Taking a Stand for Gereration X
Sep. 30th, 2013 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorI have for many years now been posting (obsessing, really) about generational differences and the probable causes and consequences that the differences make. (Don't believe me? Go here or here or here. Or here, if you wish.) All of it groping in the dark for clues to mysteries only I and a handful of thinkers even believe to be real.
Well, I've just stumbled upon two relevant points to this quest, and can speculate on more answers. One is a video.
Yeah, Millennials.
The other is a book that can explain to all who care to read it why that above video is such a brilliant and ironic dismissal of the "complaints" leveled against these poor kids. "We're entitled, narcissistic, lazy, and immature," says the first apologetic young 'un. Ah, but from where are these complaints being leveled?
Allow me to introduce excerpts from William Straus's & Neil Howe's Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069. These sociologists came up with a unique theory of generational development, one centering around the notion that we influence each other, and are influenced by others, in ways that have changed little in history, and by examining the behavior/attitudes/actions of those of our past with a special focus on when they were born, one can tease out not only patterns of behavior, but patterns that repeat throughout history.
In a nutshell, the authors suggest that each of our generational cycles, about 85-90 years long, consists of four phases, what they call birth cohorts. As they describe it, "A GENERATION is a cohort-group whose length approximates the span of a phase of life and whose boundaries are fixed by peer personality. (William Straus & Neil Howe, Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, William Morrow & Company, 1991, p. 60.)
Your birth cohorts are those born in your similar circumstances, not necessarily closest to you. For example, the children born just before or during World War II were too young to fight in that war. They came of age just as the war ended. The war was for them a very different reality from those that fought it directly, either on the front, behind the lines or back home keeping the fires burning. Though they may have been closer in age to their older, war-involved siblings and friends than they were to those born perhaps decades later, they share more in common with the latter group, those born after the war, than they do to those that fought it. These commonalities have more influence on the world-view we share with our birth cohorts than just our ages and locations. With me so far?
Strauss and Howe postulate that the four cycles begin with what they call Awakenings, spiritual revivals and times of spiritual questing and bonding. The Puritans were probably the most well known of these groups born into the first cohort of an Awakening cycles in the United States. Half way through a cycle, they note a Secular Crisis (most often a decisive war). The timing of these crises is eerie:
These secular crises are enormously important. They shape the people within them in ways few understand. And after they are over, the behavior these crises shape in turn shapes the behaviors of those born long after the crises have ended. The authors created four main cohort groups, starting with the generation born just after the last big crisis was decisively concluded:
The current Idealist generation was born between 1943-1960, what most everyone I know, the authors included, call the Boomers. These folks were the hippies in the 60s, the anti-war marchers up to the end of that war. They were the Woodstock generation, those that reveled in the Summer of Love (1969).
They were also, though, largely responsible for starting the Born Again! Xian revival of the late 1970s-early 1980s. They were the yuppies that became all the rage on Wall St. In fact, as the authors put it:
These are the voices bitching about the Millennials.
You see, in the 1960s hanging out and doing whatever was cool, man. Sure, The Man would always want you to cut your hair and not wear the paisley, but whatever. There was a War on, man! We had to get in touch with our inner selves to fight it! Oh, and march and stuff.
Later, they still had to get in touch with themselves, but many turned to traditional Christianity and voted for Reagan. They got jobs in the banks and good incomes, which they invested. But they never sold out, according to them. Interesting. And their marching changed everything, it really did.
Strauss & Howe note that every Idealist generation is coddled by its parents, probably because those parents sacrificed so much that they needed that sacrifice to mean something to later generations. This coddling, though, creates self-focused children, which age into self-focused adults. That's why the authors label the spiritual awakening period following the resolution of a secular crisis an "Inner Focused" period. Just like the Puritans, the Boomers were—hell, who are we kidding: are—the most inner focused generation alive today.
So inner-focused are they, that they see no irony at all in labeling today's Millennials (a Civic generation, born between 1982 and [probably] 2008, the financial crisis, which will probably have much greater effects than 9/11 or the two wars that followed) as "entitled, narcissistic, lazy, and immature."
No, the Boomers aren't the only ones labeling the young folks this way, I know that. There are also those of my parents' generation, the last Adaptive cohort; and yes, I well know that my cycle, the last Reactives (b. 1961-1981, self-labeled by awesome author Douglass Coupland as Generation X) do tend toward cynical descriptive for, well, everything. But Boomers? By their very nature (as Generations's authors put it) as moralistic, they tend to moralize. We of the Gen X? More nihilistic . . . but in a good way.
Which is something I hope to discuss later.
Well, I've just stumbled upon two relevant points to this quest, and can speculate on more answers. One is a video.
Yeah, Millennials.
The other is a book that can explain to all who care to read it why that above video is such a brilliant and ironic dismissal of the "complaints" leveled against these poor kids. "We're entitled, narcissistic, lazy, and immature," says the first apologetic young 'un. Ah, but from where are these complaints being leveled?
