
We Need to Ditch Generational Labels - samclemens
http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/we-need-to-ditch-generational-labels/
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ChuckMcM
That's just the kind of thing a GenX'er would say. Sort of kidding, sort of
not, let me explain.

The thing about generational cohorts are that they share a set of significant
experiences at a common point in their growth to adulthood. So for me it was
Jimmy Carter, Regan, "Stagflation" and the post Vietnam War mess. For teens
today it will be around things like Yik Yak, internet lives, Ferguson riots,
Snowden, and debt. The government is perceived in a "way" and the world is
being wrenched by a particular set of issues, and your family is affected by
various events, and your peers are passionate about various causes. They all
add up to a generational "imprint" which is the poly miasmic tint that affects
the perception of every future event. You break free from the crysalis that is
childhood innocence and your eyes open up on a wider stage, and it is that
first moment of perception that lays all sorts of groundwork in you about what
is important and what isn't, what is right and what is wrong.

Oddly there is no way, really, to easily _not_ get imprinted, and because of
that imprinting you will recognize others who came of age at that same time as
peers and people who came of age earlier or later as "different" (sometimes
good different and sometimes bad different).

Because those groupings exist, they cannot help but exist, and as you get
older you will see different groupings reacting to the same sorts of problems
everyone deals with (dating, jobs, careers, families, politics) and you will
recognize that different groups react differently from other groupings but
similar to other members of the group, well you'll want to put a name to that.
And you'll call them the "<nom de jeur> generation" or "our generation" or "my
parents generation".

It would be good to ditch being sensitive about how folks of your generational
cohort respond though. Getting past name calling is usually a good sign of
maturing. Not that it won't bother you, just like getting stung by a bee often
bothers you, except that you can see and accept the bee sting, and the name
calling, for what it is, the last ditch response of an organism that is
feeling threatened.

~~~
loopbit
The problem I see with these labels is when you try and apply them globally.

Looking at your 'imprints' (I like the term), you are probably a couple of
years older than me, but me being born in europe, the list of imprints and
experiences are totally different.

For example, people in my year were the first born in democracy in my country,
my childhood is full of examples of people revelling in the new-found freedom
with new genres of music and fashion coming and going, access to more than the
state's tv channels and things like that.

However, you and I are labeled GenX, even though our imprints are totally
different (for me, Reagan was a just a face on the tv screen). When I compare
my 'imprint' with colleagues from other european countries, they are totally
different too (some come from communist countries, others from established
democracies).

So how come, if our imprints are all so different, we are all labeled with the
same term and expected to have similar perceptions of anything?

~~~
NhanH
Expanding a bit from this comment, any set of actors will exhibit certain
emergent properties (culture etc, if you will) , which is strictly speaking
independent from any of the actor themselves. Are we actually sure that the
"imprint" becomes individual characteristics, or is everyone behaving similar
just because the society/culture at large is making everyone to be acting that
way.

------
icanhackit
_Millennials, consultants advise prospective employers, feel entitled to good
treatment even in entry-level jobs_

Perhaps because it's the decent thing to do? Just as an older generation would
see racism as poor behavior and the next would see sexist behavior as
abhorrent, maybe we're on the right track here? When did the golden rule stop
applying to those on a lower rung?

 _Millennials won’t buckle down and buy cars or houses_

Millennials earning more than me can't afford my property - they'd have
trouble paying rent for it. As for cars, if you live in the city they have a
higher cost to the user than overall utility.

 _tweeting and texting and posting selfies and avoiding responsibility._

Looking around, I see a lot of older people doing the same. Perhaps because we
hold the younger people in a different esteem we're just looking for a reason
to judge them.

~~~
JulianMorrison
There's also the shifting economics. In the youth of the boomers, working
yourself through college was a thing, getting on the bottom rung of the
property ladder with your entry level job was a thing.

Nowadays you'd get a bitter laugh suggesting a millennial do either. But
boomers still think it.

"They don't have a work ethic" \- no shit, they don't. They've made the
entirely rational decision that hard work doesn't pay. Rather, work is a
painful subsistence deathmarch promising no future other than more of the
same.

~~~
VLM
"working yourself through college was a thing"

Not just youth of the boomers, but as an early gen-x I had no problem doing
the same. Well, I had minor credit card debt but nothing much. The government
didn't help much back then, which is why my tuition payments were like $2K
instead of $30K like now.

