I’m in my peak methane production years too, I tell you what. Double plus ungood…
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I’m going to argue that some of us millennial had to re-learn how to adult because we were not taught properly because boomers never learned how to adult. Case in point: laundry. Boomers, in my experience, do not do laundry properly. They keep buying fabric softener. They use dryer sheets ON TOWELS. They use too much detergent. I completely relearned how to do laundry from how I was taught to do it as a kid because I wanted my clothes to last more than a few washes.
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I think that’s one of the xennial things for me, I missed most of the cultural Gen X things but I did experience being a latch key kid.
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I suppose it has a less confrontational vibe than the more accurate description of “personal responsibility.”
But history is also a continuity of people making decisions that were good and decisions that were bad. Could a person growing up in contemporary Russia be a little upset with older generations for mishandling the transition out of communism so badly that the country was taken over by organized criminals?
Could the generation born after world war 2 in Germany think, “Wow, our parents really fucked things up?”
Integenerational strife is over real issues. When it comes to real issues sometimes one group of people is in the right and another is in the wrong. Currently young people are upset at old people for burning oil like it was an infinite resource and for being taken in for more than 40 years by the con of neo-liberalism, leaving young people with fewer prospects than their parents had despite there being far more wealth to go around.
When young people complain about old people (as a group), I usually think it’s best to listen and figure out what the complaint is really about. They are perceiving the world their parents made and may see things in it their parents don’t because they’ve become accustomed to those things. When old people complain about young people (as a group) I usually think, “Maybe you should have raised your kids better, then, you stupid asshole.”
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But they were responsible for making you - was that good or awful?
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I agree - sure, there’s always been conflicts between older and younger generations, but recently it’s been blown out of all proportions, fuelled by online clickbait media, political tribalism, etc. Every single generation has had its share of struggles, maybe not the same ones, but struggles none the less, and made its share of mistakes.
Also, I wish people remembered that not everyone has the same life experiences. I’m technically a Millennial, but my life experience as a Millennial in Eastern Europe wildly differs from those who grew up in the US, live in the US, etc. Our countries’ history is different, our parents had different lives, our politics and economics were completely different, etc. For me being a Millennial is not a point of contact with others, because even though we lived through the same calendar years we didn’t experience the same things in life.
They could, but other people growing up in contemporary Russia are like “fuck yeah, Putin 4 life!” and organize vigilante groups to harrass gay people and whatnot. Generations are not a monolith, in my own generation we have people who are passionately liberal (not in the US sense of the word) and oppose the corrupt government, those who are passionately nationalistic and far-right, and those who have no idea what’s going on outside their Facebook bubble of sports/friends’ babies/cute animal pictures.
You’re talking about some young people in the US/Western countries. In my country, most young people are either apolitical and have no idea what to think about climate change, or right-wing and eat up populist propaganda with a spoon. “Con of neo-liberalism”? Good for you, over here it was half a century of being a Soviet vassal state, then having democracy and capitalism dropped into our laps, and fucking it all up, so for many of today’s young people (my generation and younger) even democracy is kind of like “eh what’s it good for?” if they even care about what it means. (Not saying all of them are like this, of course, many young people here are politically and socially aware and active. But most of them are either depressingly ignorant and uncaring, or depressingly alt-right/far-right.)
Thing is, young people have complained about old people since the beginning of time, and vice versa. The “BOOMERS VS MILLENNIALS!” thing is being blown up nowadays because social media encourages this kind of tribalism, and people desperately need someone to blame for the current state of the world. (It’s the same as how anti-Semitism, flat earth and other conspiracy theories, etc. are also on the rise, other groups are blaming more “traditional” targets.) Otherwise it’s something that happens all the time and frankly, is a bit of a cliché. Young people have the luxury of looking at decisions of older generations at a hindsight, and tend to think they know where they went wrong and what should have been done instead; not saying they can’t be right but we need to see things in context before we get on our high horse and start pointing fingers and demanding justice. The generations following us will likely do the same thing with us, after all.
One of my favorite things ever was a letter along the lines of “Ugh, young people today! They’re so disrespectful, and the way they dress is scandalous - men have long hair like women, their shirt is so short you can see their backside, and women reveal far too much skin! It’s not enough that we have to suffer for the sins of our fathers, we must suffer our ungrateful sons as well!” It was written around the turn of the first millennium.
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Never would. As a later Gen X’er though, I suspect I was among the last to have home-ec offered.
Either way, I hope something more comprehensive and useful like this college course makes its way into secondary.
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The metric is true. It’s more like >60% of the Boomer group. Look how they lean right approving of GWB, and still ~45% approving Trump… the right is well-associated with dismantling the earth.
When we roll our eyes, as I am doing now, and say OK Boomer, we don’t mean the well-intentioned or the ones with a conscience. We mean the majority.
I think that’s key whenever there’s a “Why should schools do it, it’s their parents’ job?!?” argument being tossed around.
Relying primarily on families to set up success for the next generation is a huge driver of social reproduction of class disparities. For people whose parents die young, whose parents have aptitudes…other than budgeting, scheduling and self care, for parents suffering debilitating mental and physical illness, for parents working 3 jobs, the opportunities for this kind of transfer are much more difficult.
Having a public, or even semi public (private with scholarship and open admissions) goes a long way toward evenign out opportunities, even in this “peripheral” concern.
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I don’t know… I think conflicts between generations were also incredibly high in the 60s, too. I sort of see this as rising out of the concept of the teenager in the postwar period, and becoming one of the predominant narratives about youth since then. It’s become a narrative that both has some truth in it and is a media driven narrative as well.
I think this is important to remember, too, that American experiences aren’t always universal, as much as we might imagine it to be.
But you can also say there are parallels with the same alt-right groups in the US who supported Trump or embraced white supremacy or just authoritarian ideas in general. The narrative that we think is generally true (that we’re on a progressive track across the board, we just need to wait for the old people to die out and we’ll have a better society) is just… not correct for the most part. Belief systems curt right across generational lines and are centered on other kinds of identity formations (class, ethnicity/race, gender, nationality, political, etc). And these types are most certainly organizing across national boundaries - there is a disturbing archipelago of right wingers, unfortunately.
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I wonder to what extent both the demographic changes (particularly the war dead and civilian casualties) left by World War II and the post-war economic boom factored into that. Not judgmentally, changes happen, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t play some role. That’s one reason I’m not on the blame the boomers bandwagon.
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But you’re saying they were responsible for all decisions that you disagree with from the age of their births till now - just as you are. Especially as they are on;y 26% of the voting age population. If you’re not voting - you’re actually more responsible for everything over the last fifty years.
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And I don’t say that glibly. I mean schools, families and communities do their best work when they all share in the teaching.
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Whatever Boomer.
Certainly, but the arbitrary generational buckets are marketing gimmicks explicitly branded to divide and conquer sell. Including selling team politics. It’s an insult to human intelligence.
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Or a social construct studied by historians?
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Here’s where it gets dicey. Most identities are things people choose for themselves.
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That too. But it still seems like a construct that’s manufactured, contrived by capitalist media, not one that develops from grassroots. I don’t mean it’s evil, just that it’s a social construct that’s worth being, IMHO, extremely skeptical of. Again though, that’s merely my perspective, and perhaps I’ve been jaded by same said capitalist media.
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I identify as gen x - because that is the label firmly attached to time I was born. I don’t know if I choose this label or not. Clearly people born around the same time share a sort of mutual experience, while having their own experiences be unique.
But whether this label is forced on me or wanted I can’t really say.
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