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The New Generation Gap
Atlantic Monthly ^ | December 1992 | Neil Howe; William Strauss

Posted on 08/05/2004 10:29:02 PM PDT by Marie

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To: Marie

"Old Cracker posted a vanity tonight about the hopelessness of my Generation. (20-30's) I think that the above article, while old, does a much better job of defining this generation than I ever could. It's long, but powerful and well worth the read"

Was that in addition to Old Crackhead's anti-Southpark screed?


21 posted on 08/06/2004 6:06:42 AM PDT by adam_az (Call your State Republican Party office and VOLUNTEER!!!!)
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To: Marie

"Old Cracker posted a vanity tonight about the hopelessness of my Generation. (20-30's) I think that the above article, while old, does a much better job of defining this generation than I ever could. It's long, but powerful and well worth the read"

Was that in addition to Old Crackhead's anti-Southpark screed?


22 posted on 08/06/2004 6:06:43 AM PDT by adam_az (Call your State Republican Party office and VOLUNTEER!!!!)
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To: Corporate Law

And call us slackers - I suppose for not picking up the slack of our brothers, sisters and friends they killed before birth.


23 posted on 08/06/2004 6:59:14 AM PDT by kenth
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To: Marie
Part of me feels like pouring a drink and enjoying the show while the whole system falls in on itself. Then the grown-up in me sighs and sees that it's always the most responsible one who is stuck cleaning up the mess. But I honestly don't see how it can be done

I feel the same way. There are ways to fix SS so that it remains viable. However, doing so would require that people who are receiving SS now make some sacrifices. That isn't going to happen.

What will happen, in the long run, is that the SS system will collapse. I accept that and am planning for my future on the assumption that there will be no SS checks coming for me when I get old.

The collapse will lead to misery for many people. I don't really care, to tell you the truth. If you rely on the government to take care of you, you deserve whatever misery you get.

24 posted on 08/06/2004 7:29:28 AM PDT by Modernman (Hippies.They're everywhere. They wanna save the earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad.)
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To: Marie

My fiance and I are completely and utterly aware that we will have no Social Security. That doesn't mean that its inevitable collapse will have no effect on us.

It's a waste to have to contribute to it. I'm resentful, to be honest, and it's only going to get worse. On top of the SS contribution we must also contribute to our own retirement accounts. Fortunately I have a fully-vested private pension plan as well (which is also becoming a rarity). We still worry, and we both have a good 40 years until retirement!

My parents struggled financially and have virtually nothing in savings for retirement. It saddens me that the good, God-fearing couple who raised me will not have a relaxing and comfortable retirement. We will help them as much as we can - not that they will accept much (or any) help! At the same time we will have our own family to raise. It is going to get awfully hard if there's no social security for my parents...but we will not let them live on the street or go hungry.


25 posted on 08/06/2004 9:25:37 AM PDT by Rubber_Duckie_27
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To: Marie
I've always thought analyzing generations was lazy pop psychology. Here, for example:
Now look again--and notice a countermood popping up in college towns, in big cities, on Fox and cable TV, and in various ethnic side currents. It's a tone of physical frenzy and spiritual numbness, a revelry of pop, a pursuit of high-tech, guiltless fun. It's a carnival culture featuring the tangible bottom lines of life--money, bodies, and brains--and the wordless deals with which one can be traded for another. A generation weaned on minimal expectations and gifted in the game of life is now avoiding meaning in a cumbersome society that, as they see it, offers them little.

Empirically that is utterly unhelpful. Post-Sept. 11, it sounds even sillier.

26 posted on 08/06/2004 9:41:44 AM PDT by untenured
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To: Marie
But I honestly don't see how it can be done. We have a generation above us who are sucking the life out of our country as they pass through every age. We have our kids who we're trying to provide the best for so they can stand on their own two feet.

