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Millennials and GenZ horribly misidentified
#73
Eric the Green Wrote:
(05-22-2019, 04:28 PM)michael_k Wrote: Just to put into perspective the timing of events, as I understand, a Saeculum lasts approximately 84 years, with each Generation lasting ~21 years, with specific events and happenings making each Generation and Saeculum potentially longer or shorter to adhere to the timeline. Using this as a guide, we can look at the defining point of the G.I. Generation, which was of course, World War II (1939-1945, middle year being 1942), and then pull the timeline forward 21 years at a time, where we have the 'defining' year for the Silents (1963 Kennedy assassination), likewise for the Boomers (1984 Reagan landslide re-election), Gen Xers (Hurricane Katrina and post 9/11 era, centered on 2005) and for the Millennials, this pinnacle year would be 2026, which has not yet occurred. True, some Generations come of age early, like the Lost Generation, whose defining year was not really 1921, but instead 1914, which would place 2019 (!) as the peak Millennial year if we do the 21-year math. This being said though, the Roaring Twenties was also a defining era for the Lost, and for those whose defining eras came earlier, like the 60s/70s for Boomers and 80s/90s for Gen X, in my mind these eras didn't cement the politics of those Generations as much as it defined the youth culture and the idealism - and idealism is not the be-all and end-all of politics. If we look at the Millennial equivalent of these formative cultural eras, we get the 2000s and the 2010s, which fits right in with Millennials still being politically idealistic at this point in time.

Studies show that although defining events may come later, it is in youth, from 14 to 25 years or so, in which political attitudes are set, but of course this varies for different birth cohorts during a generation. Historians consider 1968 as the year that shaped the boomers, but that refers mostly to "the sixties generation," which consists of late silents through core boomers, and not to the late or "Jones" Boomers. I sure would disagree with saying that the Reagan landslide defined the Boomer generation. They were the least likely generation to vote for him, and Reaganomics is not a boomer ideology. These events you mentioned came at the ends of turnings, and 2026 is also scheduled to be near the end of this 4T. I don't know how that fact fits into your analysis of defining years.

Had a bit more of a think about what I said about defining years and events, I think you could split generations in two in order to get a clearer view of what shaped the attitude and perception of cohorts. For example, early G.I.s would experience their pinnacle historical moment with the coming of the Great Depression and the election of FDR, USA's longest serving President, whilst WWII would have likely had a greater impact on the later wave of G.I.s, as it would seem to be a more harrowing prospect to be fighting a war if you are younger and more naive to the world, and the Great Depression / first FDR term would have happened before the late G.I.s even came of age.

Splitting the Silents in two, we have the first group coming of age under the Eisenhower Presidency and the second group under Kennedy. The earlier wave of Silents would have been affected by the Korean War much more so than the later Silents as they would have been old enough to be in combat. The second wave of Silents would have probably been affected more by the Kennedy assassination in contrast, as well as the Vietnam War which would have started by the time they were old enough to be drafted.

Getting to the Boomers, while I do think there are prominent examples of older Boomers who are Reaganites, such as Donald Trump, the earlier wave of Boomers born up until the mid 50s would see their historical moment with the conclusion of the Vietnam War and Nixon's resignation, rather than the advent of Reaganomics. On second thought I think the Reagan landslide victory in '84 would be a much more memorable moment for the late Boomers aka Generation Jones, as this group would have recently come into voting age around that time. Although some people like to pin Reagan support on Generation X, I think this is an unfair accusation as that cohort was barely of age at the time of the Reagan Presidency and simply grew up into that world rather than being active supporters of establishing the movement.

Generation X itself, I think is split largely by the digital divide. First you had a group of people who came of age in a world where things like the internet and home PC were formative and experimental technologies, and then a second wave of Xers who started seeing programs Windows 95 and Internet Explorer becoming mainstream as they grew up and I think this is a stark difference, especially given how that sort of technology became so prominent and expanded later on. The defining time for the first wave of Xers would probably be the Clinton Presidency and the era known as the 'End of History', when the USSR was no more, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and it seemed that the ideology of Capitalism had an indefinitely long future, leading to a sense complacency and apathy in the general population.

