I'm about smackdab in the middle of GenX, which I'd define as "born after the Moon landing, but before the Challenger exploded" (so roughly 1969-1986). The Vietnam War ended shortly before I was born, but I was around long enough to be fully aware of the Cold War and this sort of inevitable expectation that one day we would have a nuclear World War III with the Soviets, after which we'd fight off mutant cockroaches and cannibals in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And everyone would be wearing neon colors and have big hair. Grandpa Reagan was this sort of smiling, benevolent Glorious Leader that you didn't question, (unless you were a college activist type person, in which case you wrote songs about Nicaragua).
Then suddenly the Soviets ceased to exist and Bill Clinton became President, leaving us with a grand unanswered question: What is our national
raison d'etre, what do we do now that this existential threat that defined our parents' entire lifetimes is gone?
The answer mostly turned out to be "Dude, let's get baked and play some video games."
Then in 2000, our national nightmare of peace and prosperity ended. The next decade pretty much sucked ass. A few thousand of us died in a war that few of us wanted. And now we're up to the current day.
Economically, there have been a number of studies showing that we make less money (adjusted for inflation) and have a lower standard of living than our parents did. Some of us did insanely well in the late 90's tech bubble. Most of us didn't have the money then to take advantage of it.
Socially, we're a lot more tolerant than our parents. We were the first generation for whom homosexuality, interracial relationships and divorce were shrug-worthy topics. We are the "Meh, whatever" generation.
Artistically, we've flourished...but at a cost. Our generational culture is so steeped in irony and black humor that I fear sometimes we've lost the ability to take anything seriously.
I feel like, with the exception of some notable folks, our generation is generally a little
too laid-back. We're the Slacker generation. Because we don't take things seriously, we lack that burning drive and motivation that drove other generations. For the "Greatest" generation, it was a drive to win WWII and then seize that American Dream -- two kids, a house with a white picket fence, a good job and a better standard of living for your kids. For the Baby Boomers, it was either greed and excess, or "self-discovery" and narcissism. Not the greatest motivations, but it did drive people.
And now I see Generation Y folks, like some of my younger grad school classmates, and I'm envious of their drive. They want to do something important, they have big ideas. Not always the
best ideas, but at least they're trying.
With technology, I feel like GenX is caught up in the "hey, wouldn't it be cool if we can make a gadget do this?"
Whereas GenY goes, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we took that technology that GenX just developed, and used it to ignite a social revolution? Or crowdsource poverty reduction?"
Next twenty years will be interesting, as more and more GenX'ers wind up taking the lead in politics. I honestly don't know if that's going to be a good thing or not.
EDIT: I think in some ways, we have similarity to the Lost Generation, in that we flourished artistically, although much of that art was in brazen rejection of convention. We're both somewhat hedonistic generations. But where the Lost Generation embraced the excess of the 1920's out of despair at what they'd seen in World War I, Generation X became slackers and hedonists because
there just wasn't anything else to do. We all got jobs, but mostly just to pay the bills and save enough money to get tickets to next year's Lollapalooza.
Author
Topic: How's your generation doing? (Read 45749 times)