Millenials spoke up which is why we gained attention.
Gen X just accepted their reality at face value and never questioned it.
I can't have a single reflective conversation with my parents. They dont even say anything.
I totally agree with JOKL, Gen X cannot relfect collectively. Nor see the implications of their actions. I was passed on no knowledge or values by my parents, nothing.
It irritates me deeply to hear the phrase "kids nowadays". This comes from a generation whove spent the last 25 years watching TV series on a couch. It's ridiculous they do it every day.
But what does "reflect collectively" mean exactly? It's not like millions of people who were simply born within a 15-year range of each other can sit and "reflect" together. And anyway they all disagree with each other about almost everything.
About the only thing I ever see Gen X agree on is that Millennials were kinda wimpy and entitled (til they grew up and reality smacked them in the face/disappointed them) because adults were so much nicer to them and paid so much attention to them. But also that it isn't their fault, because that's just how they were raised, just like it's not anyone else's fault how they were raised. I have no idea why some Gen X then decided to raise their kids even MORE catering to them, but it just seems to get softer and more protected year after year, and then when the kids grow up that way they get even more and more angry and offended when reality in the outside world doesn't meet their expectations, so I don't know why they keep doing it.
I suppose you could say Gen X "just accepted" their reality because that's exactly what one should do if they don't have the power to change things. Numbers matter...Gen X is simply way smaller in numbers than either the Boomers or Millennials, bc birth rates in the 70s were just as low as they are now. Plenty of us complained or didn't abide by our parents' expectations, and they would just kick you out on your ass.
I'm sorry your parents won't talk to you about stuff or address it. I don't have that experience...I talk to my parents about political and cultural issues all the time, and also give them shit for how much more ridiculously nice and indulgent they are to their grandkids than they ever were to their kids. Their response is that they "learned from their mistakes" lol (aka us).
That's probably because this type of generational analysis isn't very native and doesn't make a ton of sense, at least to me. Gen X did not blame or talk about the Boomers as a group that could be conceived of in this manner...it doesn't make sense to do so when a Boomer who grew up in a rural town and was drafted and sent to Vietnam versus a Boomer who was a hippy or part of college protests are so very different, and they hated each other for everything anyway...they were on both sides screaming at each other during all the social turbulence of the Civil Rights era.
So it doesn't make sense to me to critique Boomers as a whole when they were so divided against each other. Perhaps it doesn't seem that way to someone younger, bc you just view them all as sort of collectively smug and comfortable grandparents, but we saw them when they were still in their prime, struggling in life and with each other. Also, human psychology has a natural progression, where old people are more content and satisfied with life, calmer, and less excited or interested in social turmoil.
Plus the Boomers and older never really generationally criticized us either...yes they called us lazy slackers in the 90s, but that was just sort of the standard adults complaining about young people being degenerates. It wasn't a real critique. In fact there wasn't even a term for Gen X until the (Gen X) novelist Douglas Copeland came up with it...Boomers had no interest in naming us something. The generational critiques really started with the Millennials, who DID have a million magazine cover articles and news stories fretting about them and trying to explain them. And then the Millennials turned around and did exactly the same thing to the Boomers, and now they're also obsessing over Gen Z and how they're losing the mantle of being young and hip. I don't know if millennials did this because they were used to it being done to them, and they were retaliating at Boomers. Or maybe because the Boomers and Millennials are actually very similar, and battling for dominance. Or maybe it's just because way more Millennials went to college than any other generation, and this type of "collective critique" is very much a college educated thing to do, along the lines of any critical theory that uses group-based social analyses.
To me I don't see much in the way of collective generational personality traits so much as a single unilateral trend since 1950 straight through to today, towards ever gentler and less authoritarian parenting and teaching styles, more individualism, stronger senses of personal liberty and options, more self-concern and less sense of duty or obligation to others, less toleration of any restrictions or limits on personal preferences, higher and higher expectations, proliferating consumerism and mediation (as in consumption of media), and more cultural fracturing and alienation and ever less sacred cows. All of these things seem like a straight one-way shot that only goes in one direction and develops more momentum every year, and radiates up and down the entire age spectrum.