For the later Xers, also known as the Oregon Trail Generation or simply the Xennials, this is a bit of a different story. I feel that their experience would have been more heavily defined by the immediate post-9/11 era and the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, since many members of that cohort served in those wars during their young adulthood. The wars, and the other dramas of the time such as Hurricane Katrina and the Great Recession would have spurred different attitudes about the world than older Xers at the same age.

Finally getting to the Millennials, I feel like the leadup to the Trump election and the Obama Presidency was defining for older Millennials like myself, and the events after will end up being more defining for the later half of the Generation. First wave Millennials were defined by the advent of Social Media and the recent eruption of Social Justice movements that the new ways of communication brought forward, whilst later Millennials are growing up in a world that has experienced a sudden whiplash movement to Conservatism in terms of Parliamentary and Presidential politics, while nonetheless spearheading progressive youth movements that continue to gather energy and steam underfoot of information and culture war politics, and accusations of 'fake news'.

If we had to pick a year, I feel like 2016 would be the pinnacle year for older Millennials, as it epitomised the drama of Social Media politics and the various branches of thought that had coalesced, exemplified by the candidates of Sanders, Clinton and Trump. The pinnacle year for the younger group of Millennials is not yet defined, it will likely occur sometime in the mid 2020s if there is a precise date that can be pinned down.

Now after all that analysis, a summary of what I consider a general pattern of defining years / eras for each cohort, occurring approximately every decade:

1929-32: Great Depression / FDR election, defining for older G.I.s
1939-45: World War II, defining for younger G.I.s
1950-53: Korean War, defining for older Silents
1963: Kennedy assassination, defining for younger Silents
1974-5: Nixon resignation and Vietnam withdrawal, defining for older Boomers
1984: Reagan re-election, defining for younger Boomers / Jonesers
1992-2000: End of History era and Dot-com Bubble, defining for older Xers
2001-2008: W. Bush Presidency, 9/11 until Great Recession, defining for younger Xers / Xennials
2009-2016: Obama Presidency, post-Recession rise of Social Media and divisive politics, defining for older Millennials
Defining era for younger Millennials TBA as of now.

The last three cohorts have rather nebulous definitions as to what time defined each group, using eras rather than years. If I had to pin it down further, perhaps 1995 would be the pinnacle year for early Gen X, as it is the year that Windows 95 and Internet Explorer came to be, as well as the NATO intervention in the Bosnian War after the Rwandan Civil War was largely left to its own devices resulting in genocide, thus starting a new wave of interventionist politics that would be exploited by the W. Bush administration.

As I've stated before, 2005 could be the pinnacle year for the Xennials. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and the relative inaction of the government in terms reconstruction whilst intervention continued overseas changed a lot of minds about the Bush administration, later contributing to the Obama victory. Older Millennials have 2016 as their pinnacle year, for reasons already stated.

I believe my original argument was about Millennials not having sufficient time to have a legacy defining moment as a generation. I still think this is definitely true if you count those born from the mid 90s to the mid 00s as Millennials also. Looking back, I feel like the first wave actually did a lot to advance social views on issues such as feminism, multiculturalism, sexual liberation, diversity and acceptance and if we didn't exist, there would be a big hole that would leave our society a lot more naive about differences and how they affect people.

The Trump movement in a lot of ways was an overreaction to some of the excesses of first-wave Millennial progressivism and some of the drastic changes to how we view those that were once outliers in society. Regardless of what some may say about Millennial extremists killing the right to free speech and opinion, I feel that we actually expanded freedom of expression massively for many different types of people in a more important way than simply granting the right to be bigoted without repercussion, and many forget it was those bigots, who are playing the victim now, that prevented much freedom for others in the first place. It is considered possible now for an African American to be US President, after the Millennials helped support Obama in 2008. It is considered possible now, for LGBT couples to not only marry, but to be conservative rag editors like Milo Yiannopoulos, thanks to the social progress that Millennials brought.

Although we may now seem to be in strange political territory, part of this is because of what Millennials unearthed about our contemporary world and their challenges to previously accepted judgement. Some people cannot take this, and I would not be surprised if some of the more wretched elements of society are still deeply angry that we dared support Obama, and they hold us accountable for it. After all, there was plenty of propaganda back in the day about him being the anti-Christ of all things, before right-wing trolls decided to forget all that happened and start 'owning the libs' over emotive Trump disapproval when Obama's term ended.
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RE: Millennials and GenZ horribly misidentified - by michael_k - 05-26-2019, 11:59 AM

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