At first I was a little annoyed, but then I had to smile at just how emblematic of Generation X the article really is. Screwed over by their parents, depressed, substance-addicted, and hopeless, but not one single hint of any effort or plan to change things. Generation X is the generation of ennui at the ruination of the world. Millenials and Gen Z might just be pissed off enough to do something about it.
We tried to change things I faced down 15 cops with loaded shotguns to protest Gulf War 1. I'm not depressed or substance addicted and I started doing web development in 1995 and continue to work as an a self taught engineer even though I'm pushing 50.
I faced down 15 cops with loaded shotguns to protest Gulf War 1
Why? Opposition to war in general? As wars go, the Gulf War was pretty close to ideal. One country invades another, invaded country requests help, US expels invader, US goes home. I wish every other US war was as clean.
US bases in Saudi Arabia was one of the 'grievances' of al Qaeda:
> 3. One of the principal goals of al Qaeda was to drive the United States armed forces out of Saudi Arabia (and elsewhere on the Saudi Arabian peninsula) and Somalia by violence. Members of al Qaeda issued fatwahs (rulings on Islamic law) indicating that such attacks were both proper and necessary.
It’s a feature, not a bug. The monied classes/aristocracy use the good times to pad their coffers and make the plebs feel like they can succeed and then they hunker down and wait out the bad times in their castles and mansions while the plebs fight for king and country because the aristocrats/monarchs got bored and kicked off a war, the plebs get sick and die while the rulers/owners stay safe by sending their servants into harms way out to attend to their external needs, or the plebs starve in the self-inflicted financial collapse.
Sometimes you get all three in quick succession like the early 20th century.
That put way too much intent over people's actions IMO. Who the hell are these aristocrats orchestrating multi-generational psy-ops? Do they meet over brunch to plan it? Not every theory has to be explained by conspiracies. I don't know if Strauss-Howe's theory is accurate, but it seems to me (a layman) completely defensible thru plain psychology, sociology and observation, a defensible "natural evolution/patterns of societies theory".
> Who the hell are these aristocrats orchestrating multi-generational psy-ops?
The capitalist class.
> Do they meet over brunch to plan it?
Sometimes. Sometimes dinner. Sometimes drinks. Sometimes, at meetings of the global institutions they and their paid agents run.
Not, like, in one unified, organized group, just a disproportionately powerful class, with many members aggressively pursuing their own self-interest, and coordinating on that where they recognize the opportunity.
The same way they overthrew the feudal order and established the capitalist order in the first place. (And also the same way that the larger but less disproportionately powerful classes beneath them have weakened the capitalist system in favor of modern mixed economy as the dominant system of the last century. Which has a lot of the first group irritated.)
All things considered they're not too bad if their goal when fabricating bad times is so that the next generation gets stronger. I would be solely focused on my self-interest if I was a Machiavellian oligarch.
Strong people bring the good times when you standing on the side of the winner.
On the other side, strong people brought destruction, oppression, international shame, broken nations, and sometimes the disappearance of entire cultures.
So are the greatest generation bad and the boomers good?
This is a silly way to look at things I think. Without a solid definition of time, its just the tautology of the good times and bad times being the only states and then blaming the people of those times.
And to say those were the hard times conversely states that prior to that were the so-called 'good times.' This might be generalized as the roaring 20s in the US (and similarly for Weimar Germany.) However, this generalization fails in two regards: 1) contrary to popular belief, the roaring 20s weren't roaring for most people in the US (or Germany). 2nd) the members of both eras were primarily composed of the same individuals; there is no distinct line of generations divided by 'good times/bad times.'
Lastly it implies that by definition all 'good times' are predicated upon holocaust.
EDIT: And that strength can only be continually cultivated through perpetual war.
Eh, Generation X created the internet. Tesla/SpaceX, Amazon, Google, Paypal, Netflix, Ebay, Square/Twitter, and Signal were all founded by members of Gen X. Gen X made San Francisco a tech hub. Gen X created Linux as well as *BSD. Gen X invented Java, Javascript, Python, and Ruby. Gen X created the PEV revolution.
And Y-Combinator, together with hacker news. Thank Gen X for that.
Gen X never had the numbers to do anything substantial. Millenial's population total crossed the Boomers in 2019. Gen X will not do the same until 2028. From 2019 forward, governmental power will be exercised by Millenials. Gen X will never have an era of ascendancy, our lot is to simply figure out how to be satisfied where ever we find ourselves.
I feel like that should be obvious. But generations do have some commonalities based on the societal changes at the time, and that is what this "generations" talk is all about.
