(1) Amongst the millennial generation today, millennials are perceived as being self entitled and only worried about their own self preservation.The author Ron Fournier argues that many people from different generations are frustrated and strongly believe that the millennial generation will cause a great downfall in our political system today due to their lack of confidence in our government. Fournier in his essay, discusses the common misconceptions about millennials and refutes them with examples of how millennials are taking big steps to radically change our political system. Similar to Fournier, authors David and Jack Cahn, address the various doubts other generations have about millennials, but counter this misconception with how this generation is the exact opposite of these stereotypes and exemplify what they can really achieve in our political system. This Cahn “manifesto” extends Fournier’s logical conclusion about revolutionary, or worse, millennial political goals.
(2) Self preservation, is first introduced through Hobbes’s, an English philosopher, natural laws. Hobbes establishes the idea that a man’s right to self preservation is the first law of nature “each man hath to use his own power as he will himself for the preservation of his own nature” (Hobbes 1). Based off of Hobbes’ natural law of self preservation, collective preservation can be the act of one taking action to use “his power” not only to benefit himself, but also others around him. For example, Fournier states that millennials want a small government to benefit themselves, but still also want to help the poor community. (3) Fournier, argues that although other generations do not agree, millennials are passionate about changing the world but don’t agree with the traditional efforts to make a change that were commonly used throughout other generation’s times. Fournier, supports this argument through facts and statistics with testimonies from interviews from millennials describing their passion to make a change, but lack of trust in today’s government. His purpose is to highlight millennial’s “eager[ness] to serve” (Fournier 4) but lack of faith in politics to emphasize that although their actions are different from other generations, they will radically change our government. He establishes a casual tone for an older conservative audience who is educated and interested in the future of our government relating to other generations. Along with his argument, Fournier states that millennials only way in participating in politics and using their collective preservation is to “radically change” Washington through challenging the political status quo and doing what they are passionate about and helping the community around them. (4) Millennials today are rejecting the traditional beliefs about our government and ways to change the world. Fournier, addresses the fact that this generation has grown up in a time in which they are “products of an era of economic crisis and war” (Fournier 7) therefore they are accustomed to the idea of helping others around them in order to take small steps to change the world. He offers proof that defends his idea that millennials are truly passionate about making a change for the better through various examples and statistics in which show how this generation “[is] more concerned with the importance of their work than the salary attached to it” (Fournier 11). Many of his examples appeals to ethos which gets the reader to trust him since he went out himself and spoke directly to the millennial generation to understand what they are passionate about and what actions they’ve made to achieve …show more content…
These two views that interlink might influence my reader’s idea of self preservation because of the way each piece of evidence shared shows that initially they thought these actions were done to only benefit one person but in the end were done to achieve the goal of changing the world to benefit everyone in a more effective manner than past generations. Both texts also show the sweeping generalization fallacies that other generations commit when perceiving the millennial generation as ineffective and entitled, but then refute these generalizations with evidence of their passion to change how our political system works, in order to benefit not just one person but all of the