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A GST for Agism [Generations]
Heffling
No PicEverRegistered User regular
No PicEverRegistered User regular
Discussions about the different challenges faced by each generation keeps popping up in various threads, so I thought I'd make a new home so we can have the same old arguments in one thread. This is also going to be (yet another) Western (US, Canada, Europe) based discussions, because I think the generation challenges in other parts of the world are very different.
Greatest Generation - Pre-1928 - Leadership during the Civil Rights Movement is from this generation.
Silent Generation - 1928-1945 - Typically the earliest generation to have current statistical meaning. They were raised during extremely lean times. Leadership from the '70s and '80s can be found here.
Baby Boomers - 1946 to 1964 - Due to many improvements in Healthcare, they are currently the leaders. Although in the next decade, the Gen Xers should take over. Boomers were raised during the biggest economic expansion and takeover of the world markets by the US thanks to not being ruined by WWII. Will mostly die out before climate change impacts them.
Generation X - 1965 to 1980 - Another generation to grow up during lean times, especially in the 70's. Will have to deal with some climate change.
Millennials - 1981 to 1996 - Grew up during a period of mostly middling economy. Will have to deal with major upheavals in the world due to climate change.
Generation Z - 1997 to 2011 - Grew up in a boom and bust economy (dotcom in 2000, real estate in 2008). Won't know what life is like without climate change.
Generation Alpha - 2012 to 2027 - Good luck, kids, you'll need it!
The years should be treated as fuzzy. Your feeling as to which generation you should be in should be treated as fuzzy. It's all made up labels to try and communicate incredibly complex and nuanced ideas with only a handful of symbols. Just, talk to each other, not past each other.
Greatest Generation - Pre-1928 - Leadership during the Civil Rights Movement is from this generation.
Silent Generation - 1928-1945 - Typically the earliest generation to have current statistical meaning. They were raised during extremely lean times. Leadership from the '70s and '80s can be found here.
Baby Boomers - 1946 to 1964 - Due to many improvements in Healthcare, they are currently the leaders. Although in the next decade, the Gen Xers should take over. Boomers were raised during the biggest economic expansion and takeover of the world markets by the US thanks to not being ruined by WWII. Will mostly die out before climate change impacts them.
Generation X - 1965 to 1980 - Another generation to grow up during lean times, especially in the 70's. Will have to deal with some climate change.
Millennials - 1981 to 1996 - Grew up during a period of mostly middling economy. Will have to deal with major upheavals in the world due to climate change.
Generation Z - 1997 to 2011 - Grew up in a boom and bust economy (dotcom in 2000, real estate in 2008). Won't know what life is like without climate change.
Generation Alpha - 2012 to 2027 - Good luck, kids, you'll need it!
The years should be treated as fuzzy. Your feeling as to which generation you should be in should be treated as fuzzy. It's all made up labels to try and communicate incredibly complex and nuanced ideas with only a handful of symbols. Just, talk to each other, not past each other.
+9
Posts
What the fuck
IDK. Maybe this is because as a person who was born at the very end of the supposed “millennial” cohort—late ‘96—the distinction between generations always felt arbitrary, anyway.
I literally can't imagine having to actually physically look for something that might be in any one of those journals in the last ten years being the way things were done. It was a game when we did have to find a book in the library to reference to try to find the one that had been checked out the furthest back in time. Wasn't hard to find a few 1950s books in the early 2000s.
Though again, in my first job, there were people who when they started they had to dictate their reports to the secretaries to type up.
A childhood without the internet and uni/work without the internet seem pretty good fault lines for generations. Social media at the junior school level and having these technologies coming in after 10-20 years experience as well. Though with those latter generations, the successes of feminism are going to have also going to have a much greater impact on them compared to their slightly older and slightly younger compatriots.
I do not believe there is some great difference in generations that generally label them. I do think there is common shared aspects that are formative though.
Eh, there are cohort effects that are durable and identifiable. Especially when it comes to major events/ regime shifts. Like the Great Recession, the Pandemic, &c. That just inherently hits people differently depending on where they are in their life stage.
Part of the issue is that we have such broad ranges for generations. Especially Boomers. That's less the case now, seeming to have settled in at around ~15 years per generation, but even that's a bit too broad to really be meaningful outside of broadest strokes. ~8 years is probably closer to realistic since that basically covers exposure to things at a somewhat similar developmental level. A highschool sophomore has some commonality with an 8th grader and a college freshman, but not a toddler.
From 2013. So I was a bit off. Looks like Gen-X is more split down the middle with Early X'ers and Late Boomer cuspers (Generation Jones, because why not invent even more names) are the oddly Conservative cohort while Late X'ers being more akin to early Millennials (Generation Oregon Trail cusp) and later.