As a Gen Xer, I feel like the defining characteristic of my generation was parental divorce. It was really the first generation whose mothers entered the workforce in droves, and due to a widespread societal change of the roles and possibilities of women, this caused a ton of marital strife and divorce (in no way putting a judgment on this, it's just what happened).
My parents did not divorce, but my mom did work full time since I was in kindergarten, and we were pretty much all on our own until late in the evening, at a time before cell phones where parents could easily contact us.
Thus, this "shmuck" may not speak for me, but I see where he's coming from.
I don't even know what the fuck generation I am, when I was a kid they called me Gen X but then I got retconned to Gen Y and now who knows. When I started highschool mobile phones and the internet weren't a thing and when I started university they were ubiquitous, that should date me closely enough.
They should just move the Gen X - Millennial cutoff back from 1980 to 1975 or so. Gen X is already so small, it won't matter if we make it a bit smaller still. Meanwhile, coining your own special term to feel extra special about yourselves is the most Millennial thing I can imagine!
I respectfully disagree. There is a huge shift in worldview and mindset between someone born in 1975 and someone born in 1980. The former essentially grew up before the interconnected world was a thing. The latter had it come in when they were in their formative early teens. My partner and I are on either side of this divide, and the the effects, while subtle, are significant.
X/Y "Cusper" (I think most cut that off at '82?), or just an early or "elder" Millennial if you're slightly past that. Some like to add an "Oregon Trail generation" that covers the tail end of X and the beginning of Y, basically for the kids whose first computers (their own, a relative's, at school, whatever) were not connected to the Internet. I think that cut-off's around '85 or '86, usually.
[EDIT] I think there's a tendency to have a bunch of names for that set specifically because the latter ~half of Millennials had a very different experience than the early ~half—the early half did have a childhood more similar to Gen X, and they grew up immersed in Gen X media on top of it—so lumping them together doesn't seem right to a lot of people.
I like that. My gaming started with Repton, Qwak, Vertigo and Elite on a BBC Micro but I spent a lot of time playing Dig Dug and Rick Dangerous on green screens. I graduated highschool just as we got dialup and started realising that combined 2D/3D graphics cards might actually be alright after all. (We got one from a little company called nVidia, you probably haven't heard of them though. :P )
I'm GenX (b. early 70's), my parents were/are Boomers (b. 1949/50), but somehow Millennials' parents are Boomers too. Families changing caused a lot of this- my parents stayed married, had kids early, Mom stayed home, parents paid for undergrad, retired early but simply. The Millennial upbringing seems to be kids late, Mom worked, kids left with student loans while parents have second homes and travel and new partners. I suppose if my parents had been less focused on family and participated in the party/disco side of the 70's, I'd have been a millennial too.
Why aint anyone blaming the "Me Generation" for the current crap?
The kids who were really invested in the difference between Disco and KISS and AC/DC; and have yet to forge any closer connection to reality even though they're the people in charge of shit now?
The folks writing paeans to the Quaalude and taking full advantage of the modern pharmacopeia to make sure those pesky pains of reailty biting them dont actually affect their groove.
I wasn't updated on the terminology change, apparently. How unfair to "boomers" to be lumped in with the most coddled and swaddled and useless children to ever inherit the earth.
It is kind of a weird half-generation- it seemed people my age were always running into the after-effect of the kids 5 years older. Things like 'the campus is dry now, but it wasn't 4 years ago' or 'there used to be this awesome event but it ended 2 years ago when a girl was drugged and raped'. They got sex drugs and rock 'n' roll, we got AIDS, 'no means no', 'Say no to drugs', MADD, and Rick Astley.
Whilst funny, speaking as a GenXer myself, we got a raw deal, but not nearly as bad as the subsequent generations. Many of whom seem a lot more switched on than we ever were. We just kind of treated what was happening as inevitable. Millennials know that this was a policy enacted by people with names and addresses.
Maybe in an abstract post-GenX got a raw-er deal, but I've gone from being the kid no one will listen to the old no one will listen to pretty quickly. I work in a more traditional company and the 70 year olds want to leave things to the 30-40 year olds, not the bitter 40-50 year olds who never amounted to anything while the Boomers held on as long as possible.
I've had a couple Gen X'er friends tell me the generation is collectively stuck in the past. Are there any plausible theories why that might be? Was it a lack of meaning in the general narrative that made growing old too painful for many to face or something?
It could be that our pop culture has been frozen in time as "THE pop culture" for 50 years now. Rehashed, rebooted, remade, and reimagined over and over again to become your pop culture too.