On the woke thing, I stand by it not being characteristic of Gen X since most of them hated it the whole time. I take the point that it was likely Gen X teachers who instilled it, but teachers have been comprised of almost entirely the most progressive women for 30 years now. It would be like if the Alt Right all became teachers and instilled their philosophy in Gen Z, when obviously most millennials were not Alt Right, just a small fraction. Woke is basically 90s political correctness on steroids (as Deep Left notes), and both came out of liberal high-end college campuses, which inherently comprise a small fraction of the population but one with outsized cultural influence because they're who run the media. It's possible that 90s PC culture never went away in those circles or in schools, and instead continued in the same one-way direction, and that it only seemed that it had gone away in the adult culture because 9/11 caused a temporary swing back towards conservatism among grown ups (but apparently not in the world of formal education).
Though i'm not sure why it is poorly worded. I was stating that Gen X cannot have a collective reflection. IE a conversation. Which is my experience with my parents.
Everything gets swept under the rug. You don't have to try change and put meening to my words just read them as they are.
Poorly worded in the sense that “reflect collectively” in this context conjures an image of millions of people sitting down and having one big talk therapy session with each other, which I think is also how Kate read it.
But as you requested, I shall henceforth read every word you type as it is.
To add something of value to the conversation, I’m not sure you understand Deep Left’s take. You contradict it by saying Gen X took everything at face value. Deep Left’s take was that Gen X is simultaneously the generation of Alex Jones-style conspiracies and woke deconstruction. That’s anything but taking the world at face value.
I liked your original post because I agreed with the final paragraph. You’re correct that I was being condescending because this is clearly an emotional issue for you, and your response to me was more indignant than was merited.
So if we were wimpy its because there was no strength passed down. My parents wernt even around. I was shuffled between a babysitter and school. My dad spent his life in the pub and my mum spent her life climbing a career ladder. She has no social life at all.
My point is that Gen X dont take into account the implications of their actions or lack of. I think millennials are a generation without any parents. Without anyone to lean on from above. The “I have to do everything alone” mentality begins here, this is what I learned from my parents.
When I say reflect collectively I meen have a conversation, as a family or even just 1-1. When we sit at the table so many topics that my siblings bring up my parents and their partners sit in silence, complete silence. In some cases they will say we shouldnt talk about that… it leaves me to wonder what can we talk about? who is responsible for what?
My parents were responsible for:
Raising me
Passing on values
Teaching me life skills
Yet they did none of the above and I had to learn it on my 1’s.
Consider this a reflection of my reality and not an accusation.
However I want to talk about this because I am fed up of blame been handed down generation after generation. It doesnt work like that. Action - Reaction. Its simple yet we overcomplicate everything with our theories. How about we just show up and have a conversation without being offended by what’s on the table?
Things used to be different. Families used to be different. Everything changed with industrialization. The home structure changed, communities changed, couples started living separately and slowly became more isolated by big cities and corporate culture.
Industrialization gave us many things, but it took some fundamental things away from us. Family and Home was one of them. Fact. Yet we never reflected on this.
You know when people think about buying a house/ home—who do they think of?
An estate agent, lawyer, or banker. Yet what do these professions have to do with the foundations of social and/or family life? Absolutely nothing. That is a mentality I/ we/ you have been given by another generation.
Now I want to talk about it. I think it’s a big thing we need to reflect on. Again i’m tired of hearing “Kids now” because its a simplification of my mind and other people’s minds, including you—because it has been said by every generation so far. I want that phrase gone.
And I want to talk about how home culture shifted and community culture shifted, that’s what is important.
If you are older than someone, I am of the belief you have a moral duty to pass on quality values, not shame them. This is culture in the west now.
See this is interesting to me because I do feel for you if this is how you were raised, and that sucks. But also this is the complete opposite of the stereotypical conception of how millennials were raised, and in fact sounds exactly like the stereotype of how Gen X was raised (ie checked out or gone parents who paid no attention to us and knew nothing about our lives).
