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Journal Liora's Journal: I'm all right, OK 38

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I was reading the frontpage article about Generation X. I am proud to say that I am not a member of Generation X. Yes, I am a child of a baby-boomer, but I was born in 1979.

I once read something that a friend of mine wrote regarding generation titles. I think that there is just a fundamental difference between people of the one generation and the people of the next. It has to do with thought processes and ability to accept things they cannot explain. So here is my fine analysis:

Generation X: Rough Definition. These people are people born roughly between 1965 and 1978. They want to know why everything works, or if they don't (mostly because they don't have an inquisitive mind), they don't know how to program their VCR because they never learn how to use things that they don't understand. If they are Christians, it is probably not because their parents raised them in the faith so much as it is because they have had direct revelation of God, and have rationalized the heck out of it. Or if they are Christians just due to parental influence, they are a Christian-on-Easter and Christmas, and maybe on Sundays kind of phenomenon. They are eager to learn, highly cynical, and doubt everything that is not proved to them.

Generation Y: I fit in here. I know how to use things. I know how some things work. I am really not interested in how most things work. I don't have to understand everything, I don't have to know everything, and all of this stems from the knowledge that by the time I was born, there was already more stuff out there than I could possibly learn in one lifetime, and I don't want to bother myself with learning anything I don't decide is really worth learning. I am a Christian. I can't prove God to you. Or to myself, nor do I have to. All of my ducks need not line up in a row, and it doesn't bother me one bit. We Y's are able to split our thoughts, hold opposing views, information and opinions can be unreconcilable with other opinions... that's the way it's been our whole lives. Most of us are that way.

I don't know if I made any sense, but this is what I think. I think it's a fundamental difference in thought-patterns, ability to leave notions unresolved (you Xers out there will probably say that isn't a good trait though :P it's a flaw).

Those numbers are not hard held either, as far as when people are what.... Someone wrote that if you were in grades 7 through college when Cobain died, and you know who he was, and how he died, that you were a Generation Xer. I almost agree with that. That would push the boundaries around a little, but then I count as an X. And I know people younger than me that count as Xes by that standard. But then, I know people older than me by a year or two, that taught me it was all right to rebel from the upper-classmen's need to define their thoughts so rigidly, so I suppose someone has to be the innovator.

Unapologetic Stereotypes: I have been reading people's comments to this, and I am noting one thing in particular... I didn't mention enough about Generation X. I am going to remain unapologetic about stereotyping people here because this is one of the major generational differneces. Generation Xers hate stereotypes. They want to be their own person, they want to be defined as differently from all of the rest, they don't want to be lumped into a single category. There is a reason for this feeling. They saw their parents as so many cattle being herded. They don't want to be that. They also want to be conscientious of everyone. Hence they hate generalizing everyone.

Well... the generation Y response to this is "well, duh, everyone knows that everyone's different." We also know that most people know that by now (we grew up with it being a fact... thanks to you guys, we really ought to be grateful), and given that that is a fact, we aren't going to give up the stereotype, because it does one thing very efficiently, and that is categorize large groups of people into broad trends.

If you are a Gen Xer, and you are immediately thinking about all of the exceptions to these generalizations and are thus forming logical arguments based upon these exceptions to refute this loose generalization, you are proving yourself just that: a Gen Xer. They are just that, broad generalizations! I even state above that I know of exceptions to these norms.

Thanks to the Xers: We Y's think you X's are very cool. You rebelled against the standards put forth by your parents, in big ways by dressing differently, in little ways by refusing to think about stereotypes, and you guys grew up at a very cool time. You got to see Star Wars in the theaters and like it the first time you saw it. I got to see it at a slumber party when someone's older sibling insisted that I watch it when they couldn't believe that I hadn't seen it. I didn't like it, because at the time I wasn't interested in it. I wanted to do other girlie things during that timespan. You guys got to watch the technology roll out, and got to play with the next new thing. The next new things were coming out so rapidly when I was a kid, I would be caught up for a week and then behind again.

More importantly, you guys set the scene for all of the things that we take for granted today. Yes, we take them for granted. We take for granted that everyone is different. We take for granted that new things will always come out. We take for granted that people with authority shouldn't abuse it, but we don't have to go to the extent of avoiding titles and awards in order to keep everyone sitting at the round table.

