Meditation for November 20th
Participation Trophies
Some call the millennial generation (1982 – present) the Participation Trophy generation. There is this focus on why kids act the way they do, and one target is participation trophies, sometimes given out in school. This might be a race, and the last-place person gets a ribbon, too, or a spelling bee, and the first person who goes out gets a trophy for trying. The theory is that the kids grew up not wanting to be winners and should be celebrated for everything. They call them the participation trophy generation because they are entitled and demand recognition for everything they do.
Is this fair?
In some ways, the title is very apt, but without the previous generations’ parenting skills, would the millennials be such entitled little shits?
Generations have always been a focus of the media to try to make sense of the world around us. Back in the day, you had the Silent Generation and the Greatest Generation, who fought back-to-back World Wars. We became a country of winners. France has to thank us every year for saving them from the Germans, and England had to finally forgive us for seceding from the kingdom. We were a dynasty like the Los Angeles Lakers or the New York Yankees!
But after the back-to-back wins, we started struggling. Beginning with our involvement in the Korean civil war, which ended up as a tie and North Korea still scaring us half to death with missile tests, we started seeing that we could be beaten. The war ended in a tie. This was good enough for the United States. American G.I.s were rewarded by being immortalized in the movie and the long-running TV show M.A.S.H.
Vietnam was even messier and didn’t even end in a tie. We straight up lost. It is now just a war that happened, immortalized every time you hear The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” or Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.” While we were carpet bombing SE Asia (we couldn’t just bomb one country, ok?), the boomers were back home, upset that we were in a war that was confusing about our intentions and also because we were drafting them to fight it. Not only did we not win Vietnam, but we didn’t act like we wanted to.
Vietnam is now one of our allies in the region. We would be mad if Braddock (Chuck Norris in the movies M.I.A.) were to enter Vietnam looking for any M.I.A.s. It’s where upper-class white kids get culture by going to Vietnam to teach English.
So, other than the time we invaded the 133-square-mile island of Grenada in 1983, a pretty fun arrest of Manuel Noriega in Panama, and the first Gulf War, could be counted as a success. Still, aside from these small victories, the USA has not had an excellent winning record. Since Vietnam, we have been fighting and not winning in several conflicts, leaving the world on fire and worse for it.
It seems that the previous generation took huge global participation trophies.
The idea of participation trophies was created to bolster all kids’ self-esteem, not just the winners. The days of watching the winners celebrate while you have nothing are long over. The losers get something too. Just for trying. Just for showing up to what you had to show up to anyway. It just made one feel less entitled to win.
This isn’t just about the competitions the person is entered in; it also includes sports teams and political campaigns. Didn’t win the presidency? Here, have a huge book deal and TV appearances. Had the worst record in the sports league, here is some money from the big market teams. You’re a quarterback who never won a ring? Here is a commentator’s job.
And a team can’t just win anymore; there is a conspiracy about why one team won and the other lost. It isn’t that the team didn’t win because it didn’t score as many points as the other team; it is the refereeing, weather, deflated balls, or some other form of cheating, real or imagined, instead. Participation becomes a blame for not winning. Even when the system works, it must be changed when a person doesn’t get elected.
When the losers get participation trophies, the winners don’t really see a reason or reward for winning, so the best don’t try anymore. The elite stop living up to their potential, and only the mediocre try anything.
So the older people love their M.A.S.H. and Forrest Gump, celebrating tying like a soccer match or downright running away, completely bitching about younger folks and their participation trophies. Maybe it’s the baby boomer generation and older who are the participation trophy generation.
They normalized divorce.
They were fine trying to “contain” communism militarily.
Turned the country into a debtor nation.
Continues our racist, homophobic, and sexist institutions.
Wouldn’t change their ways to do anything at all for the environment.
Making the millennials pay for their health care.
Neo-liberalism.
Neo-conservatism.
Donald J. Trump
Votes for themselves and not for the future – protects their own interests over their children’s.
Came up with the participation trophy.
Popularized cocaine and then crack cocaine.
Kept the Grateful Dead working for far too long and therefore enabled Jerry Garcia and all the keyboard players’ deaths.
Normalizing alcoholism and drug addiction.
Taking golf, one of the most environmentally inappropriate pastimes, too seriously.
Light rock.
Generation bashing.
Prayer
Great Ancestors that are sometimes called the Founding Fathers,
I forgive you.
You know not what you did.
Granted, you could have known with a bit of thought,
But it was more important to fit in back then,
So standing up to corruption and perverse power,
Was out of the question,
And maybe you wrote some documents that we take too seriously.
Now the US really doesn’t lead anything at all anymore.
You had no idea.
That is a colony of pirates, enslavers, and tax dodgers
It would create a country of pirates, enslavers, and tax dodgers.
Weird.
Maybe you knew exactly what you were doing,
And the system is operating exactly as you had intended.
Nevermind.
Amen.
Craft
Make your own awards to give to a person!
- Some sturdy paper, like vellum
- foam board,
- ribbon, and glue, scissors, and/or an exacto knife.
- Sparkles
- Cut circles in the paper.
- Write your award on the circle.
- Use the circle as a template to cut circles in the foam.
- Glue the hanging ribbon and the looped ribbon for going over the head to the foam circle.
- Glue the award paper to the foam.
- Hang on, person you want to award.
Here are some ideas.
- Showed up to work
- Did the work
- Did the work fine
Goal
Participation trophies are not the end of our fragile society, and maybe we keep giving the older generations too much credit and not enough shame for fucking everything up and then blaming it on the younger people.