greatness. It is they who have opened the minds of this nation.

In millennials, I trust.

The relevant portion of the interview from C-SPAN. (Sorry, but the dialogue on the C-SPAN website was in all caps and is difficult to read due to a number of errata as well.  I have made some minor corrections, these are not in caps):

John Della Volpe

GUEST: THIS IS A COLLABORATION I HAVE WITH A COUPLE DOZEN STUDENTS OF HARVARD AND ONE STUDENT FROM OREGON WAS REALLY INTERESTED IN TRYING TO MEASURE WHETHER OR NOT YOUNG PEOPLE COULD ASSOCIATE WITH -- OR CALL THEMSELVES A SOCIALIST OR CAPITALIST. WHAT WE FOUND WAS A COUPLE OF THINGS, YOUNG PEOPLE REALLY DON'T LIKE ANY LABELS. VERY FEW PEOPLE AS you indicated feel COMFORTABLE CALLING THEMSELVES A SOCIALIST OR CAPITALIST. MORE TELLING IS THAT A MAJORITY OF YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY indicated that they do not support capitalism. That's frankly, I think, what I consider one of the most significant findings of this survey -- THE FIRST THING WE DID WAS, WE EXPANDED THE POLLS FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER AS YOU NOTED AND ASKED PEOPLE OVER THE AGE OF 30 AS WELL, WE CONDUCTED A separate SURVEY AND FOUND THAT until you get OVER THE AGE OF 50, THERE IS NOT A LOT OF SUPPORT FOR CAPITALISM. until YOU GET OVER 50, A MAJORITY OF PEOPLE IN AMERICA TELL US THEY DO NOT SUPPORT CAPITALISM. I WENT BACK TO A COLLEGE CAMPUS AND CONDUCTED A FOCUS GROUP OF OVER A DOZEN OR SO IN Lancaster AND FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL COLLEGE AND WHAT I LEARNED WAS CAPITALISM THAT IS PRACTICED TODAY IS SOMETHING THAT IS UNFAVORABLE FOR STUDENTS. THEY TELL US THAT IT PROVIDES OPPORTUNITIES NOT FOR ANYONE BUT FOR A CHOSEN FEW THAT KNOW HOW TO MANIPULATE THE SYSTEM AND THAT THOSE OF THE MAIN REASONS WHY CAPITALISM IS NOT SUPPORTED BY MEMBERS OF THIS GENERATION. LARGEST GENERATION IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICA.