What If Everyone Born from 1967 to 1991 is Generation X?

[JasonBlack]

(03-28-2022, 12:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: It is better to go by the generational dates specified by Strauss and Howe, with maybe an adjustment of a year or so in some cases, or acknowledgement that people on the cusp are combos and that people in different regions may be faster or slower to adopt generational trends. But the S&H dates hold up pretty well, even if the Pew Research dates for Gen Z have been adopted in the media.

This is a second Civil War saeculum, but the first one really did have heroes, even if not called such by S&H, and a longer 4T than they said. I think the civil war anomaly is the one thing S&H did not get quite right; it was less of an anomaly than they said. We are still in the 1850s.

As David said, Generation X is the most compatible with Reagan because of their libertarian and survivalist leanings, which makes neoliberal Reaganomics and its self-reliance memes more compatible with them. The most typical millennial civics are Bernie Sanders fans. The Gen Z Zoomers really begin in about 2003 or 2004. The cut off for Millennials and start of Gen Z is memories of the 4T we are still in, and that means the 2008 recession which started our 4T.

Millennials have shown themselves to be quite typical civics in many respects. Being disaffected they may be, but in different ways than Gen X. These 13ers as S&H called them were cynical because they were neglected in childhood and were disillusioned with the previous Awakening. They felt opportunities were less, but being a smaller generation, many opportunities were still open to them. Millennials also feel the same limited opportunities, or even more. But they tend to understand that the Reaganomics which Gen X favored well beyond the 1980s are the problem, not the solution (turning Reagan's slogan on its head). Not being so neglected in childhood during an Awakening as Xers were, Millennials don't so easily assume that one can make it economically through self-reliance and survival skills. Millennials have greater understanding of the social and institutional problems that are the real cause of their lack of economic mobility, and they also are well aware of concerns like climate change that threaten their future. Millennials are more willing to direct their disaffection toward the politics and institutions that caused it, rather then to blame those who aren't self-reliant or are too spoiled like the Boomers were.

Millennials have been slow to embrace their civic virtue by not voting in midterm elections. But thanks partly to exortations by Obama and the Parkland kids, they did much better in 2018. They will need to keep the habit. But millennials are good civics otherwise. They are especially noted for their ability to network on social media, and to be collegial with each other and to organize. They tend to favor science and technology as civics tend to do, more than the "inner-directed" Xers and Boomers who functioned more on ideas and self-direction. 

Millennials may not feel so "entitled," as they are said to be, but I'm not sure that's a civic trait. Civic heroes are confident and smug in their views, and tend to conform to the trends of their peers. Millennials are certainly those things. Whether they are sanguine about their economic situation or not, they tend to be optimistic anyway and are outer-directed and confident in their opinions and ideas. So they are not cynics like their Xer older siblings or parents. Just like the GI "Greatest Generation" who came of age in the poverty of the Great Depression, they are cheerful and optimistic like JFK was, and love to sing confident, superficial and cheery songs like the "Get Happy" and "Accentuate the Positive" songs that the GIs sang, and who so easily got "In the Mood." The Millennials had their own bouncy "Happy" song to sing and they loved their "millennial whoops". The Gen X fare was much more brash, dark, and about "I want to get away!" and sung with a desperate-sounding and decadent or screeching growl.

Most of this sounds about right, but I think the confidence bit is incorrect. The early wave millennials tend to be a little more confident, but the middle and, especially, the late wave...not so much (we shouldn't expect too much from 18 to early 20-somethings, but compared to early millennials or Xers at their same age, they certainly are not a confident bunch). Confident people don't voice their anxieties so consistently, talk about how they are not being supported or demand people be "non-judgmental" about all of their life decisions. It's not rare for millennials to be assertive or opinionated, but I think any reasonable definition of "confidence" requires a a threshold of thick skin that most millennials do not meet. The 2010s were, to be frank, a pathetic spectacle mostly dominated by millennials being emo and licking their wounds after realizing that the world wasn't fair, they couldn't just "follow their passions" and the workplace wasn't going to value their "creativity" (of which they greatly overestimated in themselves in the first place). The optimism you are referring to was more the norm in the 2000s and, to a lesser extent, the 90s. As would be expected from a generation at that period in their lifecycle, it was a childlike optimism, born more out of naivety than the mature, durable optimism which can only come from achieving victory over a substantial challenge. 

The early wave millennials tend to be a little more confident, but the middle and, especially, the late wave...not so much. Confident people don't voice their anxieties so consistently, talk about how they are not being supported or demand people be "non-judgmental" about all of their life decisions. It's not rare for millennials to be assertive or opinionated, but I think any reasonable definition of "confidence" requires a a threshold of thick skin that most millennials do not meet. 

With that said...I think we're doing a a little better. It took awhile, but millennials are starting to mellow a bit into a sober maturity that looks reality in the face. Whether it's the "woke" left or the "redpill" right, Millennials have spent a good portion of the last decade mulling over presence circumstances, looking to the past to see what went wrong, and, most importantly, taking a hard look at the nonsense values our parents and teachers indoctrinated us with. 

Even so, I think most of us are still in a kind of "dark night of the soul", a lull between the blissful ignorance of youth and the vitality that comes with rising to a worthy challenge or rite of passage. Perhaps millennials will not become the heroes Strauss and Howe predicted in their models, but it's pretty clear at least that most of us want to be heroes. It's all over the entertainment we grew up with as children and still cling to to this day: Harry Potter, Star Wars, Pokemon, Call of Duty, Avatar (the show, not the movie of the same name) Lord of the Rings. Millennials have an obsession with stories about epic quests, fighting for causes with their friends and journey for which they are chosen to accomplish some specific feat, but in practice, most are poor, anxious, depressed, with optimism metastasizing into nihilism and defeatism. Most millennials, including myself, have spent a good portion of what we were told were supposed to be the best years of our lives trying to start over, having our noses rubbed in failure, and continually being on the receiving end of vague expectations for which we received next to no concrete guidance. 

I know your opinion of millennials is a little more positive than mine, but my main point of contention is specifically the bit about confidence, and how this makes me less optimistic that this 4th turning will resolve itself with the resounding victory of the previous one.