Why Moral Clarity Attracts Millennials
Millennials gravitate towards causes with moral clarity. For example, the situation in the Middle East is not easily grasped; its history, motivations, and the intended outcomes are murky. The genocide in Darfur, conversely, is crystal clear; people are being slaughtered solely because of their ethnicity, and something needs to be done to stop it now.
Darfur was a little-known, easily overlooked issue five years ago. Fueled by the energy and outreach of America’s college students, ending the genocide in Darfur has become a leading cause on campuses led by organizations such as STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition; GI-Net; and the Save Darfur Coalition. More than 500 groups on Facebook, millions of dollars in donations, and thousands of hours of volunteer time are now dedicated to this important cause.
According to Thaddeus Ferber, chair of the Youth Policy Action Center, the highest traffic areas on his website address the topics of reducing student debt and reforming drug laws to make students convicted of such crimes eligible for student loans. On YouthNoise, an online community of youth focused on causes, issues of great interest include female body image and future employment.
Comments
Moral clarity? I'm not sure that moral clarity is really the issue addressed here. What seems to be on the table is not really clarity, but rather simplicity - of narrative, communication, and argument.
Consider the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in your example from the perspective of the parties directly involved. Do those active parties experience a lack of moral clarity in their support for either side? Unlikely.
So, perhaps "clarity" is a function of intimacy with an issue that is gained from direct, personal involvement and/or investment? If that is the case, it may help explain why milenials feel "clarity" regarding the issue of legal sanctions for drug offenses hindering access to student loans. Perhaps also, as in the example of Darfur, clarity is achieved by default through popular concensus or the lack of credible counter-advocacy.
Responding to socially specific, focused, goal-delineated efforts to improve female body image, future employment, and access to student loans is more straightforward than attempting to consider or foster the broader social/systemic change that necessarily entails an examination into the muddy water of history, trends, contexts, powers and moral ambiguiity. To me it seems that the question of moral clarity and simplicity is closely entwined with (for starters) the scale of impact that an organization is striving to achieve, supporting individuals personal experience with the issue at hand, and the presence or absence of a vocal counter-party.
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