A Recap: These are broad generalizations. If you are an Xer, you will likely object, because Xers don't like broad generalizations. That's ok, in fact, that's great, because if it wasn't for your tendency for that, we couldn't take your social strides for granted. And if you still don't like it, congratulate yourself.

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I'm all right, OK

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  • 1975-1978 are the cusp.

    They share traits with both Gen-X'ers and Gen-Y'ers.

    I can assure you this, because by most definitions, I'm a Gen-X'er, and my wife's a Gen-Y'er, yet are interests and habits are alike... The fact is, we're both 'inbetweens'
    • I guess I am an 'inbetweener' too. I'm mostly a Gen X, though. I do have to know how everything works, and it's ironic that I read this today, as on the way to work I was pondering how matter exists. :-) I do have some Gen Y attributes, but these have mostly developed later in life. I'm OK now with having beliefs that I can't totally explain, whereas that previously drove me nuts. I guess the thing that really makes me realize I'm X is that constant need to be rebellios, and the fact that I do everything in my power to be different.
  • i was born in 1975, so people most often associate me with gen x.

    i can name countess examples and counter-examples of both of your summations. gen y is not a better, more thoughtful version of x. be careful not to be too quick to judge people who lived through different situations than you have. hindsight is always different than looking ahead. in regard to those before you, they only could look ahead. nowthey have both, while you only have hindsight. it makes it too easy to judge.

    i know plenty of people well inside the boundaries of gen x and within gen y who don't even care that they don't know how anything works. i know more in both ranges who want to know about everything. some people in both ranges don't have a work ethic at all, others know what it means to try and succeed. there are differences. but i think you have over-generalized.

    it is typical of youth to see itself as knowing better than those who came before them. sometimes it is with reason. often it is not.

    none of this is meant as a personal attack on you. i respect your ideas. i think i probably took it a little too personally your summation of people my age as opposed to how your age group has it figured out. i can't seem to stop myself from speaking up when i feel that way. and i'm really not that much older than you anyway.
    • Typical gen-Xer. ;)

      Seriously, though- the line between the two seems a little fuzzy. It seems like the difference between discovering new things and growing up in the midst of said "new" things. Personally, I fall clearly on the Generation-Y side and my sisters are both pure Generation-X people, which is kind of weird, I guess. (They are 9 and 13 years older than me.)
      • ok, i'm typical. thank for the levity ;) usually gen xers hate being grouped together in any way.

        the thing that got me was the assumption that people who believe in God rationalize it. i have no idea where that idea comes from. i have noticed that some groups are more likely to believe in God, but the specific beliefs and reasonings behind believing (or disbelieving) vary widely. but you didn't say that. and i'm over it that liora did.

        we did grow up with different tech. but i know plenty of people in the y category that don't have the first clue about anything related to technology or how to use it effectively. they just want the convenience of it now. of course, i know people of all ages like that. also note that interest in technology does not indicate how inquisitively minded a person is. some people are just inquisitive about other things than vcrs.
    • Hey, I edited this thing to address your (and other people's) qualms. You should read what I wrote.
      • thanks for broadening your perspective.

        i would like to know what it means that xers " have rationalized the heck" out of beliefs in a deity. i feel justified in my beliefs, but i only feel it needs to be justified to me. justification as in understanding why i believe what i do, not justification as in rationalization.

        you were on about wanting to know how and why. at least with me.

        i think everyone should be ok with not having their ducks in a row. not always true though. there are extremes both ways. i don't think people should be ok with letting the same ducks stay out of the row indefinately.

        you were also right on about hating generalizations. but finding connections between things is good.
        • Let me guess... You were born in 1977, right?

          Really, I don't really know what Xers do with regards to rationalizing their beliefs in God. I'm not one of them. But it seems to me that every Xer either believes and has a list of reasons why, or they don't, and have a list of reasons why. I believe, but sometimes I dont' know why, and never are my reasons logical arguments, they are more like theoretical side-notes.

