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

[Victorian Jim Dandy]

And then everyone born from 1992 to 2016 is a Zoomer, making this a Second Civil War Saeculum with no civic heroes? The cutoff for Generation X should be whether or not you have strong memories of the 90's, 9/11, the 2008 recession and the War on Terror.  If you don't have memories of these, you're a later generation. Also,  there should be no nostalgia for Reagan.  Voting in the eighties and having nostalgia for Reagan should put you in the Boomer category. Generation X should also be defined by more than just "Listened to Grunge." Does the fact that someone born in the 80's doesn't remember He-Man really make that much of a difference? I'm starting to think Millennials don't exist. We're certainly not what they write of us.  The idea that we're an "entitled" generation is pretty laughable at this point. Most of us are just as disaffected as Generation X.

[pbrower2a]

(01-09-2022, 12:50 PM)Victorian Jim Dandy Wrote: And then everyone born from 1992 to 2016 is a Zoomer, making this a Second Civil War Saeculum with no civic heroes? The cutoff for Generation X should be whether or not you have strong memories of the 90's, 9/11, the 2008 recession and the War on Terror.  If you don't have memories of these, you're a later generation. Generation X should also be defined by more than just "Listened to Grunge." Does the fact that someone born in the 80's doesn't remember He-Man really make that much of a difference? I'm starting to think Millennials don't exist. We're certainly not what they write of us.  The idea that we're an "entitled" generation is pretty laughable at this point.

Then one has an anomaly of a Reactive generation born over thirty years, with plenty of Reactive kids being born to Reactive Parents. Generation X is leaving the age in which it bears children in large numbers, and nobody can say that it has not reshaped how children are raised. Reactive parents do not raise Reactive kids unless teenage mothers who can rarely be considered competent (as a teenager one lacks the resources or must turn much of the responsibility to grandparents). Reactive adults who hate their jobs and lament the low pay and limited opportunities despite their ability to do better if only they got a non-existent chance invariably create hostility toward the economic nastiness of bad capitalism. Boomers may have set public policy on childcare, but X had their part in family life. X may have affected the big, bright "Happy to serve you" smile while performing thoroughly-odious jobs, but don't be fooled. They don't lionize the shareholders and bosses that they despise on the job once they go home. If you have ever seen the movie Clerks, then you get the general idea of the disparity between the public persona and life off the job. Generation X has gone from having hope that the sacrifices that they made in Reagan years would manifest themselves in great prosperity in which they would share. They have been cheated, and their politics have drifted clearly to the Left of where it started when they were teenagers.

[David Horn]

(01-09-2022, 12:50 PM)Victorian Jim Dandy Wrote: ... Also,  there should be no nostalgia for Reagan.  Voting in the eighties and having nostalgia for Reagan should put you in the Boomer category. 

Picking just this one, the most Reaganite cohorts are all classic Gen-X.  His libertrarian pitch fits their libertarian sensibilities like a glove.  Are there Boomers iin that same group? Sure, but certainly not nearly as many.

[pbrower2a]

(01-10-2022, 01:00 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-09-2022, 12:50 PM)Victorian Jim Dandy Wrote: ... Also,  there should be no nostalgia for Reagan.  Voting in the eighties and having nostalgia for Reagan should put you in the Boomer category. 

Picking just this one, the most Reaganite cohorts are all classic Gen-X.  His libertarian pitch fits their libertarian sensibilities like a glove.  Are there Boomers iin that same group? Sure, but certainly not nearly as many.

