But one senior army commander said members of Generation Z — renowned in the business world for their efforts to reshape corporate culture — were also going into the armed forces with different ideas and outlooks. “People are vulnerable, they cry easily,” he said. “They talk about work-life balance.”
“I understand that,” the commander added. “They grew up in a different time. It’s not a bad perspective. But it doesn’t match that well with a wartime situation.”
Work-life balance obviously goes out the window in a war (actually, life itself does). Does being vulnerable really preclude you from being brave, though?
We live in a hyper-individualistic society which is self-centred. This is only exacerbated by social media, where attention and being the main character is more important than ever.
The new generation is living more and more in society. Instead of being part of society. Being part of something bigger is uncommon nowadays. Which makes participation in something as extreme as a war unfathomable.
If you look at countries with high levels of civil sense like Taiwan. We see school uniforms and military service. Kids are being raised to be part of a free and democratic society, not to just live in it.
I can’t really provide evidence for or against that in recent years, but I’ll point out the greatest generation grew up during the literal great depression.
Vulnerability not, but sympathy misunderstood for empathy will. I don’t think German Gen Z doesn’t enlist because of vulnerability, but because of culture. German liberal nationalism relies on ‘Never again’ as a mantra of nonaggression; to them the Bundeswehr was always a compromise against the NVA.
Schools until recently told us that conventional war is ‘fallen out of time’, “look at UN, EU, OSCE”.
As a German Gen Z my main concern would be the fact that you can’t rely on the promise that our army is purely there for defence. I’m ready to defend my home and the home of my neighbors but I’m not willing to be sent to another continent to (allegedly) do so. Right now that may not be an issue but these things can change overnight.
Technically, conventional war is largely obsolete. As long as you do have a reliable and credible nuclear deterrent. Germany has long been in the very comfortable position to fool itself into deeming conventional war obsolete without having to maintain an own nuclear deterrent. With the USA finally having revealed itself to even the most servile transatlanticist as an utterly unreliable ally, (in fact, as more of the kind of “ally” commonly referred to as “enemy”) this illusion is falling apart.
Work-life balance obviously goes out the window in a war (actually, life itself does). Does being vulnerable really preclude you from being brave, though?
We live in a hyper-individualistic society which is self-centred. This is only exacerbated by social media, where attention and being the main character is more important than ever. The new generation is living more and more in society. Instead of being part of society. Being part of something bigger is uncommon nowadays. Which makes participation in something as extreme as a war unfathomable. If you look at countries with high levels of civil sense like Taiwan. We see school uniforms and military service. Kids are being raised to be part of a free and democratic society, not to just live in it.
I can’t really provide evidence for or against that in recent years, but I’ll point out the greatest generation grew up during the literal great depression.
Vulnerability not, but sympathy misunderstood for empathy will. I don’t think German Gen Z doesn’t enlist because of vulnerability, but because of culture. German liberal nationalism relies on ‘Never again’ as a mantra of nonaggression; to them the Bundeswehr was always a compromise against the NVA.
Schools until recently told us that conventional war is ‘fallen out of time’, “look at UN, EU, OSCE”.
As a German Gen Z my main concern would be the fact that you can’t rely on the promise that our army is purely there for defence. I’m ready to defend my home and the home of my neighbors but I’m not willing to be sent to another continent to (allegedly) do so. Right now that may not be an issue but these things can change overnight.
What do you mean? Germany is defended in the Hindukush of course /s
Exactly 😄
Wow, that’s been the attitude here too, but you never hear people say it outright.
Technically, conventional war is largely obsolete. As long as you do have a reliable and credible nuclear deterrent. Germany has long been in the very comfortable position to fool itself into deeming conventional war obsolete without having to maintain an own nuclear deterrent. With the USA finally having revealed itself to even the most servile transatlanticist as an utterly unreliable ally, (in fact, as more of the kind of “ally” commonly referred to as “enemy”) this illusion is falling apart.
Oh, well that’s true. How is the offer of formal protection by France being received? I’d hate to see more proliferation.
Yeah that’s why current events hit people twice as hard. We basically all assumed peace to be a given. It’s not.
I wish the West could have woken up before it was on top of us.
Better late than never
Absolutely.
It was true. It was the longest continuous peace in Europe ever.
Yeah, but, they all end. Nobody ever had a good argument why it had to go on forever.