I agree, but there are identities that are imposed on us by society that we have a harder time either integrating with or pushing against without consequences to ourselves.
I’m still struggling to formulate this set of ideas (as it very much relates to my work), but identity is an important concept that I’m wrestling with.
I didn’t say other wise, but that still makes it a historical phenomenon that should be studied, even if that’s the ultimate conclusion. And even things that are corporate can take on more “authentic” grassroots meanings if people push for that.
Many bisexual people are told that they don’t exist and are gay. They clearly share many experiences etc.
Many multiracial people are called one race -
Well any number of things we might not like have a history and should be understood and studied. Theories about generational conflict happen to be one of those. I’m not in anyway advocating for the idea that generations are hard and fast facts of life, but that they are ideas that has shaped people’s lives and identities in both good and bad ways, and hence should be understood.
I’m not sure I’m being understood on that, though.
perhaps - but a twenty year age range makes no sense to me. You’re literally old enough to be the parent of someone in the same generation? Cognitive dissonance increasing!
Entirely true… It was Strauss and Howe who came up with 20 years, as far as I know:
It’s pretty arbitrary, I think. You can also have siblings from different generations, based on that (my dad had 5 siblings, and the youngest is technically a gen xer, while the rest are all boomers).
That smells like BS to me. If we cannot look at the failures of the past and call it out, then what good is being done?
What is wrong with looking back and calling out the perpetrators of racism, sexism, homophobia…
—POLICIES THAT WERE ALL ENSHRINED IN LAWS AND ENFORCED BY POLICE ADMINISTERED BY THE PAST GENERATIONS—
…environmental destruction, death, war, famine, slavery, suppression, superstition, ill-logic, ignorance, stupidity…? I mean the list goes on and on…
The rising generations have a responsibility to look back at our forebears and exclaim, “My GOD! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU GUYS DO??? We need to make it so this shit can never happen again.”
I think you’re making a more nuanced point. My initial point was merely in addressing this particular statement by @anon50609448:
I don’t see people of a particular age being responsible. Individuals are right or wrong; but age demographics are statistical. To me, saying someone is responsible for something merely because of when they were born or how young or old they are is perilous. And I don’t think you were saying that, so I think we’re discussing two related but distinct nuances of generational conflict. It should absolutely be studied, but I believe it’s hazardous to say a group of people is right or wrong when that group of people is an age group. When it’s a political identity, then yes, and it’s a mathematical fact that some political identities skew to certain demographics including age.
But I for myself just want to be careful that I don’t go from there to someone being responsible for X (say the election of fascists or the devastation of the climate) because they are the same age as most of the people who voted for Trump. Again, you’re not saying that, but I think a lot of people do simplify it through that filter. And I think pundits stoke that to the advantage of their preferred ideologies. That’s an observation, but not a rigorous one, so I could be wrong.
It’s tricky, because certain political ideologies have a skew to certain ages, but sometimes I think people can come to believe that’s somehow destiny and it might function to drive people further apart and more into entrenched camps of us vs them.
I agree it’s complicated and not a simple topic to suss out. And I can be a little blunt sometimes, which can do more harm than good.
But I appreciate that we can have a thoughtful and constructive conversation about it; it’s hard to imagine many places on the internet where that could occur.
You have an inflated sense of ability and congruence of values based upon an arbitrary bucket of characteristics that capitalists devised to sell products. Let’s take myself - when I was your age I was a homeless trans person who couldn’t get work and experienced violence.
See you’re a boomer, but you’re not a “Boomer”. When we are bashing Boomers its a particular subset of Boomers. And there’s people I’d throw in that category who were born in the GenX and Millennial years.
This was one half of my point. Intergenerational anger is about problems with the state of the world.
The other half of my point is that, yes, they will do this and they when they do we should listen because they are probably more right than we are. The longer you’ve been on the Earth the more responsible you are for what has happened on the Earth.
I was going to respond but I just feel like you read something I didn’t write. The intergenerational conflicts I mentioned in my post were hypothetical conflicts around how Putin’s Russia is working out for young people and about how post-war Germany worked out for young people; plus a real world conflict I’ve experienced about how well dismantling society to pretend to slay the deficit (but actually just giving money to rich people) worked out. I’ve reread my post a couple of times and I don’t see the word “millenial” or “boomer” in it.
Pop culture offers us deeply simplified versions of reality, but it still has meaningful content that resonates with people and grasps at actual reality. I graduated from university during the nascency of the student debt crisis and lucked out of having debt myself thanks to the timely death of a parent (woo life insurance), but I know lots of people who experienced being the ones burdened with that when people just a few years older than them barely had any debt. That doesn’t define their politics for life, but it certainly it was a shared experience that had some effect on us. Growing up in a particular time and place shapes us.
To me it’s much more interesting to extract the truth from people’s ideas of generations (however little there is) than to says it’s all bullshit. Everything is bullshit.
I agree with this with the massive caveat that it’s merely one of many factors conferring that responsibility. But there’s a distinction between elders and youngers on the one hand, and generational categories on the other. They’re two related but distinct concepts. Being older confers responsibility; being thrown in a categorical bucket does not.
I apologize if I misunderstood what you were saying.
I wouldn’t say it’s bullshit. But I would say that it is used by those in power to manipulate people into stereotyping one another. That’s not all there is too it, and not everyone who talks about generations does that. I talk about generations, and I try not to stereotype while still recognizing which arbitrary categories within which others are likely to group me for things as simple as age.
I’m not against talking about generations. But I do choose personally not to treat those arbitrary categories as destiny either for myself or anyone else, and certainly not as the determinator as to whether anyone is right or wrong. That seemed to be what you were implying, but I take your word that I misunderstood you.
Clearly, many do, hence the intergenrational bashing. And I think it cuts both ways. I don’t think the people who fit into the arbitrary bucket of boomers are singled out. Honestly the only group that gets off a little easier is the bucket I’m put in, probably because people don’t think about us as often. So, Gen X privilege I guess.
My vote is responsibility to leave this place better than we found it, however that plays out. But play it out and don’t shy from it.
Some people stridently insist that the only change that matters is political. I’ve met a lot of people like that in person and on the innertubes. I don’t share that opinion and I don’t think you do, either. But the inmost part of it still remains: we each have a responsibility.
I believe the previous generations have failed us. So it’s in our hands, and it will be in the next generations’ hands, who will rightfully be mad at us for not fixing everything because we have too many in our ranks who are selfish assholes who don’t think the way you and I do.
Are you saying there are people who are bi-generational? I can see that point for people like my brother who was born in 1981. So he is technically a Millennial but I think he would relate more with Gen X… So certainly the “label” doesn’t fit everyone well. But I am in the middle of Gen X and don’t really have a choice to claim being a boomer or a millennial.
I find labels in general silly for a lot of things. Generational labels I think work well for what on expects one to know or not know in regards to popular culture. But as far a how they act or think etc it isn’t that helpful.
You keep saying you this you that, directed at me, and it’s wrong. I’m of half a mind to start flagging this shizz, but I’m also a pretty open minded person and like some of your other statements. Feel free to stay on topic at any point…
