That being said, what do you feel is the cause of a drain in motivation on the endemic level? For some reason my gut reaction is to think that it's the outsourcing of jobs to other countries, and wages stagnating while prices go up. And then couple that with social media, of the life we're all told we're supposed to live, and now young men have less opportunities, less income with higher prices, and having a false idealization of "the good life" shoved down their throats.
I don't need to insist what I'm thinking is correct, but that's just what I'm kinda seeing in broad strokes. Could be way off. I also don't know if there's a version of this in every generation, or if in fact the current generation is a new/ fringe case that requires very different approaches for how to address it on a macro & interrelated scale.
Can you provide a citation for the pew research on the weekly messages of hope, whether my above inference was correct or not? If it's not Sunday services at church, I'd love to know what else I can do inject some hope into my weeks.
* or whatever is the holy day in a given church congregation.
Here is one example: https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2...
It begins:
“A new Pew Research Center study of the ways religion influences the daily lives of Americans finds that people who are highly religious are more engaged with their extended families, more likely to volunteer, more involved in their communities and generally happier with the way things are going in their lives.”
It's a natural reaction to the fact that opportunities are shrinking in terms of quality and payoff. There are lots of "jobs" but they don't offer long term stability or growth.
As an employee, it would be irrational to ignore this and hope that loyalty would be rewarded.
Google is a great example of one that started out very differently, but unfortunately became much like the companies they strived to set themselves apart from. Many startups still foster that culture Google originally had.
Of course individual situations and be quite different, but you are really bucking the trend in expecting the average company to show loyalty instead of respond to financial incentives.
It used to be that you had a limited set of people controlling the messaging that went into your mind, often limiting negative messages for the majority of people. The Internet has made it far too easy to stumble upon, or seek out, negative messaging. I could definitely see where if you have been conditioned to feel that you don't need to try, or shouldn't even try, then you will believe a life without accomplishment is acceptable and sustainable.
They used to say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but now that tree is a forest. If you are a parent, a mentor, or similar, you are competing for airtime with billions of other voices on the Internet. You really have to make sure your voice stands out amongst the rest. I try to offer that in my classroom, but I only get them for a short period, then they're onward to their next training in the pipeline.