          Yeah. You're right. Sometimes the ducks have to line up in a few places. Read what Nyarly and my response in this JE about Y's being unable to resolve issues sometimes. It's just another extreme.
          • had to change the subject line because i don't think you sound that way anymore.

            it was 14 april 1975 when i was born.

            to me rationalization means an excuse that may or may not be well reasoned. rationalization is like a cop-out sophistry that sounds just enough like logic that you don't have to question it. i have reasons for believing in God, but i also know that it is my nature. i know i cannot choose whether i believe. but i have challenged whether and what i believe. my reasons have survived those challenges, so to me it strengthens them.

            so in the sense that you meant (of having reasons), i'd say yes, you probably have it. it's akin to wanting to know why things work. thanks for the discussion topic here. it's been cool.

  • X or Y? (Score:2)

    by glh ( 14273 )
    I was born in 76, but I'm really not sure if I'm an X'er or Y'er. I think it is hard to categorize people as belonging to either/or because no one is going to fit all the stereotypes perfectly. Based on Lioras description, I think I fit more into the Y category and actually I would say most of those things are also what I hold to.

    However I do remember Curt Cobain and how he died, but I'm not sure how that makes someone a GenX'r? I didn't particularly care for Nirvana, and I downright hated MTV mostly because of the anti-Christian values (or lack of values) the station tried to promote.

    This generation thing is pretty interesting to me. I read the comments of the story before I read the article, and everyone seemed really ticked off. Then I read the article and I didn't think the person was out to trash GenX'rs near as much as the slashdot collective thought. I guess I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt before branding them scumbags :)

    By the way, nice to hear from you again Liora! Where have you been lately?
    • I would say that you're an Xer by date, because I think it best goes from 1965-1978. But then, I would ask you, where do you think you fit in? I edited the JE, so you should read what I added, but based on what I know about you, you are actually more a Y than an X.

      I've been busy working lately, but I've been here... I came back today b/c I knew I had mod points I was gonna lose, but then the Generation article caught my eye too, and now I'm stuck here when I should be working... hmmm... must close browser...
      • I would say that you're an Xer by date, because I think it best goes from 1965-1978. But then, I would ask you, where do you think you fit in? I edited the JE, so you should read what I added, but based on what I know about you, you are actually more a Y than an X.

        Unfortunately, I never got to see Star Wars in the theater. The first movie I remember seeing in the theater was Back to the Future, but there were probably others before that (I just don't remember them).

        Generation Xers hate stereotypes. They want to be their own person, they want to be defined as differently from all of the rest, they don't want to be lumped into a single category. There is a reason for this feeling. They saw their parents as so many cattle being herded. They don't want to be that. They also want to be conscientious of everyone. Hence they hate generalizing everyone.


        My dad always stood up for what he believed in and had common sense. My mom was more the nurting one, give lots of hugs, etc. I see those as good things (tm). And they're still together! I guess that is not the norm today. I don't think there is anything wrong with stereotyping, without it, it would be very difficult to make assumptions. Of course, most people don't like to be labled so I don't go around telling people that. I'm proud to be a middle-class white + fundamental Christian + computer geek + musician.

        It sounds like what you are saying in the "amended" JE is that GenX-rs are into post modern thinking. Basically the "Whatever works for you is what works for you, and what works for me is what works for me" mindset. In other words, nothing is wrong and there are no absolutes. I personally think this is a bunch of hooey, but a lot of that is due to my religious beliefs.

        I guess I think I'm a Y more than an X, but I'll probably never know for sure.. :) It'd be cool if someone could set up a questionarre online, you fill it out, and then it tells you.

        By the way, I was wondering where you get all your insight :) Are you taking a sociology/anthropology class right now? This seems like it would be something fun to study. Certainly more fun than my supply chain management class. Speaking of which, I have two midterms next week and I have to start studying.
      • If you're working in IT for a few years, you're probably a geek. And chances are that you might fall into generation X from age, but behaving like a Y by your job and personality. IMHO of course :)

        I'm from 74 and I like to touch things, understand how stuff works, and I'm obsessed by mechanics/electronics. On the other hand, I'm not that good at socializing with people, though I feel homely with my wife (non-geek) and my fellow geek friends. What does this make me ?

        Nice write-up anyway, I enjoyed reading it.

        • Well... I would say you're an introvert, but that doesn't really have to do with when you were born. And I would say that you're probably just somewhere in the transition between the two as far as where you fall based upon the vague cultural stereotypes I am referring to.