Hard decisions are going to have to be made. If the boomers want to be remembered in any other way than "sucking the life out of country" (well put btw), than they need to make a sacrifice. Their grandparents did in WWI, their parents in the depression and WWII/Korea, my generation in Gulf War IⅈBoomers are the only generation to condescendingly balk at true sacrifice. It's time to atone, stand and deliver.

27 posted on 08/06/2004 10:04:33 AM PDT by JPJones
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To: untenured

It was written in '92, dude...


28 posted on 08/06/2004 10:07:15 AM PDT by Cogadh na Sith (I shook my inner child until its eyes bled...)
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To: Rubber_Duckie_27
It's a waste to have to contribute to it. I'm resentful, to be honest, and it's only going to get worse.

I totally agree! We could solve the problem by excluding from SS everyone born between 1945 and 1960 who never served in the armed forces, ...or was a registered democrat from 1965-to present. :)

29 posted on 08/06/2004 10:12:38 AM PDT by JPJones
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To: chookter
It was written in '92, dude...

I know, but it was a prediction about the future. It was silly then, and looks sillier now in light of the way the future actually played out.

30 posted on 08/06/2004 10:20:33 AM PDT by untenured
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To: Marie

My sister was born in 1960, and my younger sib and I (who were born in 68 and 70 and consider ourselves "Generation Reagan") always called her "Backwash of the Hippies". That used to make her really angry. She's not really "like" my sib and I from a values and work ethic standpoint, though we were all raised in the same home with the same parents. She's very socially conservative and not a fiscal liberal, exactly, but she's very "Earth Mother" type.


31 posted on 08/06/2004 10:28:27 AM PDT by hispanarepublicana (Free Brigitte Bardot.)
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To: untenured
I dunno....

It's a tone of physical frenzy and spiritual numbness, a revelry of pop, a pursuit of high-tech, guiltless fun. It's a carnival culture featuring the tangible bottom lines of life--money, bodies, and brains--and the wordless deals with which one can be traded for another.

Seems to explain the popularity of the reality shows, extreme sports, internet porn, low-carb beer and Paris Hilton...

32 posted on 08/06/2004 10:28:38 AM PDT by Cogadh na Sith (I shook my inner child until its eyes bled...)
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To: chookter
Seems to explain the popularity of the reality shows, extreme sports, internet porn, low-carb beer and Paris Hilton...

I'm part of what the author (weirdly) calls "thirteeners." I don't enjoy any of the stuff you list, nor do I even know anyone in my age group who claims to. Obviously lots of people in my "generation" do enjoy them, but there are also lots of people who don't. And those who do and don't can be found across age groups. I just don't think "generations" (as opposed to age, or religious intensity, or whether you are married with kids, etc.) is a very useful way to think about how Americans are different.

Some baby boomers did see themselves as some sort of revolutionary vanguard, of course, but that was probably part of the problem.

33 posted on 08/06/2004 10:37:15 AM PDT by untenured
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To: hispanarepublicana
She's very socially conservative and not a fiscal liberal, exactly, but she's very "Earth Mother" type.

In many ways, you just described me. Fashion trends don't over ride the underlying conservative core, though. When push comes to shove, she'll put her family first.

34 posted on 08/06/2004 10:51:14 AM PDT by Marie (Hey Boomers.... reap it.)
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To: untenured

Yeah.... Low-carb beer sucks.


35 posted on 08/06/2004 11:23:21 AM PDT by Cogadh na Sith (I shook my inner child until its eyes bled...)
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To: kb2614

What year were you born in. If you're 1961 or earlier you're an "againg boomer". If you were born 1962 or later you're "a brat"


36 posted on 10/23/2004 8:31:28 AM PDT by Chrysler813
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To: Marie

for later


37 posted on 10/23/2004 8:35:43 AM PDT by independentmind
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To: Chrysler813

1969. Actually I'm in between generations. Baby boomers and there offspring. My parents pre-date the baby boom.


38 posted on 10/23/2004 6:44:35 PM PDT by kb2614 ( You have everything to fear, including fear itself. - The new DNC slogan)
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