*edit*
But regardless, my point still broadly stands. Tack on ~9 years to those numbers and the generation of folks who are more Republican than the national average are folks in their late 40's-mid-60's. Also known as the age of the vast bulk of people in middle management, upper management, the C-suite, &c. The folks who are empowered to wield their shitty views in ways that 20-30 somethings broadly can't. In 10-20 years that'll swap out thanks to the unceasing march of time, but we aren't in 2040 yet.
While living in Japan, we've observed too many instances of old people acting like gross, self-entitled fools (and we're talking about a homogenous society that is supposed to honor its elderly population). Old people hitting/slapping other people's kids for them being too loud or inadvertently blocking the doors on a train, pushing and shoving and cutting in front of others (to include us) while queuing up in line, etc. One foot in the grave and adherence to respectful social norms can go straight out the window.
This is not to say that American olds can't be terrible either. While recently dining at a local curry restaurant, the two fat old American white guys in the booth behind us were complaining loudly that women, being the weaker gender, shouldn't be serving in active duty military, which caught my wife's attention and ire.
One of these old guys literally looked like Roger Ebert sans glasses and presented quite the fine specimen of alpha male strength and virility. /s They then pivoted to complaining about the local Japanese and Asians in general, which was special.
They glared daggers at us when we paid our check and left after we made our displeasure about their shitty sexist and racist atttides known, but zero effs were reciprocated. Boomers can definitely suck.
Edit *hopefully post-Trump
I call this the Jim Breuer / Tim Heidecker gap.
So don't trust anyone over 40.
Leaded gas was still being sold in the 90s, so there's been an impact on 30-somethings, too.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I can think of like 3 worse Star Trek movies.
My dad and 3/4's of his brothers fall under the Nixon range while the youngest brother is in the Ford/Carter range and it's the youngest who decided to become a right wing prosperity gospel blowhard.
My mom's older siblings are or were shithead Republicans from Chicago in the Ford/Carter range. My mom decided to be a Democrat and a Packers fan at an early age
I mean I guess I get the logic that it more refers to somebody who came of age in the new millennium. Or at least that god damn well better be the logic behind it.
It only officially ended this year, globally, with Algeria using up the last of it's stockpile.
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1031429212/the-world-has-finally-stopped-using-leaded-gasoline-algeria-used-the-last-stockp
Granted,
Nemesis
Final Frontier
Into Darkness
Are probably worse
But i wanted to make a funny
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Generational cohort traits and things are generally focused around Bildungsroman years, yes. It's why the Greatest Generation / Silent Generation cutoff is basically if you were old enough to enlist in the War or not.
It makes Gen X bleed more into Boomers but I think boomers have a bigger window than most anyway.
I was six when Chernobyl happened and I definitely remember the news from back then.
Also as an '80 I'm definitely identifying as millenial.
Some people really have a hard time accepting that the millenial cohort is old enough to have grandchildren.
I think the Vietnam one goes way too deep into X - my dad was born in 56 (almost a decade before the traditional cutoff) and was too young for the Vietnam graduating in 74.
Something for me in my mom was born in 51 and the second youngest of a Catholic family so my grandparents on that were born in 1909 and 1911. My grandpa was on the line of too old to be drafted for WW2. Grandpa died in 92 ans grandma in 2002 but its crazy imagining how much the world changed in their lives.
I think even then you're thinking too broad, the experiences by which each of these generations are defined seemed to be mostly US events. And even then I don't see much use for generalisations of vast groups of people.
It's more that I've noticed among boomers at least where I am, there is a marked generational difference, my dad is roughly the same age and his friends that did go always felt 10 years older than him because of it. Like they still believed hippies existed and he knew that was never an option. It's just as messy as any other change point but it does line up with the larger a trend of "when the war were on" being the change points.
I remember in school learning that America has won every war other than that of 1812*
*statement not valid for wars that were police actions, or where the US itself never officially declared war and instead the UN did and the US just supplied all the fighters, or wars on abstract concepts.
The world events that happen in someones late teens into their 20s will probably shape them the most.
Your average Millennial:
Was in late HS early college on 9/11
Was enlistment age for Afghanistan and Iraq
Probably remembers a time before the Internet
Edit: Though "Whyers" has a poetic ring to it as we look at the world and go "Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?"
The Soviets were big on it, too. Lots of recognition publicly for the Revolutionary and Great War generations, and less official recognition of the Stalin and Khrushchev generations but people recognized them as a dividing point.
Having lots of wars and turmoil creates stark generational differences. I can see how countries with less upheaval might focus on it less.