Generation Gap Flash
I feel no generation gap whatsoever with Generation Y.
Zero.
They do make me feel slack and old, but that's not their fault. And their celebrities -- well, I was going to say that their celebrities were somehow even more shallow and moronic than Generation X's -- but then I realized that the examples I was going to cite, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, are both members of my generation. Shout out to my Gen X homies, yo!
Generation Y makes perfect sense to me. They seem to have effortlessly assimilated the best ideas of the Baby Boom generation after filtering them through our generation's BS detector. And they know how to do stuff, in teams even. They're functional, as opposed to dysfunctional.
Which is totally in line with what Generational Theory predicts.
Overall, I find Generational Theory to be a good theory. Patterns bestow meaning on history, and enable understanding. The four-cycle generational and event patterns fit the facts of history.
But I do have a few questions:
1. What about people who are out of step with their generation? For instance, in many ways, I've always felt kind of alienated from my alienated Gen X peers. I love to read, I hate consumerism (especially advertising) and I love thinking about the Big Questions. What role do we exceptionalists play?
2. Some parts of the country are 'ahead' of other parts, in terms of cultural/social/techonological trends; e.g. NYC and L.A. are years ahead of, say, Statesville, NC. I've noticed that fashions and political trends here tend to lag behind the national in a predictable manner. Do such 'time lags' have an impact on events?
3. Do great events shape generations, or vice-versa? Or both?
Recent posts have been kind of dry. We are aware of this issue and are taking steps to address it. Thank you again for reading Warrior of the Woods. Have a nice day.
:-)
Zero.
They do make me feel slack and old, but that's not their fault. And their celebrities -- well, I was going to say that their celebrities were somehow even more shallow and moronic than Generation X's -- but then I realized that the examples I was going to cite, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, are both members of my generation. Shout out to my Gen X homies, yo!
Generation Y makes perfect sense to me. They seem to have effortlessly assimilated the best ideas of the Baby Boom generation after filtering them through our generation's BS detector. And they know how to do stuff, in teams even. They're functional, as opposed to dysfunctional.
Which is totally in line with what Generational Theory predicts.
Overall, I find Generational Theory to be a good theory. Patterns bestow meaning on history, and enable understanding. The four-cycle generational and event patterns fit the facts of history.
But I do have a few questions:
1. What about people who are out of step with their generation? For instance, in many ways, I've always felt kind of alienated from my alienated Gen X peers. I love to read, I hate consumerism (especially advertising) and I love thinking about the Big Questions. What role do we exceptionalists play?
2. Some parts of the country are 'ahead' of other parts, in terms of cultural/social/techonological trends; e.g. NYC and L.A. are years ahead of, say, Statesville, NC. I've noticed that fashions and political trends here tend to lag behind the national in a predictable manner. Do such 'time lags' have an impact on events?
3. Do great events shape generations, or vice-versa? Or both?
Recent posts have been kind of dry. We are aware of this issue and are taking steps to address it. Thank you again for reading Warrior of the Woods. Have a nice day.
:-)
posted by Warrior of the Woods at 2:05 PM
5 Comments:
You must have a different conception of what Gen X and Gen Y are than I do because as unfortunate as it is, I consider myself barely Gen Y while Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are younger than I am. (By the way, I consider Gen X as being born between the mid 1960s to 1979 and Gen Y as 1980 to early 1990s.)
I don't think it's so much that people are out of step with their generation as they are out of step with the majority. Or maybe that's just me--I don't particularly identify with any generational cliques. It's just proof that not everyone has a herd mentality. Events more obviously influence generation than vice versa--for example, the World War II defined the people who lived then but all those people didn't actually start the war. And as for time lag--maybe that's why people have difficulty defining the borders of each generation. I find it's more accurate to guage people by temperament than age.
You're right, I probably look at this differently.
In this and the previous post, I'm commenting on ideas from William Strauss and Neil Howe. In their books -- Generations (1990), 13th Gen, The Fourth Turning and Millenials Rising -- they throw out a big-picture theory of American generations.
Strauss and Howe draw the line between X and Y at 1981/82 -- but they admit that no one will know for decades exactly where to divide. As you point out, events decide, and in this case the event is probably 9/11. I'm guessing kids under 18 have reacted differently to it than those over 18 did, so my guess is that Gen Y starts around 1983. (BTW, Strauss and Howe say Gen X started in 1961).
I do think the era you grow up in has a huge impact on who you are. For example, Britney Spears (b. 1981) and Whitney Houston (1963) are different from each other, but much less so than Houston and Stevie Nicks (1945) are different.
One thing making it tough to tell, is that you have to strip away the surface layers and get at identity -- core 'values,' to use an overused term. And few would argue that those born in 1985 have very different values than those born in 1979, but with '83 and '80, it's still hard to tell (for me).
Gen X is deeply splintered anyway, and there are plenty of literate, deep thinker types among us. But mostly we're not very literate or reflective.
The last Reactive generation before us included Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hemmingway. But they were exeptions, too. My alienation from peers is actually kind of typical, I think. The Baby Boom generation is even more deeply divided; hell, they actively fight each other (Xers mostly just live separately from each other).
One of the defining feature of Gen Y is/will be their unity. Not on everything, of course, but they'll put aside the small stuff and work together on the big stuff. Which they'll agree on.
Do you see signs of that already at Dartmouth? I see it when I visit/read about Chapel Hill (and I'll be there this summer, so I guess I'll know more then...).
And true, WWII shaped the younger generations then -- but also WWII was shaped by them, and more especially by the older generations who brought it about. See what I'm driving at. I think the answer to my third question is clearly 'both.'
And you're absolutely right about dealing with people as individuals, regardless of age. Every generation has its jerks.
And its cool people, too, wouldn't you agree?
:-)
Well, if they say I'm Gen X, then I must be. :)
It's too bad I don't interact too much with the undergraduates (at Dartmouth) because then I'd be able to tell if there was a unity trend going on. As for the graduate students--well, they all do their own thing, as one would expect Gen Xers to do.
I think a better comparison would be when I was an undergraduate at Caltech. I heard a lot of stories from the 60's and 70's about how reactive the students were, but by the 80's and 90's the student population turned completely apathetic--the political activity was literally zilch. It was only until my last two years there that the student body started "waking up".
Word.
That matches my experience, too.
I wonder if it's the pace of cultural and economic change. Someone recently observed in something I read that unlike boomers and preboomers back to the ice ages, we're raising kids for a world that's likely to be very much unlike our own and in ways we can barely imagine. That feels a little like the plight of a teen.
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