Reagan was more economic (the pitch to X that then succeeded) than religious. Generation X never fell as much for fundamentalist religiosity (whether evangelicalism or Pentecostal claptrap in Protestantism or the Opus Dei or Operation Rescue currents in the Catholic Church) as did Boomers. Reagan was practically a collectivist and secular version of the Prosperity Cult that owes more to Horatio Alger than to any divine. Make your sacrifices of working cheap, loyally, hard, and you will get your rewards in This World. But Reaganomics would fail at making life better to those consigned to and working cheap. He did succeed at crushing the inflationary trends, but he did so at a great price for young workers who were obliged to create the basis of prosperity without enjoying in the prosperity. The Reagan era was the time of multiple jobs just to meet rent, food, utilities, clothes, and commuting costs. If one was poor it was a miserable time. Of course, poverty is never fun whether one works or is unemployed. If one has the time but not the means one gets boredom or at most the questionable diversions of TV and pop music. 

Religious people can, if they have the right (or should I say Right) view, recognize that life is little more than a struggle to avoid damnation by obeying their Divinely-appointed oppressors. In the end as one can do little to hurt others one gets the promise that one will go to Heaven where those who have suffered in This World get their Pie in the Sky. Boomers could more easily believe that than could X. To be a Christian Fundamentalist is of course to hold intellectual curiosity as much a snare in life as the drives for sex, entertainment, gain, or drugs and alcohol.

I am tempted to believe that the X world is one of  serious disappointment. If they could not safely gripe on the jobs that they hated, they could certainly do so at home to their Millennial kids who learned that the trickle-down promise was a fraud. But even more, Generation X had good cause to drift left on issues of labor and management because managers trained in the "Simon Legree" School of Management made sure that the people who did the work would live miserable lives,. which effectively negates the promise of prosperity in This World. Prosperity for someone else?  I chose "Simon Legree" for a very good reason.

The Horatio Alger story was a myth in the late nineteenth century, and it still is. Ownership of an income-generating asset remains far more an assurance of prosperity than does work. Wielding bureaucratic power to ensure that people remain poor despite their toil is another way in which to be rich. (That was the ultimate failure of the Soviet Union, which differed from America in economic practice largely in having no room for small business including family farms that might do sort-of-OK and serve as an alternative in America; the Soviet nomenklatura was just as rapacious and self-indulgent as America's executive elite). 

The era between Reagan and Trump fits the neoliberal (really plutocratic) era of a Skowronek cycle in politics. Two Skowronek cycles, at least for the Presidency (The President enunciating a political culture and either effective as such or failing). Basically, Reagan and the older Bush were opposition to the previous Establishment of New Deal and Great Society politics and got some results, however flawed. Clinton was a recapitulation largely of the New deal and Great Society to a great, if not full extent. Dubya followed the 'new conservative orthodoxy' of "He who has the gold makes the rules" and was only marginally effective. Obama seems like a portent of things to come, arch-conservative in style but supporting what would become indelible and necessary changes. Trump is a disaster even if he takes Reagan-Bush ideology to its logical conclusion and grafts onto that a Personality Cult and a hypocritical support for right-wing religiosity.  He has run into diminishing returns for his ideology.

Who were the prior failures as President for sticking with a mainstream philosophy after it lost its effectiveness? If you remember the talks of the Lost, you would recognize Herbert Hoover (the Market, free enterprise, drive, determination, willpower, and hopeful sacrifice will solve everything) believed such as fully as anyone and got instead the worst economic meltdown in the Industrial Age. Short of some incredible Man-Made disaster such as thermonuclear war or unimpeded global warming, or a supervolcano eruption or meteor strike that ravages the world's ecosystems, we are unlikely to see that again. The sesquiannum beginning at the peak of August 2007 and ending in the spring of 2009 was just as severe as the first sesquiannum of the 1929-1932 meltdown... but the political system of 2009 stopped the catastrophe of bank runs beginning in earnest in the summer of 1931 that ensured no easy return to the sleazy prosperity of the middle-to-late 1920's. Jimmy Carter was a smart, moral person, but he attached himself to the New Deal Coalition that was no longer getting the bang for the buck as it had. To be sure, the New Deal coalition (mostly the GI Generation) was eroding and its economic contributions were on the fade, which may explain Carter failure. 

