Good and Bad Jobs of the Future

The article Good and Bad Jobs of the Future is surprisingly fatalistic, even for Scott Adams. The idea that the future will become steadily more meaningless, fruitless and desperate due to its population of ne’er-do-well adults is kind of depressing. It reminds me of the movie Office Space, where the main character blithely informs the company’s “efficiency experts” that his current job structure and resulting benefits package only motivated him to work just hard enough to not get fired. This idea definitely ties in to the article The Next 20 Years, where the author discusses how older generations tend to view their younger contemporaries as generally lazier and increasingly more morally repugnant than themselves. It seems that the Adams piece was written by some baby boomer who viewed the next generation (Xers) as the downfall of society.

A popular topic of conversation among my peers that pertains to this idea is the Army’s new crop of basic trainees. When we were leaving our units, we began to see a disturbing trend in the new privates we were receiving. Many of them were physically unacceptable (in terms of body composition and overall fitness) and, simply put, just did not act like Soldiers. When I was a platoon leader, the new privates I got were usually in better shape than my other Soldiers (who typically get “soft” after a few years on line) and were ramrod-straight in their address to me. They would shoot up to their feet at the position of attention whenever I walked by. It took a while for me to get them to relax and actually talk to me without looking terrified. Nowadays you get privates that can’t run (at all!) and talk to their Commanders like they’re their best friend.

Then you get to Fort Leonard Wood (basic training land) and witness privates run amok on post. That’s the first thing I noticed the first time I drove on post when I returned here for advanced training. They’re walking all over the place doing whatever the heck they want, seemingly whenever they want. They have more privileges at basic training than cadets at the service academies get. It’s crazy! They can call home whenever they want after zero day. They can go to the post exchange almost whenever they want, they don’t have to pass the PT test, and now there are varying degrees of ridiculousness when it comes to the rules governing physical punishment. My current favorite: you can’t “smoke” a private 30 minutes prior to and 30 minutes after a meal. So if a private screws up in the chow hall, a Drill Sergeant can’t make them do pushups until AFTER a) the private finishes eating and b) the private’s meal has had ample time to be digested. What the heck? I CLEARLY remember talking out of turn in line at the chow hall as a CADET and getting smoked in place by my trainer (our equivalent of a DS). I didn’t even get to eat because our platoon had overextended their time in the chow hall by the time I was done getting punished. They have a sense of entitlement that privates never had before. It’s very difficult to be judgmental about this new crop of Soldiers who obviously joined the Army with full knowledge of the current state of world affairs (when I signed MY name on the dotted line, it was pre-9/11) but it still pisses me off to no end. However unfair my opinion, I honestly think most new privates, while notably patriotic, are generally lazy and lack respect.

One thing I’ve noticed about younger generations in the Officer ranks (green Lieutenants versus us old and crusty Captains) is that they are MUCH more optimistic (a disclaimer: this is definitely my own warped interpretation, that I can’t be certain will be shared by anyone else in the class). This was echoed in one of the works we read. I’m not sure if it’s just because of the burdens that have been carried primarily by junior Captains commissioned between the years 2001-2004 or because the new Lieutenants are still in the motivated, bright-eyed, “save-the-world” phase of their careers. Junior officers (Lieutenants and Captains) are definitely divided into two categories: (1) early OIF/OEF veterans (us) and (2) post-9/11 commissionees (them). One of the most glaringly obvious differences between “us” and “them” is that they’re still hopeless romantics and optimists. I’ve noticed most of “them” still think everything is going to work out in the end; and inevitably in their favor. They still believe in “love conquers all”, in the dream of the Iraqi democracy, and are itching to get over to the Middle East and “get some”. We generally shake our heads, automatically shake our fists at them and say, “you’ll change your tune in a year”. In retrospect, that reaction is really sad. But