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Sensible people who don't think it's rational to internalise the arbitrary demographic categories invented by marketers for the purposes of selling mass-produce

Sensible people who don't think it's rational to internalise the arbitrary demographic categories invented by marketers for the purposes of selling mass-produced goods in the post WWII consumer boom are sick of your bullshit. If human beings had a mating season once a decade, then this "generation X/Y/$foo" shit would make sense.

jeffool 15y ago
I'm led to believe that culture wasn't always as fast as it is now. Some period in human history lasted thousands of years, then hundreds, eventually decades. Now things may be a constant stream, but looking in history, the marks of change in culture stand out like rings in a tree. It may still now and we're just too close to it... Or maybe things have truly changed. Maybe that's what hipsterism really is, an inability to differentiate from the immediate precursor.
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  Or, these "rings" have been imposed on history by the human race's psychological compulsion to impose an understandable narrative structure onto the chaotic, senseless, meaningless mess that is life. If we can't make sense of the past, how can we reasonably believe we have a chance of making sense of our own lives? Of course in actuality, we can do neither of these things. The problem is if everyone sincerely believed this, we wouldn't get anything done. This is a big part of why religion continues to be so popular.
- cmhamill 15y ago
  You've been led to believe wrong, if you ask me (I know you didn't). History has always been a constant stream, but you're ability to sample it with a certain frequency diminishes as you "look" back into the past. The historical, archaeological/material, and memorial, if you will, records all become less preserved, and your relatively flawless memory of the time you've lived will of course lead you to see the the time you've lived in as happening more quickly. Disclosure: my background is in archaeology/anthropology. Sorry for the rant, but this is a meme that I see all the time and really bothers me. As far as the OP goes, this article is asinine and meaningless. As a "millenial," I honestly don't give a shit about whether I have it worse or better than some X'er; what I do care about is a sane and just world. We'll continue to fight for that, thank you very much, while the OP continues to feel self-righteous.
- Duff 15y ago
  I don't think that's true. Life was slower when most people were farmers. But culture has always changed with time.
Helianthus 15y ago
You're missing the point of the abstraction: it's about groupings of people based on roughly how old they were at major cultural events. You're complaining that the concept isn't "Generation 5993"--the point is that we all have all generations in us, but those of us who were in school when 9/11 happened have, as a group, a different perspective. Just because someone's a baby boomer doesn't mean they won't feel like Generation X every once in a while.
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  I can see how your 'life stage' at the time of different historical events might have some binding effect on different cohorts of the population. However I think this effect is so crowded out by the infinite number of other factors at play, socio-economic class, race, place of upbringing, parenting, genetics and so on, that it is effectively unmeasurable and therefore meaningless. The major effect it has is as a self-fulfilling prophecy: if "Generation $CHAR"ers do have stuff in common, its because they've been told that they have, over and over again for their entire lives. As I said in my other comment, the need to group ourselves in this way is a necessary social instinct. However much we have internalised neoliberal doctrine since the cold war, we are profoundly not just a country full of separate individuals, as this debate shows. You cannot have a country full of individuals, just as you cannot have a tribe full of individuals. We have to identify with each other or we will not survive. At the same time, we have to distinguish between each other or we will not prosper. I am going to stop this rant here, because I am not an anthropologist, and I realise that I am in danger of looking like I am pretending to be one.
  - alphadogg 15y ago
    Hear, hear! I, too, am tired of this "binning by birth". It's as if people born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s exhibit no behavioral clustering on any other, more common demographic variable.
  - joejohnson 15y ago
    I agree. I was going to write something similar, but you said it better. Because of the many different factors in someone's life (like socio-economic class, race, place of upbringing, parenting, genetics) these "generations" encompass many diverse experiences than can't accurately generalized.

jeffool 15y ago

I'm led to believe that culture wasn't always as fast as it is now. Some period in human history lasted thousands of years, then hundreds, eventually decades. Now things may be a constant stream, but looking in history, the marks of change in culture stand out like rings in a tree. It may still now and we're just too close to it... Or maybe things have truly changed. Maybe that's what hipsterism really is, an inability to differentiate from the immediate precursor.

JonnieCache 15y ago
Or, these "rings" have been imposed on history by the human race's psychological compulsion to impose an understandable narrative structure onto the chaotic, senseless, meaningless mess that is life. If we can't make sense of the past, how can we reasonably believe we have a chance of making sense of our own lives? Of course in actuality, we can do neither of these things. The problem is if everyone sincerely believed this, we wouldn't get anything done. This is a big part of why religion continues to be so popular.
cmhamill 15y ago
You've been led to believe wrong, if you ask me (I know you didn't). History has always been a constant stream, but you're ability to sample it with a certain frequency diminishes as you "look" back into the past. The historical, archaeological/material, and memorial, if you will, records all become less preserved, and your relatively flawless memory of the time you've lived will of course lead you to see the the time you've lived in as happening more quickly. Disclosure: my background is in archaeology/anthropology. Sorry for the rant, but this is a meme that I see all the time and really bothers me. As far as the OP goes, this article is asinine and meaningless. As a "millenial," I honestly don't give a shit about whether I have it worse or better than some X'er; what I do care about is a sane and just world. We'll continue to fight for that, thank you very much, while the OP continues to feel self-righteous.
Duff 15y ago
I don't think that's true. Life was slower when most people were farmers. But culture has always changed with time.

Helianthus 15y ago

You're missing the point of the abstraction: it's about groupings of people based on roughly how old they were at major cultural events. You're complaining that the concept isn't "Generation 5993"--the point is that we all have all generations in us, but those of us who were in school when 9/11 happened have, as a group, a different perspective. Just because someone's a baby boomer doesn't mean they won't feel like Generation X every once in a while.

JonnieCache 15y ago
I can see how your 'life stage' at the time of different historical events might have some binding effect on different cohorts of the population. However I think this effect is so crowded out by the infinite number of other factors at play, socio-economic class, race, place of upbringing, parenting, genetics and so on, that it is effectively unmeasurable and therefore meaningless. The major effect it has is as a self-fulfilling prophecy: if "Generation $CHAR"ers do have stuff in common, its because they've been told that they have, over and over again for their entire lives. As I said in my other comment, the need to group ourselves in this way is a necessary social instinct. However much we have internalised neoliberal doctrine since the cold war, we are profoundly not just a country full of separate individuals, as this debate shows. You cannot have a country full of individuals, just as you cannot have a tribe full of individuals. We have to identify with each other or we will not survive. At the same time, we have to distinguish between each other or we will not prosper. I am going to stop this rant here, because I am not an anthropologist, and I realise that I am in danger of looking like I am pretending to be one.
- alphadogg 15y ago
  Hear, hear! I, too, am tired of this "binning by birth". It's as if people born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s exhibit no behavioral clustering on any other, more common demographic variable.
- joejohnson 15y ago
  I agree. I was going to write something similar, but you said it better. Because of the many different factors in someone's life (like socio-economic class, race, place of upbringing, parenting, genetics) these "generations" encompass many diverse experiences than can't accurately generalized.