Allow me to introduce excerpts from William Straus's & Neil Howe's Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069. These sociologists came up with a unique theory of generational development, one centering around the notion that we influence each other, and are influenced by others, in ways that have changed little in history, and by examining the behavior/attitudes/actions of those of our past with a special focus on when they were born, one can tease out not only patterns of behavior, but patterns that repeat throughout history.
In a nutshell, the authors suggest that each of our generational cycles, about 85-90 years long, consists of four phases, what they call birth cohorts. As they describe it, "A GENERATION is a cohort-group whose length approximates the span of a phase of life and whose boundaries are fixed by peer personality. (William Straus & Neil Howe, Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, William Morrow & Company, 1991, p. 60.)
Your birth cohorts are those born in your similar circumstances, not necessarily closest to you. For example, the children born just before or during World War II were too young to fight in that war. They came of age just as the war ended. The war was for them a very different reality from those that fought it directly, either on the front, behind the lines or back home keeping the fires burning. Though they may have been closer in age to their older, war-involved siblings and friends than they were to those born perhaps decades later, they share more in common with the latter group, those born after the war, than they do to those that fought it. These commonalities have more influence on the world-view we share with our birth cohorts than just our ages and locations. With me so far?
Strauss and Howe postulate that the four cycles begin with what they call Awakenings, spiritual revivals and times of spiritual questing and bonding. The Puritans were probably the most well known of these groups born into the first cohort of an Awakening cycles in the United States. Half way through a cycle, they note a Secular Crisis (most often a decisive war). The timing of these crises is eerie:
Exactly eighty-five years passed between the first Confederate shot on Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbor Day. Back up the story, and note that eight-five years also passed between Fort Sumter and the Declaration of Independence. (Or, as President Lincoln Noted, "Four score and seven years" separated the first Fourth of July from the Battle of Gettysburg.) Back up still further, and note that another eighty-seven years passed between the Anglo-American "Glorious Revolution" of 1689 and Independence Day. Preceding the Glorious Revolution by a slightly longer period—ninety-nine years—was the epochal victory of the English navy over the Spanish Armada.
(Strauss & Howe, ibid, p. 88, I emboldened the authors' italicized emphasis since idiot LJ occasionally insists on italicizing everything in blocked quotes.)
These secular crises are enormously important. They shape the people within them in ways few understand. And after they are over, the behavior these crises shape in turn shapes the behaviors of those born long after the crises have ended. The authors created four main cohort groups, starting with the generation born just after the last big crisis was decisively concluded:
- Idealist
- Reactive
- Civic
- Adaptive
The current Idealist generation was born between 1943-1960, what most everyone I know, the authors included, call the Boomers. These folks were the hippies in the 60s, the anti-war marchers up to the end of that war. They were the Woodstock generation, those that reveled in the Summer of Love (1969).
They were also, though, largely responsible for starting the Born Again! Xian revival of the late 1970s-early 1980s. They were the yuppies that became all the rage on Wall St. In fact, as the authors put it:
From VJ-Day forward, whatever age bracket Boomers have occupied has been the cultural and spiritual focal point for American society as a whole. Through their childhood, America was child-obsessed; in their youth, youth-obsessed; in their "yuppie" phase, yuppie-obsessed.
(Strauss & Howe, ibid, p. 301.)
These are the voices bitching about the Millennials.
You see, in the 1960s hanging out and doing whatever was cool, man. Sure, The Man would always want you to cut your hair and not wear the paisley, but whatever. There was a War on, man! We had to get in touch with our inner selves to fight it! Oh, and march and stuff.
Later, they still had to get in touch with themselves, but many turned to traditional Christianity and voted for Reagan. They got jobs in the banks and good incomes, which they invested. But they never sold out, according to them. Interesting. And their marching changed everything, it really did.
Strauss & Howe note that every Idealist generation is coddled by its parents, probably because those parents sacrificed so much that they needed that sacrifice to mean something to later generations. This coddling, though, creates self-focused children, which age into self-focused adults. That's why the authors label the spiritual awakening period following the resolution of a secular crisis an "Inner Focused" period. Just like the Puritans, the Boomers were—hell, who are we kidding: are—the most inner focused generation alive today.
So inner-focused are they, that they see no irony at all in labeling today's Millennials (a Civic generation, born between 1982 and [probably] 2008, the financial crisis, which will probably have much greater effects than 9/11 or the two wars that followed) as "entitled, narcissistic, lazy, and immature."
No, the Boomers aren't the only ones labeling the young folks this way, I know that. There are also those of my parents' generation, the last Adaptive cohort; and yes, I well know that my cycle, the last Reactives (b. 1961-1981, self-labeled by awesome author Douglass Coupland as Generation X) do tend toward cynical descriptive for, well, everything. But Boomers? By their very nature (as Generations's authors put it) as moralistic, they tend to moralize. We of the Gen X? More nihilistic . . . but in a good way.
Which is something I hope to discuss later.