The stereotype of millennials is that their parents were OVERLY involved in their lives and helicoptering them and centering the entire family's life around the needs and desires of the child, getting involved in every small mishap, trying to be their best friend, etc. I suppose that stereotype probably derives almost entirely from the sort of top 20% affluent class (since that's who produces media and they love to talk about themselves). But it was also true bc that's how my younger brother who's a millennial was raised, along with all his friends. And he tells them everything about his life and they help him with all his problems. He literally talks to them every day on the phone now as an adult (all of this is very different than how it was for me and older sib...our parents knew almost nothing about our lives and had little to no input or involvement).
It sounds to me like what you're describing is completely different and more Gen X like, and that may be a function of location or family economic/cultural background because you almost never hear about that side of things. I'm guessing bc the media never focuses on the lives of middle or working class families, it reflects the world of highly educated urban liberal affluent people with intact families who invest massive resources into each kid and who are all focused on social striving.
But I suppose this is why collective analyses of blame or credit makes little sense to me, when everyone's individual situations are so different, with little overlap between different families and sub-cultures. This becomes even more the case as time goes on and technology has enabled more and more fracturing into a million tiny little sub-cultures with no broader cohesive one. It's not like it used to be, where the entire country was spending every night watching one of the same 3 channels on TV, or listening to the same radio program, and everyone went to church on Sunday and people's lives were just much more similar to each other on a daily basis. Now everyone has their own bubble.
Your parents sound very odd. And clearly you are disappointed in them. I don't know why they're like that. I guess my husband's family is sort of like that...they spend all day long watching sports on TV and never really talk about anything with each other that's beyond shallow things like movies or the weather or sports/TV. Mine is not, when my parents come visit we spend the whole time discussing the news and politics and philosophy, whatever....definitely not watching TV. But also part of why his family is like that is bc they HAVE to avoid a lot of topics bc there are too many disagreements, mostly about religion, so they kind of stay shallow to keep the peace.
Why do you think your parents are like that? Did they have kids too young or something, where they weren't equipped to handle it?
I think the only thing I would warn about is too much romanticization of a now-gone past. The tight-knit, wholesome family of the past that worked together DID exist, but often just in the sort of lucky minority, much like today. Because for regular people there were also a lot of families where the parents fully hated each other but had to stay together, so there was a lot of screaming and yelling every night...and dads were often much scarier, especially if they came home drunk (and dads being full on wasted every night, drunk driving, etc was totally normalized pre-80s), kids and dogs were regularly beaten with belts and that was fully acceptable, etc. It's not good today where so many dads aren't in the picture at all or barely involved, and moms often do a bad job trying to raise kids alone. But while pre-80s the shitty dads might have stuck around, that often just meant they terrorized the whole family and that every evening they all had to be scared of whether dad was coming home in a bad mood or not. I remember a lot of families like that, and a huge change in my lifetime is how much more loving, close, and involved with their kids dads are nowadays, and how much less scary. I think the median Boomer man for instance never once in his life heard his dad say "I love you" and much more often had to bring their dad the belt with which he was going to be hit.
I just want to start by saying I appreciate you taking the time to write this out. I also didnt neccesarily disagree with anything you said in the podcast. I am speaking on the term "kids nowadays" as a cultural norm. One that deflects blame and condescends people.
I would start by saying I don't romanticize the past. I also didnt romanticize it in my comment... at all. I asked a question and I make points about corporate culture. How it has taken over every crevice of our life and we have never reflected on this.
My parents chose that culture. Thats why they wernt there. My mum spent 80 hours a week at work so she could become a CEO, while my dad worked for nothing so he drowned his sorrows in the pub. I was born in 91- so maybe im an early millenial. None of my friends from childhood had the upbringing you described. Though my little brother and sister did who are 16 years younger.
However we have all been thrown in a bag. To be honest I hate labels, but when other people are using them in conversation I will use them too. Normally it triggers something.
