This probably isn’t that new of a thought to most of you all, but another post made me think to share it.
About a year ago my wife and I (both millennials) were taking a long walk and reflecting on some stuff. It occurred to us both that from our early to mid 20s forward it was hard getting good advice from our parents (both Boomers) on life matters. Sure, there’s the usual “they don’t know what the housing market is” stuff, but it seemed like more than that. That’s when we both had the glass shattering conclusion that we have experienced more life than our parents.
We didn’t mean travel. We honestly meant global changes and conflict. Sure, our parents had the Cold War and threats of nuclear annihilation, but it felt like the traumas of the last generation weren’t as frequent, global, and of personal impact. Economic meltdowns, global warming (with local weather events impacting us), 911, COVID… I don’t need to keep going.
So, we came to the conclusion that even though Boomers like to fall back to the “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” mantra, it turns out that they went through their adult lives with relatively little global/national trauma. This obviously can’t stand as a generalization for personal trauma, but on a macrochasm scale Boomers are Summer Children (matured during a time of plenty and ease).
Didn’t they also live through all of what you just mentioned? What makes their experience of those events different than yours? It is all perspective. How do you know what it was like to be alive during the civil right’s movement, the Cuban missile crisis, the oil crisis, the assassinations of JFK and MLK Jr, the Vietnam war and the draft, the real estate crash in the 1980’s, etc.
It turns out that people are rubbish at understanding others perspective and life experiences. There is no hand book on how to be an adult and how to live. Giving advice is difficult. Give your parents a break and realize that they are people too.
The Internet is what’s different. They lived through all of that but it wasn’t in your face. Not broadcast 24/7 on networks. On every social media feed. With the Internet and constant information it all can seem way more overwhelming.
People are people and giving them a break is a good idea. But the idea that things are the same now as they were back then is wrong in my opinion.
As a society, we suck at understanding media. Intentionally, of course. But yeah.
Really good point and a very important distinction
No one is saying that things are the same now.
Things have been fucked up in completely different, but similarly severe ways, for all of human history.
The flipside of the internet is that we have an ability to search for and find the truth, if we have the critical thinking skills. Before the internet, knowledge was controlled by institutions. All information that you could consume was filtered through the authorities first.
It fucking pains me to my soul how profoundly naive and petty our generation appears when we start making these criticisms of previous generations. Not only do we reveal our complete ignorance of history, we reveal our lack of empathy as well, because even without understanding exactly what prior generations had to contend with, it’s not that hard to simply give them the benefit of the doubt and figure that they were more or less the same as us, given that we share the same genome.
Are you contending that boomers don’t use the internet and, therefore, were sheltered for decades? Because I assure you they’re very present in right wing spaces online.
I dont understand the central idea that boomers have lived through less. It sounds like a ridiculous premise that minimizes the experiences of millions.
We haven’t just the last few years Sped run a lot of these types of events.
George Floyd, the imposing threat of World War III, COVID.
We seem to have a lot better coping mechanisms than the older generations had. Mostly through memes and nihilism.
It sounds like you’re talking about people still living. Haven’t they gone through all of these things with you? Or does one stop “experiencing life” at a certain age?
Re-read my post—I’m referring to things we’d experienced comparatively at the same age.
But I get your point. They’ve obviously experienced these same things but at a different stage of life. I do think the distinction matters.
In what way does it matter what age you experience things? I mean, of course it makes a difference but you clearly have some argument to make in favor of young people’s experiences meaning more. Make it.
This and they were first at the buffet and are now holding onto the money (at least most I know) instead of sharing with their kids.
They’re not really “holding onto the money”.
It’s more “they’re holding onto jobs” and refusing to retire, because they never saved for retirement
They have “wealth” because by now a lot of them have paid off cheap mortgages and their home value has skyrocketed.
But they can’t sell and buy a cheaper house because there’s no cheap houses. And if they rent it’s 2x-3x what their mortgage uses to be.
Most Boomers are still a paycheck or two away from losing everything, the difference is it’s their own fault from decades of poor financial decisions and voting habits
I cant disagree here. But in that case, they might need to check their attitude a lot since the boomers I know look down on us milennials a lot more than would be warranted even by their hierarchical thinking.
So?
Boomers hated every generation before them, and every generation after them.
I give zero fucks what the opinion of Boomers as a generation overall is.
Because they’ve shown for decades that their demographic at large are a bunch of lead addled angry assholes with next to no critical thinking skills.