Trump fails as neoliberalism cannot provide any semblance of economic justice; it is out of step with any religious heritage in glorifying the basest drives of human nature (I see religion as useful in imparting moral values to children and consoling those who face impending death or other situations of hopelessness; it may offer insight into some Eternal Truth and improve the person); it rejects reason and any humanitarian interest. Trump is objectionable on many other counts, but even without those he is riding a dead horse. It is impossible to derive any new good from the neoliberal model. A "nice guy" version of Donald Trump (well, that is an oxymoron) or at least one with some more personal restraint would be just as ineffective. 

Two Skowronek cycles typically fit neatly into one Saeculum, so I love to discuss them.

[JasonBlack]

(01-10-2022, 01:00 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-09-2022, 12:50 PM)Victorian Jim Dandy Wrote: ... Also,  there should be no nostalgia for Reagan.  Voting in the eighties and having nostalgia for Reagan should put you in the Boomer category. 

Picking just this one, the most Reaganite cohorts are all classic Gen-X.  His libertrarian pitch fits their libertarian sensibilities like a glove.  Are there Boomers iin that same group? Sure, but certainly not nearly as many.

Exactly. Most boomers aren't nearly as conservative as people make them out to be. I know generation's values change overtime (I see Millennials slowly developing a kind of conservative realism that is long overdue), but...do we really expect the hippie-gone-yuppie generation have truly had all the hippie taken out of them? haha

[David Horn]

(02-17-2022, 01:09 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(01-10-2022, 01:00 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-09-2022, 12:50 PM)Victorian Jim Dandy Wrote: ... Also,  there should be no nostalgia for Reagan.  Voting in the eighties and having nostalgia for Reagan should put you in the Boomer category. 

Picking just this one, the most Reaganite cohorts are all classic Gen-X.  His libertrarian pitch fits their libertarian sensibilities like a glove.  Are there Boomers iin that same group? Sure, but certainly not nearly as many.

Exactly. Most boomers aren't nearly as conservative as people make them out to be. I know generation's values change overtime (I see Millennials slowly developing a kind of conservative realism that is long overdue), but...do we really expect the hippie-gone-yuppie generation have truly had all the hippie taken out of them? haha

I think you'll find that the most liberal Boomers stayed that way from youth, but most of the conservative Boomers, and there are many, found Jesus along the way.  Of course, there were also many who hid-out in college and moved into lucrative careers.  We're a nearly bifurcated generation, explaining why we are so bad at getting things done in the public realm.

[JasonBlack]

(02-17-2022, 01:49 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-17-2022, 01:09 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(01-10-2022, 01:00 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-09-2022, 12:50 PM)Victorian Jim Dandy Wrote: ... Also,  there should be no nostalgia for Reagan.  Voting in the eighties and having nostalgia for Reagan should put you in the Boomer category. 

Picking just this one, the most Reaganite cohorts are all classic Gen-X.  His libertrarian pitch fits their libertarian sensibilities like a glove.  Are there Boomers iin that same group? Sure, but certainly not nearly as many.

Exactly. Most boomers aren't nearly as conservative as people make them out to be. I know generation's values change overtime (I see Millennials slowly developing a kind of conservative realism that is long overdue), but...do we really expect the hippie-gone-yuppie generation have truly had all the hippie taken out of them? haha

I think you'll find that the most liberal Boomers stayed that way from youth, but most of the conservative Boomers, and there are many, found Jesus along the way.  Of course, there were also many who hid-out in college and moved into lucrative careers.  We're a nearly bifurcated generation, explaining why we are so bad at getting things done in the public realm.

There is a consistency to liberal boomers that most conservative boomers just can't claim. I don't mind people changing their values so long as they can admit what they used to be like. Where many conservative boomers show cognitive dissonance is with all their rhetoric about how "kids these days are so corrupted", and I'm over here like "Oh reallly? Tell me more about those conservative values of Woodstock you had growing up...". As a 30 year old conservative, I certainly don't talk like that to Zoomers, because I realize that conservative values are based in experience as much as theory, and that sometimes the point is hard to grasp without observing things for longer periods. 