I want to be frank I feel like I automatically get put in a category since I came on substack.. because I want to talk about relationships and family dynamics. A few have said im right wing -.- Even though I would describe myself as an Anarchist my entire life and I think my friends, relationships and the rest will agree.
I have since abandoned this label. For what its worth I am a carpenter and I have also spent my life exploring and living in various living communities.
I say this because I have seen people and families living in another way. I have lived that way too. What I dont like is the culture of acceptence (sweep it under the rug/lets not talk about it). We have a lot of problems and we need to start creating new solutions. How can we do that if we quickly assume someone angle on a topic?
I really didnt idolize anything. It's quite clear everything shifted after industrialization. Many of our cultures changed. The way we exist today doesnt work. We have unprecendented rates of lonliness, single parents, virgins, suicides, whatever... This is now our culture.
Not to mention pop culture influence. The things we have been showing kids have definately had an impact. I could write for hours on this topic. I am finishing a long form I have been writing for a few weeks about this I will send it to you just in case your curious.
I'd be interested in reading it! 91 is pretty early. Honestly I don't think the generations thing, which span huge periods of time, makes much sense. I really have nothing in common with someone who was born in the 60s and in college in the 80s...I was still in nursery school in the 80s. That's probably even more true for Millennials bc the youngest ones had mobile phones in high school while the oldest had nothing like that, etc. If people want to analyze generations it seems like they shouldn't be more than a decade long, especially with how quickly things change, technologically, culturally, and politically, these days.
It’s to observe the shift in culture. Not necessarily people. There are certain cultures that we lost and or developed at certain points in time. I want to understand those, not necessarily the people. Take the introduction of the smartphone. This changed home dynamics, it had a huge impact actually. I seek to understand what has changed in the way of social dynamics.
100% Wokeism started with Gen X
Millenials spoke up which is why we gained attention.
Gen X just accepted their reality at face value and never questioned it.
I can't have a single reflective conversation with my parents. They dont even say anything.
I totally agree with JOKL, Gen X cannot relfect collectively. Nor see the implications of their actions. I was passed on no knowledge or values by my parents, nothing.
It irritates me deeply to hear the phrase "kids nowadays". This comes from a generation whove spent the last 25 years watching TV series on a couch. It's ridiculous they do it every day.
But what does "reflect collectively" mean exactly? It's not like millions of people who were simply born within a 15-year range of each other can sit and "reflect" together. And anyway they all disagree with each other about almost everything.
About the only thing I ever see Gen X agree on is that Millennials were kinda wimpy and entitled (til they grew up and reality smacked them in the face/disappointed them) because adults were so much nicer to them and paid so much attention to them. But also that it isn't their fault, because that's just how they were raised, just like it's not anyone else's fault how they were raised. I have no idea why some Gen X then decided to raise their kids even MORE catering to them, but it just seems to get softer and more protected year after year, and then when the kids grow up that way they get even more and more angry and offended when reality in the outside world doesn't meet their expectations, so I don't know why they keep doing it.
I suppose you could say Gen X "just accepted" their reality because that's exactly what one should do if they don't have the power to change things. Numbers matter...Gen X is simply way smaller in numbers than either the Boomers or Millennials, bc birth rates in the 70s were just as low as they are now. Plenty of us complained or didn't abide by our parents' expectations, and they would just kick you out on your ass.
I'm sorry your parents won't talk to you about stuff or address it. I don't have that experience...I talk to my parents about political and cultural issues all the time, and also give them shit for how much more ridiculously nice and indulgent they are to their grandkids than they ever were to their kids. Their response is that they "learned from their mistakes" lol (aka us).
“Reflect collectively” I think was a poorly worded restatement of Deep Left’s use of “collective criticism.”
Your response when Deep Left was critiquing Gen X was basically, “Not all X are like that,” which ironically illustrated his point.
That's probably because this type of generational analysis isn't very native and doesn't make a ton of sense, at least to me. Gen X did not blame or talk about the Boomers as a group that could be conceived of in this manner...it doesn't make sense to do so when a Boomer who grew up in a rural town and was drafted and sent to Vietnam versus a Boomer who was a hippy or part of college protests are so very different, and they hated each other for everything anyway...they were on both sides screaming at each other during all the social turbulence of the Civil Rights era.