I can understand that most of that is just normal lead poisoning and not their fault, but that doesn’t mean I have to listen to their ramblings just because I understand why they’re nonsensical.
As a boomer (at the tail end, admittedly), I too have lived through all of these things. Plus the other thirty years of shit that happened before it.
The world threat that was the USSR and Mutually Assured Destruction. The Vietnam War, two Gulf Wars, and 9/11.
The “Troubles” in Ireland and IRA bombings in London. The Munich Olympics Massacre. The rise of global terrorism. The FLQ crisis. Kent State. Watergate.
Acid rain. Leaded gas and smog.
15%+ mortgage rates. The oil crisis. Wage and price controls. Multiple recessions. The Dot Com bubble.
Police raids on gay clubs. Racial slurs in everyday language. Massive gender inequality.
24" black and white TVs. It took a week to find out how your photos came out. Watching f@#$ing “Tiny Talent Time” on a Sunday afternoon because there wasn’t any else better on the other 5 channels (if that doesn’t traumatize you, nothing will).
You had to go to a library if you wanted to look something up in an encyclopedia.
Cars without seatbelts, crumple zones, anti-lock brakes, traction control or airbags.
F*CK me. “No experience”. Maybe just enough to know how much better things generally are today.
Kids always think that they know more than their parents…until they don’t.
I’m taking a psychology of aging course that gets into the extreme cultural ageism against older adults, and man, I really can’t begin to explain how much it’s humbled me. We’re reading a book called “Happiness is a Choice You Make” by John Leland that I want to recommend to everyone now.
I do wonder if there’s a generational difference in how we’ve been exposed and take in information - along with younger adults and kids being more negatively impacted by the isolation of COVID - but otherwise, yeah, I was going to comment something similar. Throw in the AIDS crisis, satanic panic, and any number of other issues
The one thing I want to maybe disagree on is how much “better” things are today. In some ways, absolutely. In others, like stagnated wages, it’s not. I’m not too interested in doing a deep dive on it today but I’ll keep it in mind for a potential summer project
It’s only right to criticise your parents, when they’ve obviously raised a duffer.
Generation Jones is a grossly underutilized concept imo. It’s totally unfair to lump in people born after 1960 with the early Baby Boomers.
Generation Jones were children during the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and were young adults when HIV/AIDS became a worldwide threat in the 1980s.
The name “Generation Jones” has several connotations, including a large anonymous generation, a “keeping up with the Joneses” competitiveness and the slang word “jones” or “jonesing”, meaning a yearning or craving. Pontell suggests that Jonesers inherited an optimistic outlook as children in the 1960s, but were then confronted with a different reality as they entered the workforce during Reaganomics and the shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, which ushered in a long period of mass unemployment. Mortgage interest rates increased to above 12 percent in the mid-eighties, making it virtually impossible to buy a house on a single income. De-industrialization arrived in full force in the mid-late 1970s and 1980s; wages would be stagnant for decades, and 401Ks replaced pensions, leaving them with a certain abiding “jonesing” quality for the more prosperous days of the past.
No it’s not. My older siblings are part of Jones and with just six and eight year gaps they have had very different experiences than X. My favorite example; there were still government grants for university when they went through. They worked odd jobs during the summer knowing that grants would pay full tuition and residence. Government backed loans paid the rest. By the time I went through the grant program had been dismantled and loans were partially privatized. And I graduated into the aftermath of Black Monday.
We all know people who are part of Jones. Your anecdotal evidence is unconvincing.
I’m a millenial and I received federal financial aid for my college tuition, so… clearly government-backed grants still exist.
Also, your elder siblings had to deal with the height of the AIDS epidemic. The first HIV medication wasn’t approved by the FDA until 1987.
Similarly, they got to enjoy of 6-8 years of additional exposure to toxic concentrations of lead as children. So lucky.
See how you can make whatever argument you like if you start cherrypicking data points?
I’m not an American. Federal grants still exist in Canada as well, but the eligibility criteria changed and the program was no longer universal by the time I went to post-secondary. As I said that was an example and there are many. I also had to deal with the height of the AIDS epidemic. The first case report in the literature was 1981. And lead contaminated water was never an issue in our jurisdiction.
If you are a millenial you don’t have any lived experience from the period, so why do you question mine? I was part of the “baby bust” as they originally called it and programs and services that were available to my older siblings were not available to me.
