My generation

[Keroin]

I was watching a documentary on the Doors last night and was both intrigued and a little saddened by some of the footage from the sixties. What was it like to come of age in that turbulent time?

Earlier in the day, I’d heard a newsperson remark that some study has shown that Generation Y feels a greater sense of entitlement than any generation in history. (Don’t ask me how they “scientifically measured” this, I have no clue). And that got me wondering how it must feel to be coming of age in this era.

I’m Gen X. I was born in 1969 and came of age post-Vietnam. I’ll talk about that later but I’m curious to know how you feel or what you think about your generation. What do you think defines your generation? What was/is good about it? What was/is not so good?

I know these are very general questions, so please feel free to talk about anything about your generation that moves you.

 

[JMaxwell69]

I'm also a "Gen Xer" according to people to define such things. (Close in age to the OP.)

I don't know if I put that much stock in being able to define generations of people.

Though I guess there are some defining events that may influence communal outlook. I was a young adult at the end of the Cold War, and have thus bridged two eras in terms of world affairs (a Cold War youth and a 9-ll adulthood) By 9-11, I mean that as a defining event for something that started much earlier which was US hegemony and a lot of what has offen been called "Low Intensity Conflict."(LIC) I don't like the term LIC, as anyone being shot at in Iraq or Afghanistan will tell you, it feels pretty intense to them.

I also think technology is a big factor. Few people can imagine not having instantaneous communications these days. Have you seen a movie from 80's lately in which people had to find a telephone booth (not like Superman to change clothes but to actually call someone.) Doesn't watching it have an odd feel to it? I don't know when they will start embedding Bluetooths in our brain, but that will certainly signal another era.

 

[Netzach]

I'm born in '73 and technically GenX - though I found that our end of GenX has very few of the traits that the people who were 23 when the book actually came OUT have. See I remember how this worked - this book came out, everyone said "the people currently graduating collage make up this new demographic that acts like" this and I thought - not much, because I was busy with 8th grade and passing obnoxious notes in French class.

For instance, they were in college prior to the Clinton election - economic prospects were *much* shakier and I think they had less of a stabilty mentality more of a fuck it all one that made sense in light of the big-ass market crash that year. I was a freshman during that and by the time graduation rolled around it was like, well you could go make a pile of money, but do something responsible and important if you do - there was nothing slacker-y about the people I knew, it was all that idealism and Americorps and do something meaningful stuff.

Some people actually lived up to that, too.

I do feel incredibly excited about being alive during the largest communication development since the printing press. No dis on the sweep of Radio or TV, but this is bigger.

 

[DVS]

I was watching a documentary on the Doors last night and was both intrigued and a little saddened by some of the footage from the sixties. What was it like to come of age in that turbulent time?

Earlier in the day, I’d heard a newsperson remark that some study has shown that Generation Y feels a greater sense of entitlement than any generation in history. (Don’t ask me how they “scientifically measured” this, I have no clue). And that got me wondering how it must feel to be coming of age in this era.

I’m Gen X. I was born in 1969 and came of age post-Vietnam. I’ll talk about that later but I’m curious to know how you feel or what you think about your generation. What do you think defines your generation? What was/is good about it? What was/is not so good?

I know these are very general questions, so please feel free to talk about anything about your generation that moves you.

You were closer to being a boomer than you think. The actual birth years of the post WW II baby boom were between 1946 and 1964.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/U.S.BirthRate.1909.2003.png/800px-U.S.BirthRate.1909.2003.png

 

[Keroin]

Have you seen a movie from 80's recently in which people had to find a telephone booth (not like Superman to change clothes but to actually call someone.) Doesn't watching it have an odd feel to it?

Yes! It's like...oh yeah, right, we used to have to do that. LOL. My husband is nine years older than me and he grew up in a rural area of Vancouver Island, where they were actually on the "party line" phone system for many years. Now there's a funny concept, eh?

For instance, they were in college prior to the Clinton election - economic prospects were *much* shakier and I think they had less of a stabilty mentality more of a fuck it all one that made sense in light of the big-ass market crash that year. I was a freshman during that and by the time graduation rolled around it was like, well you could go make a pile of money, but do something responsible and important if you do - there was nothing slacker-y about the people I knew, it was all that idealism and Americorps and do something meaningful stuff.

Some people actually lived up to that, too.

This is interesting because I always remember the eighties as a time of excess and I didn't see a lot of idealism among my peers. We were worried about world peace, because of the crazy cold war going on to the north and south of us and, unlike the generation before us, we had no illusions that we could all just hide under our desks if they dropped the bomb(s). But I was one of the few kids in my school who actually went out and marched for peace. (Most of my teachers were there - being ex-hippies and all). Big hair, big make up, big music...that's what stands out for me.