          Thanks. I didn't even really mean to write this... I meant to write something else, but this came out. And I'm not convinced it is actually all that good, but wouldn't it be cool to actually get to study this stuff?!?
  • That's probably the most solid personality-based-on- theory I've read in a while. Of course I'm going to insist on being able to pick and choose, since I'm squarely in the born 65-78 of Baby Boomers must understand it knew who Colbain was and how he died camp, but the implication that Xers can't see both sides, or hold conflicting viewpoints rankles rather.

    And it meshes with my opinion of a variety of people. Of my chronological peers who willfully won't understand things, and of my younger sister (and the various circles I've refered to as "The Kids") who don't care to. I'd also go so far as to point out that I've observed in Y-ers not only an ability to leave an issue unresolved, but a genuine difficulty resolving issues.

    So, while Xers are content to achieve understanding (and completion becomes merely a chore), Yers are more likely to fuss over the details without arriving at a battle plan.

    I am amused at my Y-gen friends attempts to be morbid. In high school, my friends and I, in order to claim the right to ride in the front passenger seat, would call "Cobain."

    • you were in high school when cobain was dead? ;)
      • Your point is?
        • sorry, it was pointing out you can't be that far inside the gen x range. though i'm not either. no point really, thus the smiley.
          • What I meant to point out is that "in HS when Cobain was dead" still applies. I mean, he's still dead right?

            Right?

            • it all started because i made what i thought was a silly joke. but it turned out to be neither because it wasn't funny and it spawned a long chain of responses. it was supposed to be akin to a "hey you punks get off my lawn!" or "in my day we didn't have any..." sort of joke.

              curt cobain was still alive when i was in high school. he didn't die until after i had entered college. i phrased it backwards. i should have said, "cobain was already dead when you were in high school?" being in high school in april of 1994 means you were probably born in 1976 or later.
    • You know, I would agree with you on that... Y's are more likely to be unable to resolve things. But part of that is just a general apathy. We don't have a lot of reason to bother. Sure, we could make up our minds and pick and choose and weigh, but you know what, we'll have to do it all over again next week when someone comes out with "new evidence." I think I speak for a lot of us that we won't bother unless it's important, because otherwise we're setting ourselves up for a lot of wasted time analyizing now and reanalyzing next week.

      Oh, I edited it... I want to know what you think of my addendum.

      We didn't bother calling "Cobain." Plain old "Shotgun" was good enougn for us.
      • Sure, we could make up our minds and pick and choose and weigh, but you know what, we'll have to do it all over again next week when someone comes out with "new evidence."

        See, an Xer will have a logical construction that leads to the conclusion. To sway the conclusion, new evidence needs to damage that construction. Much easier that way. But, unlike the wholesale acceptance of existant Conventional Wisdom, Xers are compelled to examine it all for themselves - to understand how it works.

        I liked your amendments. I was especially amused, however, by clothing being a large change, and a refusal to accept stereotyping and a small one. Please tell me you inadvertantly reversed those, yes? We didn't bother calling "Cobain." Plain old "Shotgun" was good enough for us.

        But, see, that was the delicious sophmoric irony. Where's the fun in a pop icon cramming a twelve gauge in his mouth and repainting the walls if you can't reduce the tragic shock to variant on a moronic game? How could "Shotgun" ever be good enough?

        • won't bother unless it's important, because otherwise we're setting ourselves up for a lot of wasted time analyizing now and reanalyzing next week.


        All knowledge is important.

        (knowledge, not trivia. :-P Just cuz I know somebody is going to try that. And no, I don't care if you think every other field of science is trivia, it is not, Science isn't trivia or trivial)
  • Really? Geez. The only differences I've seen between generations is superfluous things like "I like X and I don't understand new technology Y".

    I can't disagree enough with the "Gen Y think like this, Gen X think like this" outlook. It's some wierd sort of generational-social darwinism. Of course every generation sees itself different than all others. The Communists in the 1910's saw themselves as uniquely as the Romanticis in the 1800's. But what has history shown us? Same wars, same crimes, same famines. Same shit over and over again. Life has proven that a single hyperplane can't be dropped to deterministically divide people into bins.