How am I supposed to NOT feel "stuck in the past", when the The Matrix is coming out next month? When there's a bunch of Star Wars and Star Trek and Indiana Jones (!) next year. We're on our third or fourth Spiderman franchise, and every other teenager that I walk past is wearing an Iron Maiden or Metallica t-shirt? The most exciting new video game on the horizon is Knights of the Old Republic. Geeze, Tom Brady is the defending Super Bowl MVP!
Sure, somehow I went from "liberal" to "bigot" without actually changing my social views, and somehow we determined that comic book movies never exist before Robert Downey Jr. But otherwise, I look around... and this really DOESN'T look all that different from the 90's, you know?
>I've had a couple Gen X'er friends tell me the generation is collectively stuck in the past. Are there any plausible theories why that might be?
Isn't this true of most generations? It seems like a pretty universal human attribute from what I can tell, at least to some degree. Is the idea that it's a stronger pull in Gen X?
I've never heard anyone who's not an X'er describe themselves that way. I don't think Zoomers really could be stuck in the past, given that they don't have much depth of memory yet (and the rapidity with which trends shift in that community). My own generation, the millennials, do remember the '90s, but we tend to remember them as a rather weird and embarassing, if simpler, time. I'd characterise us as pessimistically forward-looking, maybe that's a function of my friends group though.
Which leaves the Boomers, and while there's certainly a lot of nostalgia in that community, I've known more that were looking forward to their retirement than would go on about the good old days.
I don't want to read another glamorous blog post about how well someone tried--without hearing about what could have been done differently and what will be done differently next time.
The difficult thing for "the kids nowadays" to understand about GenX is the fact that we grew up under the threat of nuclear annihilation. It seems a bit absurd now, but there were times in the 70s and early 80s where it seemed like the grown-ups were going to destroy us all. This led a lot of us to develop nihilistic attitudes to life - it's difficult to take things too seriously when you'll probably die in a nuclear holocaust anyway.
But when the cold war suddenly ended, Gen X was left a bit adrift with its nihilism. You can still hear echoes of those fearful days in everything that Gen X does and says to this day.
"Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone."
That is the problem. It should take over the reins now. Gen X has the problem that it was educated by ex-hippies with massive egos and personalities, who later sold out the West to China.
Gen X has major confidence issues and should get rid of them. It is under a two-pronged attack from the last boomers and woke millenials. Well, fight!
The problem was that we grew up in a time when the dreams died and we were having to deal with the tailwind of the post war growth boom. The protest movements of the 60's and 70's delivered nothing, the state-ist, interventionist keynesian economics produced low growth, high inflation, high interest rates, high unemployement. The right wingers Thatcher and Reagan, cleaned up the mess. Making money was the only truth to us, education and career were all important. The university protestors that preceeded us did nothing achieved nothing, and sold out anyway. Ultimately ideology is a pile of shit, and we dont want to waste our time with them. Technology and money were our gods. Of the two I fear millenials more, they grew up in a stable world without high inflation and economic stagnation, they want to invite the socialist tiger into their house but they dont know what the consequences will be. Their attitude to freedom is unnerving. They're dragging the world back into the age of the victorians.
There is a concept in/around civil engineering I've heard referred to as the 3 generation rule, though the only place search engines seem to turn it up is Ken Burnside's formulation on Atomic Rockets, which specifically applies it to space stations.
>The Three Generation Rule of Space Colonies states that space colonies have an average life-span of three generations until the life-support and other technical system decay to a point where the colony cannot sustain life. As Rick Robinson puts it "the degree of social discipline needed for a space habitat to survive indefinitely is beyond the capability of "normal" human societies. The human tendency to favor short-term expediency. will, over time, make the habitat ecosystem more and more precarious." See the link for more details.
Here's the thing, that didn't come out of nowhere. There're actually earlier references I've stumbled across from various veins of engineer or policymaker with regards to how difficult it is to get funding for proper maintenance of civil engineering projects.
The meme formulation of hard times, strong people, yada yada, is a glib restatement of a rule that to me seems to be at the very heart of information theory:
If you ain't lived it, you don't get it. I can tell you stories til I am blue in the face, but until people [start dropping dead from cholera in the streets], [get trapped in elevators due to widespread power failure], [start suffocating in the mal-maintained subway tunnels], [having their homes blow up because of long deferred natural gas pipe maintenance], you will not give me the resources to get done what needs to get done.
To generation n-1 it's theory, generation n-2, they paid for it in blood, to generation n, it's the crazy ramblings of old people and the world don't work that way anymore grampa.