So it doesn't make sense to me to critique Boomers as a whole when they were so divided against each other. Perhaps it doesn't seem that way to someone younger, bc you just view them all as sort of collectively smug and comfortable grandparents, but we saw them when they were still in their prime, struggling in life and with each other. Also, human psychology has a natural progression, where old people are more content and satisfied with life, calmer, and less excited or interested in social turmoil.
Plus the Boomers and older never really generationally criticized us either...yes they called us lazy slackers in the 90s, but that was just sort of the standard adults complaining about young people being degenerates. It wasn't a real critique. In fact there wasn't even a term for Gen X until the (Gen X) novelist Douglas Copeland came up with it...Boomers had no interest in naming us something. The generational critiques really started with the Millennials, who DID have a million magazine cover articles and news stories fretting about them and trying to explain them. And then the Millennials turned around and did exactly the same thing to the Boomers, and now they're also obsessing over Gen Z and how they're losing the mantle of being young and hip. I don't know if millennials did this because they were used to it being done to them, and they were retaliating at Boomers. Or maybe because the Boomers and Millennials are actually very similar, and battling for dominance. Or maybe it's just because way more Millennials went to college than any other generation, and this type of "collective critique" is very much a college educated thing to do, along the lines of any critical theory that uses group-based social analyses.
To me I don't see much in the way of collective generational personality traits so much as a single unilateral trend since 1950 straight through to today, towards ever gentler and less authoritarian parenting and teaching styles, more individualism, stronger senses of personal liberty and options, more self-concern and less sense of duty or obligation to others, less toleration of any restrictions or limits on personal preferences, higher and higher expectations, proliferating consumerism and mediation (as in consumption of media), and more cultural fracturing and alienation and ever less sacred cows. All of these things seem like a straight one-way shot that only goes in one direction and develops more momentum every year, and radiates up and down the entire age spectrum.
On the woke thing, I stand by it not being characteristic of Gen X since most of them hated it the whole time. I take the point that it was likely Gen X teachers who instilled it, but teachers have been comprised of almost entirely the most progressive women for 30 years now. It would be like if the Alt Right all became teachers and instilled their philosophy in Gen Z, when obviously most millennials were not Alt Right, just a small fraction. Woke is basically 90s political correctness on steroids (as Deep Left notes), and both came out of liberal high-end college campuses, which inherently comprise a small fraction of the population but one with outsized cultural influence because they're who run the media. It's possible that 90s PC culture never went away in those circles or in schools, and instead continued in the same one-way direction, and that it only seemed that it had gone away in the adult culture because 9/11 caused a temporary swing back towards conservatism among grown ups (but apparently not in the world of formal education).
I appreciate your "constructive" feedback.
Though i'm not sure why it is poorly worded. I was stating that Gen X cannot have a collective reflection. IE a conversation. Which is my experience with my parents.
Everything gets swept under the rug. You don't have to try change and put meening to my words just read them as they are.
Poorly worded in the sense that “reflect collectively” in this context conjures an image of millions of people sitting down and having one big talk therapy session with each other, which I think is also how Kate read it.
But as you requested, I shall henceforth read every word you type as it is.
Then read the first 2 sentances that came before the one you speak about. Or do you just pick out what you want?
Gen X just accepted their reality at face value and never questioned it.
I can't have a single reflective conversation with my parents. They dont even say anything.
I totally agree with JOKL, Gen X cannot relfect collectively.
Despite what you might think your not being helpful. You havnt added anything to the conversation here. Your just being condescending.
I guess your not used to collective reflection...
To add something of value to the conversation, I’m not sure you understand Deep Left’s take. You contradict it by saying Gen X took everything at face value. Deep Left’s take was that Gen X is simultaneously the generation of Alex Jones-style conspiracies and woke deconstruction. That’s anything but taking the world at face value.
I liked your original post because I agreed with the final paragraph. You’re correct that I was being condescending because this is clearly an emotional issue for you, and your response to me was more indignant than was merited.