Ex: in theory, I defaulted to being pretty sexually liberal. It wasn't until I went to clubs and saw how dysfunctional party, drugs and random hookups every night lifestyle (To this day, I'm extremely pro-sex, I'm just not pro vacuous hedonism and sex with zero intimacy or real loyalty. That destroys people). In the long run, self-regulation and a little temperance can go a long way to allowing for greater freedom and satisfaction, which is what I think most people should really be aiming for.

[David Horn]

(02-18-2022, 10:11 AM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(02-17-2022, 01:49 PM)David Horn Wrote: I think you'll find that the most liberal Boomers stayed that way from youth, but most of the conservative Boomers, and there are many, found Jesus along the way.  Of course, there were also many who hid-out in college and moved into lucrative careers.  We're a nearly bifurcated generation, explaining why we are so bad at getting things done in the public realm.

There is a consistency to liberal boomers that most conservative boomers just can't claim. I don't mind people changing their values so long as they can admit what they used to be like. Where many conservative boomers show cognitive dissonance is with all their rhetoric about how "kids these days are so corrupted", and I'm over here like "Oh reallly? Tell me more about those conservative values of Woodstock you had growing up...". As a 30 year old conservative, I certainly don't talk like that to Zoomers, because I realize that conservative values are based in experience as much as theory, and that sometimes the point is hard to grasp without observing things for longer periods. 

Ex: in theory, I defaulted to being pretty sexually liberal. It wasn't until I went to clubs and saw how dysfunctional party, drugs and random hookups every night lifestyle (To this day, I'm extremely pro-sex, I'm just not pro vacuous hedonism and sex with zero intimacy or real loyalty. That destroys people). In the long run, self-regulation and a little temperance can go a long way to allowing for greater freedom and satisfaction, which is what I think most people should really be aiming for.

I think you're pretty typical for a conservative of your generation -- much more open minded than conservatives of mine. It's that mind-slammed-shut attitude that irritates more than anything. You'll be fine. You remind me of David Brooks of NY Times, who walks a similar path.

[Anthony '58]

(01-10-2022, 01:00 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-09-2022, 12:50 PM)Victorian Jim Dandy Wrote: ... Also,  there should be no nostalgia for Reagan.  Voting in the eighties and having nostalgia for Reagan should put you in the Boomer category. 

Picking just this one, the most Reaganite cohorts are all classic Gen-X.  His libertrarian pitch fits their libertarian sensibilities like a glove.  Are there Boomers iin that same group? Sure, but certainly not nearly as many.

But, as in the case of the Lost, the younger half of Gen-X - I personally set their birth-year parameters at 1969-1980 - are the "Bolshevik" or "classic" Xers, with the 1958-1968 cohorts being the "Menshevik" Xers (remember that Doug Coupland dedicated Generation X: Tales For An Accelerated Culture to "the generation born in the late 1950s and 1960s" - it says so, inside the front cover).

[Eric the Green]

(01-09-2022, 12:50 PM)Victorian Jim Dandy Wrote: And then everyone born from 1992 to 2016 is a Zoomer, making this a Second Civil War Saeculum with no civic heroes? The cutoff for Generation X should be whether or not you have strong memories of the 90's, 9/11, the 2008 recession and the War on Terror.  If you don't have memories of these, you're a later generation. Also,  there should be no nostalgia for Reagan.  Voting in the eighties and having nostalgia for Reagan should put you in the Boomer category. Generation X should also be defined by more than just "Listened to Grunge." Does the fact that someone born in the 80's doesn't remember He-Man really make that much of a difference? I'm starting to think Millennials don't exist. We're certainly not what they write of us.  The idea that we're an "entitled" generation is pretty laughable at this point. Most of us are just as disaffected as Generation X.

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.

[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.