Today I could not possibly afford to buy the house I bought and live in around
the turn of the century. Note that in the long term those prices always revert
to the norm. One way or another the median property buyer eventually buys the
median property. So either their wages go up (LOL as if that's ever going to
happen without a revolution) or the prices go down (guaranteed, this is baked
into the cake at this point). There is a famous saying about the market can
afford to be irrational longer than you can afford to wait so its not like its
going to be next week, but eventually the average dude is going to be able to
afford the average domicile, and the only question is who's going to take the
painful adjustment.

~~~
soylentcola
Even though I was at the tail end of "Gen X" like the author of the article, I
still managed to pull it off. This wasn't without any debt but I went to a
state university that cost about $10k/yr and paid for most of it by working
part time throughout school and full time over summers (while living for free
at home during breaks, foregoing the car payment, and skipping the pricey
spring breaks and summer vacations).

That's not to say I didn't take out any loans but when I graduated, I owed the
equivalent of a Ford Focus rather than a good chunk of a home mortgage.
Looking at the costs at the same state university, it's now up to around $13k
for tuition, fees, and a dorm room for a full year. That's a decent $3k/yr
bump from what I paid but I also didn't take advantage of cheap community
college tuition for the first year or two so there are still ways to do it and
not graduate with $50-100k in debt.

If anything, I think what's missing (and was missing for me as well) is a real
focus on the value of degrees and the real cost of debt. Offers of loans and
credit are thrown at students all the time and it's way too easy to accept
when you haven't spent years of being truly broke and in debt. Likewise, there
was so much focus on just going to college because that is what you did after
high school. Just pick a major based on something you like and no mention is
made of which fields are actually hiring and what they're paying.

The idea of just going to college and paying $40k or $60k to spend four years
learning about something interesting just "because" really only works if you
come from wealth and can just pay for it. As long as it costs that much, I
think there should really be more focus on exactly what you're getting at the
end. Too many young people think it's "college, then graduate, then get job in
field, then use salary to pay off any loans while maybe saving up to buy a
house somewhere down the line". I don't think you can really blame them
because if I remember correctly, I was ignorant of much of reality at 17 when
I was applying for this stuff.

------
3pt14159
I mostly disagree. I think that there is some fluidity to generational labels;
and I much prefer "Gen Y" over "millennials" but the way of thinking that most
baby boomers have can be succinctly described by referring to their
generation. In Canada we have a magazine called "Zoomers" which is targeted at
the baby boomers. It is the most perfect example of media circle jerking I've
ever read. Every single article absolves the group from any responsibility
that the baby boomers have had for the problems faced by today's Gen X and Gen
Y people. And this needs to be called out. I need to be able to say: "Hey, the
baby boomers fucked us. During a period of peace and large employment they
increased the debt, decreased the amount of children per family, and increased
senior based entitlement programs that are ultimately going to lead to severe
economic harm."

~~~
amyjess
Finger-pointing and assigning blame has never been a useful way to solve any
problem.

~~~
VLM
Agreed, we should let them keep doing it.

------
enraged_camel
Sorry, typing from my phone so this will be short.

Anyone who thinks generational labels and associated stereotypes are
meaningless needs to read William Strauss and Neil Howe's excellent book,
titled _The Fourth Turning_. It makes a very well-documented and compelling
case that every generation is defined by the events of their era, and they
take on the characteristics of one of four archetypes: prophet, nomad, hero
and artist.

Their theory is described in detail here:
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_the...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_theory)

~~~
morganvachon
Actually the article's author brings up another work by Strauss and Howe,
_Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584-2069_ , and strongly
denounces it as "pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo". I'm not saying I agree with
that (I haven't read that book), I'm just pointing out that the article's
author doesn't hold those writers in high regard. The article does go into
detail about the four archetypes before denouncing the theory.

I will say I can't deny that there are defining generational markers
throughout my lifetime; if the author of the parent article is to be believed,
I should be thinking and seeing the world more or less exactly the same way as
my 18 year old nieces since we are in the same socioeconomic class. However,
that's simply not the case; while I do connect with them on many levels (we're
all into anime and retro gaming, for example), their outlook on the world was
shaped by what they experienced growing up in the 00s and 10s, just as mine
was growing up in the 80s and 90s. There are some things that I will never
understand about their point of view on a certain topic, and vice versa. I
believe this has more to do with a generational gap than anything else, no
matter what the author of the parent article says about "generational mumbo
jumbo", and I was born the same year as the author (1977).

~~~
k__
I can understand that events shape people, but I don't think they shape them
in the same way.

Like the recent crisis.

Here in Germany it was a thing 2009/2010 and it wasn't really "that" bad, but
it made the people a little bit carefuller.

In Greece the whole thing came smashing down and is still a huge problem for
the people there.

The whole crisis has formed people a lot differently in different parts of the
world.

------
chipsy
Cyclical theories are popular precisely because they have some empirical
backing in closely related fields. Consider the predator-prey model, for
example: Some generations of predator will experience abundance, others will
struggle to survive. The impact of this experience on future behavior is, most
likely, non-zero. It doesn't determine everything, but neither is it a non-
factor.

The fallacy lies in overfitting the data towards the theory. At twenty years
old, a human generation is defined by its parenting. By sixty, it's peaked in
influence and started on its way out. It's relatively hard to say anything
definite until late in the cycle. As well, people in the cohort are all dying
along the way, year by year, and they largely don't get represented in "what
the generation is." It's the people who make it near to retirement, and have
the power to call the shots, who get in the final word.

------
TrisMcC
I don't enjoy the generational labels because it just makes me feel like I
don't belong to yet another group.

I was born late 1981 which makes me part of either GenX or GenY (Millenials),
depending on definition.