Except it do. And it will continue to. This the cycle continues. Even the creation of an ennui consumed generation is predicted in the sense that a generation sees the problems, but isn't in touch with history enough to figure out how far to roll back thinking to safely start retraversing a new path.
You either get an extremely luck person who stumbled on it randomly, or you get hard times when the next demagogue wrecking ball's shit and everyone has to figure out how to pick up the pieces.
> to generation n, ... the world don't work that way anymore
...and that's where we get back to tech. Younger techies tend to act as though none of the hard-won knowledge about how to store/move/act on data, how to write robust software, etc. applies any more. The fact is that some does and some doesn't. Time after time after time, things that we once knew about (for example) network congestion or storage failure modes are ignored or forgotten because "the world don't work that way anymore" then come back to the fore very suddenly and painfully because yes it does. A large part of the reason I retired is that I got tired of over-promoted kids ignoring warnings about things I had lived through once and could see coming again. "I told you so" is no substitute for being allowed to contribute in the first place.
P.S. I'm not a Boomer; I'm very early GenX, and way more attuned to those experiences/attitudes.
I always felt, generationally, that I'm in a weird spot, somewhere between a Millennial and a Gen Xer.
I caught the end of Gen X, so I get some of the gripe, but I've always been a technology native, so in that regard I'm closer to a Millennial in life experience.
Many people in tech are a bit like this, perhaps ahead of their time because they caught the wave earlier.
I'm reminded of an SNL gameshow sketch. Boomers vs Millenials with Generation X being the gameshow host. When the Boomers and Millenials were arguing, Gen X sat back going, "Meh. Not my problem."
With Millenials having kids, being married, etc now, I don't think Boomers can continue being the boogeyman holding us down. It might be time to actually start fixing things.
The average politician in the house/senate/congress is a boomer.
I agree that the solution is for millennials to get more politically active. But the cards are sort of stacked against us. We have less money over all than prior generations which means any representative we want is likely going to be outspent by older representatives (for not being whiny or whatever).
On top of that, the political landscape has changed somewhat significantly. What changed is we have computers to draw congressional maps that remove political competition. There are few "swing" districts in the US and that has a lot to do with computer aided gerrymandering. That sort of system makes it easier for an old fart to stay in power for far too long, because they've picked constituency that won't remove them from office for bad behavior.
Of course, the only solution is to be less apathetic than the boomers and gen xers. To vote in very large numbers that are hard to ignore. That, however, is a hard thing to pull off. It's hard to convince people that their vote matters and will make a difference or that participation matters.
The article is making the point that we don[t actually have it superplushard as a generation.
I work in tech, I have debt, I live frugally, and I've seen how easily it would be to wipe out my entire family's savings with a medical emergency - my dad worked himself to the edge of death.
He's a boomer. We millenials grew up believing that things would always be the idealistic world it was of our childhoods, but that was a really really unique spot in history. We still are some of the most privileged people in history.
Between them, gen Z, and the mostly left-leaning Gen Xers, they could throw the Republican party out if they all showed up to vote.
"If". This isn't a new problem, the young people never show up to vote. They are given a million messages that they can't make a difference, that they shouldn't bother. They should wonder who is sending those messages.
A lot of people's votes in the presidential election are meaningless.
However those whose votes are meaningful don't know it.
Let's say that if do you vote, you are 99.999% sure your vote is meaningless. If you don't vote, you'll be 100% sure. That .001% is a larger difference than it might seem.
> However those whose votes are meaningful don't know it.
Sure they do. They live in Minnesota, Wisconson, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Nebraka's weird second district, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Maine's weird second district, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Montana, South Carolina, Alaska, or Missouri; give or take a few.
> Let's say that if do you vote, you are 99.999% sure your vote is meaningless. If you don't vote, you'll be 100% sure. That .001% is a larger difference than it might seem.
> What's stopping you?
Do you use the same logic for the lottery? Because I'd reckon you have better odds of winning the powerball than the odds of massachusetts turning red.
> Do you use the same logic for the lottery? Because I'd reckon you have better odds of winning the powerball than the odds of massachusetts turning red
The marginal cost of marking a candidate in the Presidential race is a lot lower than the price of a lottery ticket, especially if you are already voting in any of the other races that are usually on the same ballot and where your chance of impact is usually much higher.
And in a two party system, even a majority won't help. Biden got elected thanks to young voters, but look how little climate action the new administration has taken.
Sad that you're looking to assign blame rather than problem-solve for future generations.
More education of how the US government works is what's in order here.
People look at everything trump did and think "why can't Biden do the same, but for good?" and the problem is, the government is built to be torn down, not built up.
