It’s a Generational Thing…

I have long been fascinated by generations and how they are defined.

Ever since I was young.

What exactly is a ‘generation’?,Who declares them?, and how are they defined?, I constantly wondered. What made one generation different from another?

Turns out, we do. Sorta.

Us, along with natural and societal events.

Wikipedia describes a generation as, “all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively.”

Ok. I’ll go with that.

Wikipedia goes on to say:

Generation is also often used synonymously with cohort in social science; under this formulation it means “people within a delineated population who experience the same significant events within a given period of time”.^[1] Generations in this sense of birth cohort, also known as “social generations”, are widely used in popular culture, and have been the basis for sociological analysis. Serious analysis of generations began in the nineteenth century, emerging from an increasing awareness of the possibility of permanent social change and the idea of youthful rebellion against the established social order. Some analysts believe that a generation is one of the fundamental social categories in a society, while others view its importance as being overshadowed by other factors including class, gender, race, and education, among others.

via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation

Growing up I even thought generations were a constant thing, not a variable. For instance, I assumed the Baby Boomer generation was always old and my generation forever young, even though I didn’t really comprehend what a generation was. I just thought old people were…old, and young people were…young.

As I’ve gotten older (scratch that), aged (mmm…no), gained more experience (let’s go with that), on this planet, I’ve learned that the older generations and most adults, don’t know shit.

Adults are just the once-youth generation that has now gained more experience, and since the older generations before them are now dead and or dying off, they assume the position of elderstates-persons.

Generations are a construct that we create and assign properties or attributes to like data members to a class-type and whose behavior is defined by things they do. (Note to self: create a generational program–like a program where you enter traits and it spits back what generation you are, OR a generational game, using data members and member functions).

When I was really young, before fully grasping the concept, I thought the Silent Generation, (the pre-baby-boomer generation) and the Greatest Generation (the G.I. or WW2 generation) were old people, meaning that when I became old I would become part of those generations, naturally. When I learned that these generations were once young also…well…< insert mind blown emoji here>.

Timeline of major demographic cohorts since the late-nineteenth century with approximate dates and ages

Lost Generation Greatest Generation Silent Generation Baby boomers Generation X Millennials Generation Z Generation Alpha

I do feel like since the baby boom generation, society has become ‘younger’. How to explain what I mean by this? Since the baby-boomer generation came along there has been a societal focus on staying young and being forever young. (60 is the new 50, 40 is the new 30, right?) This was the generation that gave us Woodstock and the hippie sixties, and glamorous seventies. They were followed by Gens X, Y and Z. Gen X pushed even further into this forever young concept.

As generations age there’s this focus on being mentally and physically young. Not merely tapping into what the current younger generation is doing but in keeping tapped into what that “self-generation” did when they were young.

There’s no doubt about, and indeed much amusement from the fact that every young generation thinks they were the premiere generation, the first ones to do things. The first to pioneer things as if it hadn’t existed all along. The first to discover music (sorry, but classics still give currents a run for their money), and the first to discover manufactured music (nope…but sorry again…Boy-bands have in fact existed before One Direction & BTS, just like they did before New Edition, Backstreet Boys & N’Sync), the first to discover drugs & alcohol, the first to discover sex (which when further thought about is an impossibility).

And then theres the generational upstaging of and pushback against one another. Every younger generation fervently believes that they are the main event. Every older generation thinks they know better than the younger generation, and carries on about how they have no hope for the future, blah, blah, blah. Same things that were said about Millienials before that, and Gen X before them. Almost as if its’a right of passage to look out on the younger generation and act like your generation was so much better at that age.

The circle of life.

Featured Image: Wikipedia By Cmglee – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91612069