    People in Generation Y are just as normally distributed as Generation X and the Boomers. Saying Generation Y is more media saavy is just the same as saying that my Great Grandparents generation were better horseriders. People live in the world they live in. But the same shit is immutable about them.
  • To me, Generation X will always be a Billy Idol and Tony James' band. But that aside, I'm not sure how realistic it is to generalise and say that people born in certain years will have given personality traits. Yes, there's a certain amount of environmental and peer pressure influence, and that will definitely change over time, thus people born around the same time may have some similar traits. But to give it more weight than that... to me that's about as credible as astrology.

    But that said, I do have many of the Generation X characteristics you describe. I do want to know how things work, I am cynical, and I do question everything. I can't understand anyone that doesn't. But then those are just characteristics of my INTJ [ibiblio.org] personality, and I haven't seen any evidence that the incidence of INTJs in my generation is higher than the 1% or so of people born in any other year. To put it another way, I fail to relate with people of my own generation just as much as I fail to relate to anyone else :-)

    FWIW, I was born in 1970. Oh, and yes, I know who Cobain was and how he died, but I don't particularly care. He made one decent record, a pile of mediocre ones, and I don't understand why people think he was such a genius.

  • So you're a late Xer, while I (1982) am an early Y'er. I think that '78-'83 were cusp years.

    Religiously, I'm a vague Christian. I accept that there is no rational explanation for any theology, but this does not bother me, because there is not even a rational explanation for rationality.

    I say vague Christian, because I don't accept a fair amount of the mythos of post-Pauline Christianity (ie: physical resurrection, divinity prior to resurrection/ascension, etc.). In my view, the Bible is not the Word of God and inerrant. It's the writings of how people experienced God. However, words (and even human thought) cannot adequately describe such experiences. To attach such importance to accounts of how one experiences God that theyare to be taken as absolute truth is to place the cart before the horse, in my opinion.

    This does not mean that Scripture and Gospel are worthless. To me, one must read Scripture, discard elements that are not part of the experience of God, focus on the actual author of the piece, and try to apply what can be seen about the underlying experience to modern times.

    I also believe that Jesus' message was fundamentally an inclusive one. Hence insight into the true nature of God can be found in many places: in rabbinical analyses of the Torah, in the Koran, in Buddha, in paganism, even in science (yes, even Darwin provides insight into God). Atheists can (and do) experience the divine... they just do not see it.

  • Generation X is the one after the Baby Boomers, if I recall correctly, then came the Baby Bust generation, and the Baby Echo Generation. All this talk of Generation X is usually refers the people who are actually in the latter 2 generations.

    These generations are actually categorized into birth populations, and not cultural groups.

    I can see the value in generalizing, because it really does help us in our decision making process, but I think that you over generalized in 2 areas.

    1st, just about every generation [if not all of them] has things, where they don't care for more details. Most people would just rather have things work instead of reading HowTos and man pages.

    2nd, almost all people live with "contradictions" in their lives, and they also try to resolve them. I could tell you that you that 1+1=4, and you'll probably protest, telling why you are right, or tell me that you don't care, or agree or whatever. However, the fact that you would react, as opposed to just believing both 2 & 4 are correct sums, shows that you can't have a such a contradiction.

    The truth of the matter is, that people just don't spend enough time with the details of life, and don't try enough to pursue wisdom. That's about the only consistent thing that can be said about all people.

    I realize that you were just generalizing, but it was too broad, so that meaningful data couldn't be extracted from it.
    • Actually, these generations are categorized as birth populations studied within a particular cultural group (after all... none of these terms are particularly relevent in, say, Cambodia).

      I am asserting that birth population studies within the generalized mostly WASP population of the United States will yield these or similar cultural trends.

      One thing I think is funny is that you are an Xer who is protesting the stereotypes I put forth because they're too broad. It's almost as if you have resigned yourself to the use of generalizations, as long as the sample is specific enough. Specific Generalizations! Maybe you'd be happier if I made claims based upon a sample size of one :P Then I could be as general as I wanted without violating any sense you have of limits to broad generalizations.

