Once I was walking out of a Target. I passed by a woman and her maybe 6 or 7 year year old kid just in time to hear the kid say “mommy that guy creeps me out”.
Thanks to three concussions before age 5… and my entire 20’s being spent in a drug haze… my memory is pretty shot. But I remember that encounter as clear as day.
I’m sure I’ve received a few honest to goodness unsolicited compliments, but they don’t stick in my mind as much as the derision.
I mean, technically boomers saw Korea, Vietnam, Cuban missile crisis, Yom Kippur, (sorry if it’s misspelled), and the 70s oil crisis. I think the world has really just been interesting all this time
Yes. Granted not due to being a white educated man so much as a human who doesn’t have loads of money or influence. At least in 1923 you didn’t have every corporation trying to micromanage your life and life was affordable.
Maybe not 1923 exactly, but you can look at Europe in that time… That was right around the time Mussolini got to power, and why? Because of white males (and more) facing a cost of living crisis. America at that time had the “golden 20s”, true, but then you go a few years later and the fucking great depression starts, probably the biggest cost of living crisis there was.
And then also compare the standard of living from that time with now, even though we are struggling, our standard of living in general is much better than it was at that time due to technology and other factors.
Right in the middle between two world wars you’re going to experience and probably die in.
I’m not saying you are wrong in the sense that all is good now, and that it doesn’t suck majorly for a lot of people, all I’m saying is that I think you overestimate how good the past was.
Depends on where you where born I guess? Living in Belgium, my boomer parents never got a higher education because it was not affordable for working class families with 6 or more children. My dad had to go to work in a factory at 14, which was very common at the time. Props to him though, he got a degree through evening classes when he was already married with two children and working full time.
Higher education only became common and affordable with my generation.
On the other hand, while I make more money than my parents ever did, they were able to buy a 4 bedroom house in the 1980s on a working class income, whereas I could only afford a 2 bedroom appartment in the mid 2000s, the tail-end of affordability for housing.
While it’s true that I was speaking from an American perspective on a time period that definitely saw different situations in the US vs Europe, I would also say that the experience you’ve shared shows a similar effect, just in a different environment.
Your father (to his credit) was able to work his way through night school while supporting a family and (presumably) not incurring a mountain of debt.
The notion of working one’s way through college is something that was certainly difficult, but also certainly doable in the time when the boomers were in their 20s and 30s. Many of them still think that it’s possible to work a part time job while you study to pay your way through college and graduate with little to no debt (and use that perspective to pass judgement on anyone who doesn’t do that as lazy).
These days, a part time income may not even be enough to cover books, let alone room and board… forget about tuition. Honestly, it’s so impractical that it’s probably better for a student to not work and focus on study and health rather than try to mitigate debt through a side job.
These days, a part time income may not even be enough to cover books, let alone room and board… forget about tuition
This is again a more American perspective I think, which doesn’t make it invalid of course. The situation over there where students typically get loans and suffer crippling debt for years after they’ve graduated is frankly outrageous. Over here though, higher education is government regulated and highly subsidized, and while it’s not free and can still be pretty expensive, it’s possible to fit it within the budget of most families without loans, and people from families with a really low income are eligible for a grant.
So I’m going to stand by my point that in Belgium at least, education has become more accessible compared to how it was for the boomer generation. It’s visible in the statistics too: the number of people with a higher education level is still increasing every year, and younger people are much more likely to be highly educated than older people.
People are so much more “connected” now. Everyone hears about everything that goes on in the world. Well, except the good stuff, that’s not engaging. This and modern popular culture has us focused on the state of the world, which we largely have no ability to directly impact. In the past, people have been more concerned with their community and bettering their immediate life.
Now, this allowed for us to bury our heads in the sand and ignore global issues caused by state actors and accept systemic issues. But it also often set people up for success. The problems modern people are expected to solve is shit like climate change. Which, you know, is impossible for a single person to achieve. The irony is that we’re actually more alone. People today have fewer close friends and deep relationships than ever before.
The good news is that the world’s actually in a better place than it ever has been by many metrics. The woeful feelings are created by societal shifts and pressures. Things we can control in our own life. So I think the answer is to get yourself right and into a good place. Set limits and disconnect from the internet, build close and meaningful IRL friendships. Once you’re set, then reach out into the world and do whatever good you can.
I expect politics, religion, etc. to get that sort of response. That’s not what I’m talking about.
To give you a concrete example, I recently made a meme about using a condom stored in my wallet. Bunch of comments about how you shouldn’t store condoms in your wallet. Like, that’s technically correct, but it was just a silly meme.
I feel like your generation really got poisoned by the boomer lies…“trust the system, put in your time, and you’ll get your turn on top if you work hard”
Most of your cohorts just seem to be wandering around confused, struggling to reconcile their worldview with the reality that everything sucks (and is rapidly getting worse)
Not to dump on gen Xers but lets not give them too much woe(Note this is going to be more a US perspective). Yeah they grew up during(and were) the crime boom of the mid century that plagued American cities. Yeah they had the oil crisis and the dot com bubble. Yeah they were old enough to buy houses during the housing bubble bursting.
Lets not also forget they were born 1965-1980. They were the tail end of being able to work up a company, they were a gen that still came into an office to still turn in applications in person and all that dated cliche stuff an older family member tells you to do if your unemployed. Theyre the ones who got alright enough paying jobs doing things like data entry while complaining about it. Theyre the ones who were the right age during emerging tech industry to do things like take a quick community college network certification course and now are making six figures as head of IT department. Theyre the ones who picked up those high paying independent reporter jobs before print media started dying off when the getting was still good. They were the ones who were at prime earning and home buying age before the market became nationwide screwed. Yes the interest rate was higher, but that meant it wasnt as attractive of an investment or business opportunity which meant prices were lower.
But again it all depends who you are. The US went through some insane times in the mid century with urban decline thanks to sprawl and white flight, factories shutting down and de-industrialization, consolidation of banks and regional franchises and other businesses(leading to layoffs and in some cases the death of said merged company all together), and multiple collapses, the crack epidemic, aids and etc. And of course its not like gen xers or even boomers died once the elder millennials turned 18, they also experience covid, and the housing bubble crashing.
Generations cutoffs are a messy thing and the cutoffs are vague(like its already been a few years and the cutoff for gen z is still ambiguous) but generally yeah the cutoff is generally around 1980 or 1979.
Yeah I’m ‘84 - I’m either young gen x or old millennial. I dunno, does it really matter?
I’ve heard the best way to split it is if the person remembers the Berlin Wall coming down. I only remember it as being a semi-recent historical event when I was a kid, which would make me a millennial.
However, my brother is ‘80 and he says he remembers it coming down so that would make him Gen X using this method.
Either way, I like this method better than trying to draw a line at a specific date.
I think the split between boomers and gen x is watergate.
The split between millennials and gen Z would be if a person remembers 9/11.
Covid is probably where I’d put the split between Zoomers and whatever.
Perhaps some gen-x’s, much like any other generation, got lucky, but the majority of us are still trudging through the shit trying to make ends meet as well. It all falls to greed. Specifically corporate greed that has created this huge gulf of disparity. It’s the same thing the farther you look back into history as well. Limited wealth and scarcity of resources will ensure that this sort of thing continues well past we are dead and gone. Cheers lol
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