Intra-generational defeatism in Puerto Rico's young adult cohort
The bonds of affinity and affection between members of a generation vary greatly in different societies. While stateside (United States) young adult cohorts tend to reflect stronger bonds of mutual assistance, young adult cohort in Puerto Rico tend towards conflictive and areciprocal relationships. This has been a surprising observation, particularly with regard to members belonging to the middle class. While it might be suggested that individuals in professional or commercial positions which serve at platforms towards positions of greater social hierarchy are naturally predisposed towards intense mutual competition, the trait has been found to be the case even for those positions whose potential for social mobility is nearly non-existent. Why the trend exists is somewhat puzzling, as the behavior leads towards an intragenerational defeatism. Confronting a shared sets of problems, dilemmas, and general common interests, the Puerto Rican members of "GenerationX" seem to be unable to cohere to form a suitable 'unified' response--at least with the same degree of organizational speed and political force as those of the Baby Boom generation who identified relevant issues quickly and took greater political activity to confront these issues. (Even when the baby boomer responses varied greatly, the existence and formation of groups on one side of the political spectrum spurred the formation of 'counterbalancing' groups at the opposite side during the 1960s and 1970s, leading to the 'essential tension' of social development.) Active environmental groups seem to be the exception to the rule rather than the norm. It appears to be the case that various social realities tend to undermine the 'natural affinity' found intra-generationally, which (inversely) strengthen inter-generational links. Some factors influencing the formation of social bonds might include the following: 1) severely circumscribed middle class employment market, thereby artificially elevating existing competition visa viz its demographic size 2) severely circumscribed coherent territorial domain in which to easily exert geographical mobility 3) overly powerful economic actors of a hegemonic nature who create equally powerful incentives towards intra-generational "treason", 4) presence of television and (inversely) the absence of social spaces for mutual interaction and reflection. While technological changes, in-and-of-themselves,might have contributed to these social trends, their presence within the particular context of an island environment strongly reinforce particular social formations which are drastically divergent from those found in the United States.