      Yes, that's meant to be funny. I guess my point is that no meaningful data is meant to be extracted from my journal. I wrote a piece about my observances, and you said that my conclusions were too broad. Well, I suppose that I could limit my sample to white-middle-class suburbian kids, and that's about what it is (with some variation in sample coming from city kids and country kids, and I've never actually lived in a suburb anyway, but the average person would group most of my sample into that category), but what's the point? No decision process is supposed to be made upon these comments. I have just noticed some broad population trends based upon not only the people I know, but the people I hear about, and the people I read about, and the people that must populate the States given a number of other observances, but no one is supposed to take these thoughts and make commercial marketing material from it or do anything else with it, other than read it and see if it is true for them and people they know and then get back to me, if they feel like it.

      As far as generational titles, Generation X is the general concensus for the label applied to children of Baby Boomers born between the loose years of 1965 and 1978, and almost no one talks about Baby Bust or Baby Echo anymore. Since we are talking about broad generalizations and categorization, I think that going with the general concensus is probably appropriate.
  • I am "generation y" (what, the name was finaly decided upon? Simple itnerate), and;

    • I want to know why everything works.
    • I want everything explained for me
    • I hate taking ANYTHING for granted;
    • We ARE all the same, it is just that those who have done further studies of self know more about themselves and do not tend to act as shallow as those who just accept everything
    • X-stian? What X-Stians? I know ONE non-immigrant American around my age who is heavily religious, and even then He is on the more liberal side of His religion.
    • If I did not want to keep up with everything new that was coming out, what the holy fuck would I be doing on the Internet?
    • I want to know it all. Period. I hope to have at least 3 PhDs to my name before I die, hopefully 5 or 7.
    • Those who do not want to know it all should be round up and shot. In this modern world there is no place for those who are content without reason. Only knowledge shall set us free from the pain that humanity has immersed itself within.

    Do remember this is coming from a guy who used to read at least 4 or 5 books week throughout middle and most of high school, (then I started on Tech sites like /. and Ars-Technica, much cheaper, and more up to date. ^_^ Old 70's and even 60's science books got a little bit tiring to keep on having to remind myself or corrections to, heh)
    • Com, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you are not exactly typical of your generation. The other people your age that you complain about incessantly as far as generalities go, do indeed fit this stereotype.

      Mayhaps you don't realize you're sitting at one of the extreme ends of your run of the mill standard normal distribution?
      • Likely why I never get along with my own generation but mesh quite well with the older generations. This current generation is still to immature, give it another 30 or 40 years. ^_^ Though by then it will have been to late to have listened to their elders, heh, but at least they will (hopefully!) have learned that that is what they should have done.
  • You got to see Star Wars in the theaters and like it the first time you saw it.

    Yep, this is one of the enduring memories of my childhood. There had been a huge buzz about the film, but for various reasons, my parents hadn't caught on, and thus I didn't get to see it until several weeks after release. But even then, the queue for the cinema still stretched around 3 sides of the block (of the now sadly demolished Gaumont Theatre in Finchley Central). It was in the days before prebooking of tickets, so queues were normal. But even accounting for that, it was the longest queue for a film I'd ever seen, or have seen since. And the film itself just completely astounded me, in a way that I doubt happens to young kids these days (and yes, I know just how much I'm heading for "back in the good old days" territory here -- my pipe and slippers await :-)

    You guys got to watch the technology roll out, and got to play with the next new thing.

    And I wouldn't swap it for anything. In many ways I feel incredibly privileged to have been born when I was. I got to see the start of the microprocessor revolution, from pretty much the beginning, and yet sufficiently late that I didn't miss out on the newer fun stuff. I grew up at a time when machines were simple enough that it was possible to know *everything* about them. Modern computers are just too complex for that. And that gives me (and others of my generation) a great advantage over those of younger generations. Even if I no longer have to write assembly language, the fact that I grew up doing so means I'm a much better coder in today's high level languages. Similarly, I can easily debug networking problems and the like by decomposing them down to the level of individual bytes flowing over the wire, a skill which seems to be very rare these days. I wonder, though, whether other generations think the same -- does everyone feel they were born at an optimal time, or do people wish they were born earlier/later?

    • Well... I can't speak for the rest of us, but I wish I'd been born later. I was born at the start of Y. I really like Y. So I wish I had been born further into Y. But that's just me, and I'm an odd duck.