We were raised by Gen X.
So if we were wimpy its because there was no strength passed down. My parents wernt even around. I was shuffled between a babysitter and school. My dad spent his life in the pub and my mum spent her life climbing a career ladder. She has no social life at all.
My point is that Gen X dont take into account the implications of their actions or lack of. I think millennials are a generation without any parents. Without anyone to lean on from above. The “I have to do everything alone” mentality begins here, this is what I learned from my parents.
When I say reflect collectively I meen have a conversation, as a family or even just 1-1. When we sit at the table so many topics that my siblings bring up my parents and their partners sit in silence, complete silence. In some cases they will say we shouldnt talk about that… it leaves me to wonder what can we talk about? who is responsible for what?
My parents were responsible for:
Raising me
Passing on values
Teaching me life skills
Yet they did none of the above and I had to learn it on my 1’s.
Consider this a reflection of my reality and not an accusation.
However I want to talk about this because I am fed up of blame been handed down generation after generation. It doesnt work like that. Action - Reaction. Its simple yet we overcomplicate everything with our theories. How about we just show up and have a conversation without being offended by what’s on the table?
Things used to be different. Families used to be different. Everything changed with industrialization. The home structure changed, communities changed, couples started living separately and slowly became more isolated by big cities and corporate culture.
Industrialization gave us many things, but it took some fundamental things away from us. Family and Home was one of them. Fact. Yet we never reflected on this.
You know when people think about buying a house/ home—who do they think of?
An estate agent, lawyer, or banker. Yet what do these professions have to do with the foundations of social and/or family life? Absolutely nothing. That is a mentality I/ we/ you have been given by another generation.
Now I want to talk about it. I think it’s a big thing we need to reflect on. Again i’m tired of hearing “Kids now” because its a simplification of my mind and other people’s minds, including you—because it has been said by every generation so far. I want that phrase gone.
And I want to talk about how home culture shifted and community culture shifted, that’s what is important.
If you are older than someone, I am of the belief you have a moral duty to pass on quality values, not shame them. This is culture in the west now.
See this is interesting to me because I do feel for you if this is how you were raised, and that sucks. But also this is the complete opposite of the stereotypical conception of how millennials were raised, and in fact sounds exactly like the stereotype of how Gen X was raised (ie checked out or gone parents who paid no attention to us and knew nothing about our lives).
The stereotype of millennials is that their parents were OVERLY involved in their lives and helicoptering them and centering the entire family's life around the needs and desires of the child, getting involved in every small mishap, trying to be their best friend, etc. I suppose that stereotype probably derives almost entirely from the sort of top 20% affluent class (since that's who produces media and they love to talk about themselves). But it was also true bc that's how my younger brother who's a millennial was raised, along with all his friends. And he tells them everything about his life and they help him with all his problems. He literally talks to them every day on the phone now as an adult (all of this is very different than how it was for me and older sib...our parents knew almost nothing about our lives and had little to no input or involvement).
It sounds to me like what you're describing is completely different and more Gen X like, and that may be a function of location or family economic/cultural background because you almost never hear about that side of things. I'm guessing bc the media never focuses on the lives of middle or working class families, it reflects the world of highly educated urban liberal affluent people with intact families who invest massive resources into each kid and who are all focused on social striving.
But I suppose this is why collective analyses of blame or credit makes little sense to me, when everyone's individual situations are so different, with little overlap between different families and sub-cultures. This becomes even more the case as time goes on and technology has enabled more and more fracturing into a million tiny little sub-cultures with no broader cohesive one. It's not like it used to be, where the entire country was spending every night watching one of the same 3 channels on TV, or listening to the same radio program, and everyone went to church on Sunday and people's lives were just much more similar to each other on a daily basis. Now everyone has their own bubble.