My point is that your personal experience doesn’t negate the whole concept of generation jones. All the generational paradigms are based around the US anyway, it doesn’t line up perfectly with other countries.
I came off a bit aggressive in my original comment, I’m sorry about that.
It’s all good. The generations thing comes from the boomers as well, the huge number of babies that were born in the post-war period and that covered a lot of countries. They needed a name and everything else just formed around them.
I won’t deny that someone born in 1946 had a very different experience than someone born in 1964, but from a programmatic view they all benefited from growth in programs and services aimed at children and youth. Those programs underwent a dramatic change in the 1970s as they became means tested or mothballed because of the small number of children.
Again, this is anecdotal, but I switched schools every two years before high school. Every one of them closed because there weren’t enough children in the catchment area. They were built because of the baby boom, and my Jones siblings walked to schools in the neighborhood because classes were full. I was bussed from Grade 1 onwards. And so on.
I don’t disagree on the overall conclusion, but it’s unfair to say that they didn’t live through a lot of crises.
In regards to the environment, they had a hole in the ozone layer and Chernobyl in the 80s along smog issues throughout their entire youth and several oil spills.
In regards to wars, they had Vietnam, Ireland, Falklands, Yoguslavia, Iran-Irak, Lebanon, and many more.
In regards to pandemic diseases, they had Asian flu, Hong Kong flu, Russian flu, AIDS, SARS, small pox, cholera, salmonella outbreaks, mad cow disease and a whole lot of smaller outbreaks of all kinds of nasty shit.
They also had an energy crisis in the 70s, economical recession in the 80s and a stock market crash in 1987.
So they didn’t actually live like in a world like "the wonder years"tv-show.
The question is rather: Didn’t they learn anything from all this?
And just one thing: during the Vietnam war Americans were conscripted into the war effort. That’s just about as big a violation of personal rights as you can get.
I would also like to ask how you think future generations will view Generation X, millennials, or Generation Z. Because from where I’m sitting, we are going to be the ones holding the bag on the whole… destroying the planet thing? Future generations are going to look back and see that we possessed the information and the technology to halt the destruction of earth’s ecosystem, but due to our own narcissism and greed, we let it happen in slow motion.
The Boomers are also largely responsible, but that doesn’t absolve us; just like the fact that the Boomers were raised by a generation which, by modern moral standards, was far more egregious than the Boomers themselves, does not absolve them. They can at least argue partial ignorance regarding climate change, we have no such luck.
Sorry to make two top level comments but I had two separate reactions to this post.
They can at least argue partial ignorance regarding climate change, we have no such luck.
I’m not sure they will. Aging Boomers are largely those still in power in the government blocking preventing meaningful climate change legislation.
At least in the US, I think the jury’s still out on how history will view X/Y/Z’s handling of the climate, because… the boomers are still handling it. Once the government starts to be mostly non-boomers, I think we’ll probably see an enormous shift in that sort of policy.
You’re ignoring that the last election was the first where boomers and older weren’t the largest demographic of eligible voters…
That’s why they were called baby boomers. Because there was/is a shit ton of them.
They get blamed because of that. And that’s why future generations won’t share the same amount of blame.
Boomers and older
Are we discussing the baby Boomers, or every generation born prior to GenX? Boomers and older isn’t a demographic. Millenials have been larger than Boomers for some time now.
That’s why they were called baby boomers. Because there was/is a shit ton of them.
They get blamed because of that.
Huh? I’m confused. What is that referring to in your last sentence? You think the reason they get blamed is because there were high birthrates at the time leading to a large generation? How tf is that their fault?
So I don’t wanna be that guy, but as much as I loooooove to shit on Boomers for not having lived through the shit, my mom and dad lived through the period of mutually assured destruction and it wasn’t sunshine and kittens.
Remember what LBJ said: “Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Yeah, the Vietnam War didn’t really exist and the fights for civil rights elders bullshit, and of course women were equals, right?
You don’t know shit, son.
Technology and speed of information has advanced significantly over the years. As the technology advances our society tries to keep up, a good example of this is how digital friendships and relationships have become. I know many yojng people struggle to make friends in real life but have plenty of digital connections. Many peolle fall into the trap of swiping for something “better” on a dating app than tolerating a flaw or two in their psrtners.
The speed of information has increased signifcantly due to the internet and social media. The entire world feels more connected than previous generations. News stories from any corner of the world are shared almost instantly. There is more opportunties to compare ourselves to each other with social media at our finger tips.