      There is not a time I can remember when my parents didn't have a VCR... Beta AND VHS for a while there. I've pretty much been able to use one my whole life. We got our first PC when I was 7, a Commodore 64. I sort of wish I'd been born later so that I could say that I couldn't remember us not having a computer. It'd be way cool to say I've known how to use a computer my whole life... but that's not true. My dad taught me to play Chessmaster right away, but I still had to be taught.
      • Bleh. This BS journal entry is the lamest troll I've ever seen. Were you just trying to see if there was anyone on slashdot older than yourself? I can't believe people are actually replying to this. Actually, as phreakin' retarded as you made generation X sound, I fit that description pretty closely. And I was born in 1982. I'd never heard of Cobain until way after his death, but that probably has mostly to do with how totally oblivious I am to pop culture. Anywho~ to address the question of whether I feel I was born at the optimal time or not... If I actually got to *choose* when to be born, I would still not be born yet. Further into the future==better (or at least that's my current thinking for if I got to choose when to be born). Oh, and regarding whether people are different/unique or whatever: I sometimes think of people like snowflakes: no two are identical, but they're all so ludicrously similar. Sure, the snowflakes of one snowfall (generation) may tend to be larger or a little more fluffy than the next blizzard that comes along, but in the end I think I'm rambling, so nevermind. Cheers! /~pegli P.S. I would never attempt to program a VCR unless you were paying me to do Quality Assurance testing on the thing, in which case I would press all the buttons, cause a crash, and file a bug report telling you to simplify the interface. :-D
        • Golly Pegli, those're some fighting words!

          I think what you missed was that within any population there are still variations....and I know you better than most so I would say that the things you are saying makes you an X are actually your personality, not just some generational junk.

          Also, your snowflake example just epitomizes my point. Think about it. You just stated what I said was a trend of your generation, in a much prettier form. I like the pretty form though, so consider it stolen. :P

          In all reality, I would have to say that the sample of people you have been exposed to is so homogenous that any generalizations you in particular would happen to make would be just about right on.

          Oh, another thing... some people are interested in social psychology, myself included. So you're not. Big deal. Try not to be a lame troll in response though. I already knew the general characteristics of my readers prior to posting this (including their ages, yo!), and I knew that a lot of them would be interested in social psychology. So you're not. Be quiet.