Your parents sound very odd. And clearly you are disappointed in them. I don't know why they're like that. I guess my husband's family is sort of like that...they spend all day long watching sports on TV and never really talk about anything with each other that's beyond shallow things like movies or the weather or sports/TV. Mine is not, when my parents come visit we spend the whole time discussing the news and politics and philosophy, whatever....definitely not watching TV. But also part of why his family is like that is bc they HAVE to avoid a lot of topics bc there are too many disagreements, mostly about religion, so they kind of stay shallow to keep the peace.
Why do you think your parents are like that? Did they have kids too young or something, where they weren't equipped to handle it?
I think the only thing I would warn about is too much romanticization of a now-gone past. The tight-knit, wholesome family of the past that worked together DID exist, but often just in the sort of lucky minority, much like today. Because for regular people there were also a lot of families where the parents fully hated each other but had to stay together, so there was a lot of screaming and yelling every night...and dads were often much scarier, especially if they came home drunk (and dads being full on wasted every night, drunk driving, etc was totally normalized pre-80s), kids and dogs were regularly beaten with belts and that was fully acceptable, etc. It's not good today where so many dads aren't in the picture at all or barely involved, and moms often do a bad job trying to raise kids alone. But while pre-80s the shitty dads might have stuck around, that often just meant they terrorized the whole family and that every evening they all had to be scared of whether dad was coming home in a bad mood or not. I remember a lot of families like that, and a huge change in my lifetime is how much more loving, close, and involved with their kids dads are nowadays, and how much less scary. I think the median Boomer man for instance never once in his life heard his dad say "I love you" and much more often had to bring their dad the belt with which he was going to be hit.
I just want to start by saying I appreciate you taking the time to write this out. I also didnt neccesarily disagree with anything you said in the podcast. I am speaking on the term "kids nowadays" as a cultural norm. One that deflects blame and condescends people.
I would start by saying I don't romanticize the past. I also didnt romanticize it in my comment... at all. I asked a question and I make points about corporate culture. How it has taken over every crevice of our life and we have never reflected on this.
My parents chose that culture. Thats why they wernt there. My mum spent 80 hours a week at work so she could become a CEO, while my dad worked for nothing so he drowned his sorrows in the pub. I was born in 91- so maybe im an early millenial. None of my friends from childhood had the upbringing you described. Though my little brother and sister did who are 16 years younger.
However we have all been thrown in a bag. To be honest I hate labels, but when other people are using them in conversation I will use them too. Normally it triggers something.
I want to be frank I feel like I automatically get put in a category since I came on substack.. because I want to talk about relationships and family dynamics. A few have said im right wing -.- Even though I would describe myself as an Anarchist my entire life and I think my friends, relationships and the rest will agree.
I have since abandoned this label. For what its worth I am a carpenter and I have also spent my life exploring and living in various living communities.
I say this because I have seen people and families living in another way. I have lived that way too. What I dont like is the culture of acceptence (sweep it under the rug/lets not talk about it). We have a lot of problems and we need to start creating new solutions. How can we do that if we quickly assume someone angle on a topic?
I really didnt idolize anything. It's quite clear everything shifted after industrialization. Many of our cultures changed. The way we exist today doesnt work. We have unprecendented rates of lonliness, single parents, virgins, suicides, whatever... This is now our culture.
Not to mention pop culture influence. The things we have been showing kids have definately had an impact. I could write for hours on this topic. I am finishing a long form I have been writing for a few weeks about this I will send it to you just in case your curious.
All the best.
I'd be interested in reading it! 91 is pretty early. Honestly I don't think the generations thing, which span huge periods of time, makes much sense. I really have nothing in common with someone who was born in the 60s and in college in the 80s...I was still in nursery school in the 80s. That's probably even more true for Millennials bc the youngest ones had mobile phones in high school while the oldest had nothing like that, etc. If people want to analyze generations it seems like they shouldn't be more than a decade long, especially with how quickly things change, technologically, culturally, and politically, these days.
It’s to observe the shift in culture. Not necessarily people. There are certain cultures that we lost and or developed at certain points in time. I want to understand those, not necessarily the people. Take the introduction of the smartphone. This changed home dynamics, it had a huge impact actually. I seek to understand what has changed in the way of social dynamics.