~~~
forthefuture
I agree, but it's more that Gen Y is kind of split in half between people who
have ever not had a cellphone, and people whose first cellphone was an iPhone
(not a dig at apple, the iPhone came out before Android did). Of which I am
the former, and feel the latter is certainly ideologically different even if
"generations" don't show it.

------
VLM
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I'm old enough to remember "greatest generation" old timers giving "lazy"
boomers a hassle because "so what if the factory laid everyone off, just work
at the other factory". No old people, you don't get it, the world changed,
those careers are gone and never coming back. Then the mythology of the "rust
belt" developed. I don't think the greatest gen people EVER really got it.

Now its the same thing with boomers telling millennials "get that degree
(you'll never be able to pay off) then use it to get that great job (that
doesn't exist anymore) then buy that house (that you'll never be able to
afford)". And when they don't, because its not 1985 anymore so they can't,
they get labeled as "lazy". I would be interested in the analogy of the "rust
belt" phrase, what will people call the plight of the millennials in a decade
or two?

Its interesting in an alternative fiction style to predict how millennials
will hassle the generation after them. "hey kids get that social media
presence out there so you can get that startup mobile apps job" and their kids
rolling their eyes replying with stuff like "come on dad, its not 2010 again,
nobody does that stuff anymore".

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numeromancer
We need to stop writing articles telling us what “we” “need” to do.

This is almost as bad as the myriad of hacks declaring how “our brains” work,
usually to explain in some facile way what's wrong with the way some _other
people_ think.

------
baldfat
They showed a video 3 years ago at a all hands meeting about Generations.
TL:DR VIDEO Generation X sucks and no one likes them.

I made such a stink that the video was never seen again.

~~~
ericd
I saw a poll somewhere in an article about managing millenials that showed how
people polled felt about working with people in different generations. Gen
Xers actually did really well on a lot of the most important attributes, way
better than Gen Yers, and a bit better than the previous two generations.

------
ojbyrne
They probably made some sense when a group went through some catastrophic
event (plague, world war) so the demographics of some cohort was strikingly
different from some previous cohort. Otherwise I say, yes please.

------
beat
I'm early GenX (born 1965). I feel more cultural bond with people 15 years
younger than I do with people 5 years older (Baby Boomers). The divide is
really powerful for me.

My daughter is 21 and very politically active. She feels the Millennial line
strongly as well. She once recounted a conversation she had about careers and
job-hunting with her Boomer grandfather. He started giving advice, but
realized he'd only ever done two job interviews in his life, from college to
retirement. He had no clue what life was like for her generation.

~~~
talmand
It is amazing to watch when a member of an older generation comes to the
sudden realization that the generations after them have had such a different
experience. Especially when there's been big changes in what amounts to the
normal aspects of everybody's day-to-day life.

I'm just doing my best to keep an open mind as my own children grow up; that
their life experience will be vastly different. An easy one is the thought
that they are growing up with cheap, fast computers with FIOS as a high-speed
connection to a feature-rich Internet. None of which I had for easily half my
lifetime. I could bore them to tears with the vast differences between our
childhoods that I can easily identify and I can't imagine the differences I
haven't recognized yet.

~~~
Dewie3
> I'm just doing my best to keep an open mind as my own children grow up; that
> their life experience will be vastly different. An easy one is the thought
> that they are growing up with cheap, fast computers with FIOS as a high-
> speed connection to a feature-rich Internet. None of which I had for easily
> half my lifetime. I could bore them to tears with the vast differences
> between our childhoods that I can easily identify and I can't imagine the
> differences I haven't recognized yet.

And the difference you _do_ see seems to only be how things are more
easy/convenient for them.

~~~
talmand
I don't see that necessarily just as more easy or convenient things for them,
I also see them as different and new expectations and challenges that they
will face that I did not.

------
Alphasite_
Is this exclusively an American concept? Because ve never seen this in the UK
or anywhere else in fact.

~~~
Angostura
The hatred towards "Baby Boomers" appears much more prevalent in the U.S than
the UK, certainly.