          I love you anyway though. :P
  • Well now, (adjusts throw rug on lap, moves rocking chair towards the fireplace), as somebody who's given this some little thought and as an undeniable Gen-Xer (born, yes, that's right, at the end of 1966 ) I'ld say you've done one of the best jobs I've seen anywhere of articulating some fundamental Gen-X/Gen-Y differences. Though I've got to say that Nyarly's statement of an Xer will have a logical construction that leads to the conclusion. To sway the conclusion, new evidence needs to damage that construction. Much easier that way. But, unlike the wholesale acceptance of existant Conventional Wisdom, Xers are compelled to examine it all for themselves - to understand how it works. is a superb variant statement (though I'm not clear on the "Much easier that way").
    As it happens I spent a tense couple of hours this weekend talking about my deep frustration with aspects of the horticultural community for what I perceive as their fundamental incompetence, which I described as being the equivalent of going to a doctor in the 1700's. In other words, yes, they had thousands of years of passed down "wisdom" and were pretty good at handling certain common problems, but then they mix it in with their brain-damaged behavior on things like mulching and planter design and their answers start looking an awful lot like "bleed the patient"-pseudo scientific claptrap.
    My point? Yes, they do just fine at typical cases at typical times for conventional sets of priorities, but if they don't ever go back to first principles and build responses based on fundamental review of the relevant physics and biology and human behavior, then I want no part of them. I'ld far rather do it myself from scratch then turn to what, to my admittedly unforgiving view, is a bunch of untrustworthy witch doctors.
    And you know what? For the kinds of things I'm doing (low-cost rooftop plantings, composting techniques of restaurant waste, making dresser drawers into planters, etc.) they *are* useless. In fact, they're worse then useless because they'll adamantly insist that they have an answer and then pull some bit of shallow thinking out and cloak it in jargon and additude.
    And maybe that's why we Gen-Xers are so adamant about deep analysis. Because for much of our lives we've been around radical change of a sort where going by the same old rules of thumb could easily get you in deep trouble. At the same time, for us, much of this stuff was so new that we could viably futz with it by hand and deal with the problem at the core level.
    Look some time at the circuit board of an Apple II and check out what those chips actually do. Half of those chips had fewer GATES, let alone "logical circuits" then there are playoff-capable teams in the NBA. For us, if we had a problem with a computer, we could sometimes literally look at the board and figure out, in an hour or so, the exact circuit, down to the individual ANDs and NOTs. TTY folks. TTY.
    So that was our world when we were at an age to be choosing a paradigm. Trying to get by "as we always have" was a seriously bad idea. What we would think of as staying in the buggy whip business while cars are becoming common. Meanwhile, examining a problem down to root causes from cars to computers to choosing a typeface to political "sides" was much easier then it is now. Count the number of parts in a '73 Chevy. Do the same in an '89 Toyota. How much more complexity do you see? How much harder does it get to understand everything?
    It annoyed me no end last year when a woman I was dating said that she wanted to know "all about computers" for her work but wouldn't spend the time getting her head comfortably around hex. To me the importance is obvious. Why is a MB not exactly one million of *anything*? Why do IP numbers only go up to groups of 255? All obvious, all crucial. But the truth is, when I was learning this stuff, we used it all the time. Want to know a given PEEK or POKE? You'ld better know how to express that in hex. Using a scientific calculator? Better know hex.
    For her it was obscure, of no real use, and very distant from any part (HTML colors notwithstanding) of using a computer that would ever matter to somebody using MS Word.
    And yes, it does annoy us that, in some ways, "these kids" don't seem willing to make the effort to truly understand much of anything. While I can see that we got in when the game was easy (there is no equivalent of ResEDIT as we used to have it or listening to your modem to figure out how it was working) in some ways your generation has had it much easier in terms of access to learning.
    When I was in high school there was the Westinghouse (now Intel) competition, a little local thing run by the electrical company, and that was It in terms of chances to do cognitive stuff outside of the classroom. (there actually were a few others but you get the idea). There were no Invention Connections or Lego Mindstorms or Brain Olympics or anything of the kind. Either you did this sort of thing (in which case you were "creative" and that was something of a dirty word) or you didn't. End of discussion. The very idea of schools creating entire systems to teach children how to think, let alone be creative, was considered absurd. Something for rich flaky Californians whose children did finger painting and poetry and would never be able to hold down a real job.
    The other side of this is that I don't think most twenty-somethings have any *idea* how far ahead of our cohort you are in terms of your sophistication about sexuality and racial tolerance and a genuine agreement that somebody's job choice or living arrangements shouldn't be decided by gender or race or sexuality. When I was a kid a multi-racial couple (ouside of Greenwich Village or equiv.) was such a rarity that seeing one on the street was a topic of conversation for hours, even days. The same goes for awareness of the breadth of cultures in the world. As late as the early eighties more people then you would probably believe truly thought that canniblism was widespread among African cultures. Far more people were made truly nervous by any food much beyond meatloaf and hamburgers. Being vegetarian was widely considered laughable.
    And maybe that's just as big a difference. It drives me to distraction when somebody in their early twenties makes some statement on a crucial topic, maybe even about their own choices, that shows a cavalier sense of "well, whatever; I'm sure it will work out somehow" but I almost never hear somebody of that age laugh at something or somebody just because it's unfamiliar.
    To be a Gen-Xer of any intellectual rigor is to have been laughed at many times. It is almost as certainly to have laughed at others. "I'm right. That's stupid. Fuck off." We grew up in an environment where the nuclear freeze people looked to the pro-nuke people like childish panicky weaklings and the pro-nuke people looked to the anti-nuke people like thuggish brain-damaged maniacs. And almost nobody ever tried sincerly to see the other person's view or even concede that maybe they weren't in a position to judge. I get the impression that this sort of thing as decreased greatly. Very impressive. And yeah, we Gen-Xers do deserve no small amount of credit for that, as do the yuppies and the hippies. (By which I mean specifically those social groupings, NOT all Boomers.)
    By the way, have any of you out there ever *read* the original novel Generation X? Copeland deals very eloquently with just this fierce respect for and compulsion of reason and how essential a tool and undroppable a burden it has been for so many of us. Irony was not an approach reached lightly. It should be clear from my sig that I still stand by this.
    Anyway, I'ld better head off before I waste what's left of the day,
    Rustin

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