Biden has no power to take climate action. The EPA doesn't have the ability to just subsidize solar panels or enact taxes on CO2 emissions. They've actually tried to do that for CO2 and that was struck down by the supreme court. [1]
That leaves congressional action to force climate action and, unfortunately we have a 50/50 split in the senate with 2 democrat senators that are weak on climate issues. (50 republican senators that will not support any climate action).
Once you realize this, you understand the solution is voting for democrats to the senate in 2022/2024 so those 2 holdouts don't matter as much. Move the balance of the senate by 2 more democrat senators and you might see some climate action.
Stop being disappointed in biden for not doing what he can't do. Start being mad at the 2 democrat senators and the 50 republican senators who stand in the way.
Oh, I'm extremely mad at Manchin and Sinema. But I believe you are underestimating the power of the presidential podium. I will readily admit that the Democratic party deserves more blame than Biden himself.
If Biden cared, he could shame these "Democrat" senators and prevent them from getting re-elected. If he uses his platform to inhibit their campaign fundraising, they will surely change positions out of fear of loosing their seat.
And something to keep in mind before we make campaign contributions for 2022, remember that some votes are way more valuable than others. Each vote for a Senator in Arizona counts more than 5x than in California.
Biden has been meeting constantly with Manchin at least (Sinema has been ducking his calls). He has been putting his weight on them to make a change.
But honestly, Manchin is a democrat senator in a red state. Manchin pissing off Biden and the rest of the Democrats is likely GOOD for him there.
Sinema has no excuse and should be primaried in AZ.
> I will readily admit that the Democratic party deserves more blame than Biden himself.
I don't agree with either Democrats or Biden being blamed here. Democrats do not have a filibuster proof majority. Why blame them when Republicans are filibustering nearly every single bill put forward? This isn't an example of a party failing, this is an example of simply not having enough votes to make a change.
> remember that some votes are way more valuable than others.
Definitely agree, but also remember to never say never. Georgia, of all states, put in 2 democrat senators. I would have never predicted that would happen.
And to that point, I don't think a single bill would have passed had that not happened. I think Democrats take way too much blame for Republican obstruction. They've been shockingly unified throughout this legislative session. They've finally started playing some harder ball. Don't blame them because it's still incredibly tight margins.
> If Biden cared, he could shame these "Democrat" senators and prevent them from getting re-elected
It's hard to do that when you are unpopular nationwide[1] and downright loathed in Arizona[2]. Independents approval/disapproval is 30-60.
Sinema is much more popular than Biden, but not so popular among her base. A democrat can't win in Arizona just on the basis of the Democratic vote. They have to win the independent vote and hope for low turnout in the GOP. So Biden is already a drag on Sinema's re-election. If he publicly attacked her, her popularity would go up. Why do you think she is opposing these policies? Because it increases her political capital and support at home. The more the media focuses on her as the one blocking these unpopular policies, the more Arizona voters rally to her side.
> If Biden cared, he could shame these "Democrat" senators and prevent them from getting re-elected. If he uses his platform to inhibit their campaign fundraising, they will surely change positions out of fear of loosing their seat.
Manchin is more popular than Biden in WV, and his positions do more to support his fundraising than Biden’s opposition would do to hurt it. Biden can't meaningfully hurt Manchin.
Sinema presents the opposite problem: she's already completely alienated the Democratic primary electorate. She clearly isn't interested in being reelected (or, if she does care, its not as a Democrat), so there's no leverage there.
I'm not assigning blame though I can see how it would look that way.
Seeing how these discussions go today, however, and looking forward - I fully expect the millennials to be an easy target before long. Gen X isn't big enough to shoulder the blame after boomers die out.
You're right of course, I should have said plurality. I'm currently reading a biography of Hitler so you'd think I'd be particularly sensitive to the difference.
You’ve gotta do something about the boomers sooner than that if you want to inherit a living planet. The thing that makes Gen X as a group ineffective is that it’s a much smaller cohort than boomers or millenials. Boomers didn’t have enough babies to replace themselves, narcissistic fucks.
OTOH, maybe generations are just astrology for journalists.
I'm just happy to be sitting quietly on the sidelines while the Millennials and Boomers fight it out. We'll be boomers soon enough though, it's a label that's gotten completely detached from the year of your birth.
I am feeling old enough to miss the "good old day". Even as I sit here typing message on a social forum, I can't help but feel that the internet has been a net negative. We weren't as unhappy as the current generation seems. Among other factors, I think its because we weren't constantly bombarded with the message that we should be unhappy.
No I think that's unlikely. The boomer label isn't simply old, a large part of it is viewing the world from a life spent in times of extreme economic growth.