~~~
baldfat
Really? The children of the "Great Generation?" The love for Baby Boomers in
my work video shown to the whole company and a lot of the literature seems to
always life them up as the best working generation who built the US Economy
tot he power house of the 1980s and beyond.

~~~
talmand
I have no real scientific basis for this, but I always felt that the "Greatest
Generation" came back from a horrific war, had large families to replace those
lost, and had their life experience as a reason to spoil their children who
grew up during a boom time that seemed to have no end in site with no regard
for the future.

But that seems a rather broad brush to be slapping around so I'm sure it's
largely unfair.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
I suspect the Depression was more of a thing, because I'd asked about it. Most
people did not do combat duty during the War. We won that war in the factories
and oilfields.

It was also the most heavily propaganda-oriented thing in living memory.
Y'know all them John Wayne war movies? Yep.

The classic propaganda movie is best exemplified by "Sergeant York". The scene
where the dapper officer explains the conflict between "Thou Shalt Not Kill"
and "Duty, Honor, Country" is exactly how propaganda works. "Well, it's not
killing if they're Huns."

I always thought "The Best Years of Our Lives" exposed the more sinister
aspects of the war experience ( it describes PTSD decades before the concept
existed beyond "shell shock" or "battle fatigue" ) , and it's interesting that
my favorite authors were either outsiders ( like Saul Bellow or Phillip Roth),
pop historians ( Michener ) or those who went through the war as dogfaces (
Heller, Vonnnegut ).

~~~
talmand
Well, 400,000 dead and nearly 700,000 wounded. Don't forget people witnessing
the aftermath of total war in the European and Pacific theaters whether they
were in combat or not. I think it was a bigger thing than you imply.

I'm not sure where you're going with the propaganda films as compared to my
point.

But I agree, the Great Depression would be a contributing factor to what I'm
describing.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
It was a big thing. That 400k/700k was just Americans; for the Soviets it was
millions. Mind boggling. But the number of Americans actually exposed to the
horror was relatively small - say way < 10%. The death camps took a very long
time for Americans to absorb. The behavior of the Japanese in war was also
very slowly taken up, although it was mainly expressed as racism in the short
term. When you leave thousands to die on an island without relief or resupply,
the racism writes itself.

The propaganda made the Boomers uncomfortable. I've made somewhat of a study
of Sixties literature; I don't think it would have been that way if it were
not for WWII propaganda. The WWII propaganda is also quite out of character
for Americans historically. Even with the curtailment of basic freedom of
speech in the Civil War, plenty of people were on Lincoln heavily the whole
time.

FDR was all but immune from even criticism.

This propaganda changed the American character a great deal. I had two
grandmothers from the pre-WWII period and they thought differently than people
do now.

I think the Depression was the principal cause of WWII.

------
tempestn
The cover picture of that article broke my brain for a bit. The dark-haired
girl on the left blends in with the one behind her so I couldn't immediately
tell where one ended and the other began. And on the right, you just see red
hair without a face. Also, random arms poking out everywhere.

------
__Joker
Labeling is human way of dealing with complexity. Obviously it has exception
but it is good starting point for reasoning. The problem is if you don't
update your belief system with more evidence you will get and or seek for.

~~~
Dewie3
Great programmer-like answer - technically correct to a pedantic degree,
misses any subtelety by reducing it to some heuristic for dealing with
complexity, and ends with a point that isn't new or controversial to anyone on
the subject. :-)

I guess I labeled you as programmer-like there.

------
gojomo
Generations are granfalloons.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Exactly.

~~~
fit2rule
Your mom was a kan-kan!

------
d_theorist
The "Emberverse" sounds great. Just ordered the first book. Has anybody read
it?

~~~
jaegerpicker
Yes and I deeply enjoy it. That said it works best if you just accept that
this is the story that the Author wants to tell and that there might be a few
or more than a few logical conclusions that you disagree with. A lot of the
decisions he makes seem over the top at first blush but on closer inspection
the make a ton of sense.

~~~
d_theorist
Thanks. I am looking forward to it.

However, after ordering the book I realised that the series is a follow-on
from his previous 'Nantucket series', which also sounds fantastic. So I have
also ordered the first book in that series.

I have a terrible and debilitating disease that prevents me from reading
things out of order.

~~~
dragonwriter
Its not a follow-on in the sense of a sequel, its only a follow-on in that
there is a nexus between the premises of the two series and the Emberverse
series was written later.

~~~
d_theorist
Yes; thanks. I gathered that. My disease doesn't distinguish unfortunately.
It's some weird form of OCD.

------
frozenport
>>‘Generational thinking is just a benign form of bigotry.’

I disagree. It would be wacky to deny grouping societies into cohorts.
Certainly, members of minorities groups might not have the same values as the
majority but this doesn't mean the larger group doesn't exist, and that the
grouping is not useful.

~~~
venomsnake
Well with the social discourse in the US of A being what it is, being called a
bigot right now is a badge of honor.

Also generational cohorts exist. People got shaped by the great Depression or
WWII or Cold War or End of Cold War, 9/11 and Iraq and great recession ...
They have/had different experiences, different outlooks, different values and
so on ...

