:: blame the extended gestation.... ::

:: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 ::

Generation X: So very...Blank, and still undefined.
by Jim Nichols

To try to place magic words of description on a generation seems at first shallow and of little intellectual virtue, merely a vapid exercise in self-gratification or else a blame game of petty patriarchal names, hypocritical false statements, and historical misnomers. The name, the description, the cultural label given to a generation--upon closer examination--is always full of contradictions. Ironically enough as I began to try to codify my generation, Generation X born between 1964-1981(Washburn 54), within a single description, I realized that by semantic fluke it is the only generation to stay true to its description. Not only does it retain its labels of apathetic, slacker, and undefined, but it is the first generation entirely born into an economic Superpower.

These two truths at first seem disconnected and of little consequence, but the connection is glaring and of much importance if one is to understand my generation. Generation X was the first solely manufactured generation of the century, slacker and apathetic were not self-anointed descriptions of a chosen path, but an afterthought, a symbolic way of saying and showing that there was never a path created--economically restrained, by the choices and paths earlier generations made or couldn't help but make; politically repressed, due to its lack of size; institutionally controlled, by a major shift in the political views of the country--a generation lacking the power and self-motivation that other generations were allocated and entitled to, it callously had no other choice but to fall into the description it had been given: X, undefined.


The century began with a bang, 3 successive generations, with romantic titles and romantic expectations. After the Spanish-American War the country grew from a small-time-nobody to another player on the world's stage. Both the Industrial Revolution and the Europe's asinine tendency to kill one another created for the G.I. Generation born from 1902-1925, the Silent Generation from 1926-1945, and the Baby Boomers from 1945-1964 (Washburn 54), a vacuum in which U.S. geopolitical self-interest could take the driver seat after World War II. Back home this had made for an economy that saw great expansion and growth, and a perception that with hard work (the giant government intervention in the economy is always left out of the equation) one could achieve success and prosperity.


With the superpower stalemate of the Cold War, the rebuilding of the industrial centers of (West) Germany and Japan, and the expansion and growth of infrastructure within the country itself complete, the country no longer had realpolitik as a stimulating force in its leniency towards the la-di-da of egalitarianism and idealism. The dismantling of the Bretton Woods system of financial regulation in the early 70's created an international environment that put an end to the concept of the Welfare State as politically viable--business was finally allowed to run free. Profits over people became the new mantra, the business world was able to more efficiently look internationally while humans were forced to make do within their own country. This is what Generation X was born into, a major shift in the global economy and political infrastructure. Where earlier generations had expansion and dominance on their collective minds, Generation X found themselves constrained conceptionally and politically to the Nation-State while the world moved towards a Multi-National Corporate hegemony.


These new economic changes meant, as Abby Ellin wrote in her article "Generation X, Still Undecided", that "it...[has] become clear that we [will] not follow in our parents' footsteps--no 35-year job, no four-bedroom house in the suburbs before the age of 30." Where other generations had expansion or social change to defuse the energy of the young, Generation X came of age lacking such traditional paths. The right of passage had been blocked by international stability and rounded off in the cul-de-sacs of suburbia. But these new realities did not only affect our own perceptions of the world, all generations were effected. A new ideology of "me" became the rule, with a conservative movement leading the way to vilify and cut back on social spending which was not privately profitable to investors short term (all the while increasing spending within the pentagon/high-tech sectors of the economy). As the infrastructure became more and more underfunded (cuts in spending for schools, health care, day care) the true cost of these "savings" became more apparent, in "all those abstract problems like youth crime and teenage pregnancy" (Lynch "Taking Stock").


When I asked one Gen X'er what a word like Generation X meant, she told me she didn't feel "a part of any name." Many in Generation X feel estranged from any idea of a group in which they are bound together by some commonality. But when asked what words like Trickle Down Economics, Reagan, and Nicaragua said to her, without pause she sighed, "the 80's. They screwed their own children over... kinda funny when you think about it." This is the sardonic wisdom, exposed by my generation, at its best. This disdain and distrust of what society wants of them, in such a broad and general fashion, would be shocking in a pre-Vietnam, pre-Watergate era. In this generation it is merely one of the many hats being worn.


From this disdain and distrust another label has befallen on this generation, that they are apolitical. Once again you find a situation, quite common to Generation X, where external realities are brushed over and the actions are magnified. Instead of asking why there is a generation of people unwilling to take part in a process that has great effect over their lives, the conclusion is drawn that they don't care. A true calibration of Generation X's political views would more than likely find a group that feels that their voice can not be heard within the current process. Their small size creates a situation where the other, larger, generations concerns retain greater focus and have greater sway over what little influence the public sector now retains. The validity of the straight and narrow within the political realm may be destroyed but Generation X is also the generation that showed up in Seattle to shut down the WTO meetings. They have organized many other anti-corporate globalization demonstrations in the past few years since, as well. Political apathy apparently shows up as hard dedicated organizing these days.


Generation X found itself manufactured, a transition age where everything flipped. A society which moved from the modern to the postmodern, not the text but subtext; the liberal to the neoliberal, not the ideal but the bottom line. Hightech subsidy's became the internet and once again the public was privatized--except we were the generation in charge of that transition--our expectations and goals were channelled and opportunity was finally ours for the taking, or so we were told. As Generation Y is making its way into the real world the Business pages are reading the obituary for that great transformation of Dot-COMs, and Generation X is once again looking for new work, new places within which to entrust our expectations, channel our goals. The great diaspora that is Generation X, always being told not to worry, that the Promised Land is just around the corner, continues.


To be the 13th generation from the founding of our country is rather fitting. A generation that felt it had no place, got to be the testing ground for truly making this country a place where the minority of the opulent are protected from the majority, as one of our founding fathers had aspired (or was that conspired?) to create. We didn't even demand the handouts given to every generation before us, because as Orwell once noted "circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip" (Barsamian at al. 80). We were trained to not ask questions and not have expectations, manufactured to respond that we were apathetic and didn't know what we wanted to do. Even when the rough edges show up, the seedy underbelly of years of neglect, it was explained away as mere wandering. Generation X never really was any of those things specifically, it got labelled as a negation, undefined. But a negation can be anything, our disunity and lack of direction fit within that anything, but any other generation's could have done the same--in us it comes out as our validation in others their hypocrisy. It wasn't like Generation X asked for such purity(sic), in fact we've been a generation constantly at odds with being labelled.


Yes Generation X truly is, was, and will always be X. Undefined. But that's not saying anything about us, about who we are and what we dream. That's just another label for a generation that grew up with labels and is a little embarrassed to keep telling people that broad generalizations will not fit--if only because we won't allow it to happen. I asked a friend, a fellow early twenty something in college(a late Gen X'er), to sum up the Generation. "Maybe Richard Hell and the Voidoids's 'Blank Generation' might apply. That's not to say blank as in nothing, but blank as in fill in the blank line." In the end it probably doesn't matter how we define our own generation, I've been told we tend to whine about everything anyway. If that is true, I can't help but think that if we hadn't been given so much to whine about, quite possibly, we wouldn't.


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Barsamian, David, and Noam Chomsky. Propaganda and the Public Mind. Cambridge: South End Press, 2001.
Ellin, Abby. "Generation X, Still Undecided." New York Times 17 Jun. 2001, sec. 3:10.
Lynch, Stephen. "Taking Stock of Gen X: It's Fallen Sharply." The Washington Post 25 Apr. 2001, CO8.
Washburn, Earl Trey R. "FAAP." Physician Executive, Jan./Feb. 2000, vol. 26(1), p. 54.

:: Jim Nichols 6/19/2002 12:18:00 AM [+] ::
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