No doubt our profoundly unnatural educational system with its extreme age segregation has aggravated the degree of generational animus in the US.
Let's enumerate, I'm sure many of my readers can help fill in the gaps...
Greatest Generation <-> Boomers
Boomers say their parent's generation was distant, materialistic and never paid enough attention to them
Greatest Generation says the Boomers are selfish, ungrateful, and narcissistic. Generation X agrees with their grandparents' claim.
Boomers <-> Generation X
Boomers say that Generation X are cynical, lazy slackers. Generation X strongly resents the Boomers for failing to stay married (about half of Gen X'rs have experienced the divorce of their parents, with a majority of such divorces NOT being for one of the 3 A's)
Millennials are viewed as being lazy and entitled by the older generations. In turn, they greatly resent the bill of goods they've been sold as regards college degrees and employment (exceptionally high unemployment in this set right now)
The Greatest Generation by far has the best PR, escaping blame for many of the things that can rightfully be attributed to them. Millennials have by far the worst PR---few taking their grievances seriously even when they are actually legitimate. Boomers have by far the greatest political clout and control most of the engines of indoctrination. X'rs will hopefully step up to the plate as they gain political ascendancy and stop enforcing edicts that they don't really believe in but go along with out of fear of sanction or ostracism.
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4 comments:
silent generation
Jim,
One doesn't hear much of the Silents. They're a lot less numerous than the Boomers, and their war, the Korean, has largely been forgotten (although I've played a few Korean war wargames before it doesn't have the attention of Vietnam, WWII, or even Desert Storm.
I'm a GenX with Silent parents and I find little in common with GenX who have Boomer parents.
Sometimes I think differences arise not only based on one's generation, but also that of one's parents' generation.
Maybe a Venn diagram could illustrate this?
Race is also a generational chasm. Although Boomers and Milennials both hold PC attitudes on race, the worlds in which the two groups grew up are enormously different, racially.
Boomers grew up in an 85%-white America. You still had open racialists in Congress and in many governors' mansions when Boomers were kids. Milennials know such a world only through history books, movies, or school diversity training sessions (wherein the white-racialists are roundly villified). A large share of Milennials have gone through their formative years in schools with large shares of nonwhites, and all public-school white-Milennials have been trained to idolize nonwhites, with few or no dissenting voices at all.
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