I do feel incredibly excited about being alive during the largest communication development since the printing press. No dis on the sweep of Radio or TV, but this is bigger.

Yes, this. Very exciting.

 

[Keroin]

You were closer to being a boomer than you think. The actual birth years of the post WW II baby boom were between 1946 and 1964.

Yes, but "Gen X" sounds so much cooler. Kind of dirty almost.

 

[Netzach]

Yes! It's like...oh yeah, right, we used to have to do that. LOL. My husband is nine years older than me and he grew up in a rural area of Vancouver Island, where they were actually on the "party line" phone system for many years. Now there's a funny concept, eh?



This is interesting because I always remember the eighties as a time of excess and I didn't see a lot of idealism among my peers. We were worried about world peace, because of the crazy cold war going on to the north and south of us and, unlike the generation before us, we had no illusions that we could all just hide under our desks if they dropped the bomb(s). But I was one of the few kids in my school who actually went out and marched for peace. (Most of my teachers were there - being ex-hippies and all). Big hair, big make up, big music...that's what stands out for me.



Yes, this. Very exciting.

Yeah, see I have one summer of big hair pictures and it was when I was 16. The Russian coup was my Junior year, if I'm getting this right.

Admittedly I went to a school that mandated and stressed community service and involvement - but I do remember the idea of doing something, a kind of leaner and less drugged out idealism being popular for a duration. To the point of stupid. Conscious consumption was invented - Body Shop was Starbucks, you couldn't go 2 NYC blocks without seeing one.

 

[WriterDom]

Missed the war. First age group not to have to register for the draft. Pot was everywhere. Thank god no meth or crack. No one in our peer group could afford cocaine. No AIDS to worry about but I was real careful to use protection in high school. Hell, I don't think I lasted a minute WITH a condom on. But she was pretty hot. Except for her inverted nipples and pussy farts. But I didn't know any better at the time and I'm not complaining now.

 

[Netzach]

Oh yeah - I lost my virginity with a rubber. I had entire relationships, monogamous, with rubbers. Condoms are simply part of my sexual lexicon - very specific to people born exactly the same time as me. We're also the annoying little prigs who are absolutely wringing our hands and *begging* the rest of them to maybe not bareback, just because there are meds that keep you alive.

 

[Keroin]

Yeah, see I have one summer of big hair pictures and it was when I was 16. The Russian coup was my Junior year, if I'm getting this right.

Admittedly I went to a school that mandated and stressed community service and involvement - but I do remember the idea of doing something, a kind of leaner and less drugged out idealism being popular for a duration. To the point of stupid. Conscious consumption was invented - Body Shop was Starbucks, you couldn't go 2 NYC blocks without seeing one.

Mmm, it was kind of the second coming of consumerism, IMO. Take the "ideas" of the sixties (but leave behind the messy bits), then package them and market them properly.

I wonder of the sixties could have happened without the excessive drug use?

Missed the war. First age group not to have to register for the draft.

Timing is everything.

 

[JMaxwell69]

Yes! It's like...oh yeah, right, we used to have to do that. LOL. My husband is nine years older than me and he grew up in a rural area of Vancouver Island, where they were actually on the "party line" phone system for many years. Now there's a funny concept, eh?

I actually grew up in rural Mid-West and have vague recollections of the party line phone system. As I didn't make many calls that young, I mostly remember my parents and others complaining about the "clicks" that indicated some nosy neighbor with nothing else to do was evesdropping.

Before these discussion boards, maybe that's how people got their jollies, listening in and hoping they might just hear something juicy.

 

[midwestyankee]

I graduated from high school in the year that Keroin was born and from college in the year that Netzach was born. That puts me almost precisely in the middle of the Boomer years, right after the first big spike in births.

Now, what was the question? Oh, right, what was it like?

Well, when I was in 7th grade it was a big deal to listen to your 3-transistor radio at night to pick up the Boston and New York stations for the latest hits from England). My first day at college I, the innocent rube from a smallish city in Maine, asked if any of my three roommates smoked. The answer shocked me: "Smoke what?" because I'd only heard of marijuana and wasn't sure if I knew anyone who'd used it.

Near the end of my freshman year in college 4 kids were killed at Kent State. From that day forward, it was all different. We looked at the police and the military in a different way. We distrusted them intensely. The student takeover of the admin buildings at Berkeley had happened the year before that, as I recall, so we'd already begun to distrust our own college administrators based on their reactions to that episode. We truly did not trust anyone more than a few years older than us. This was very difficult for me as I'd been mostly a good kid and a believer in the benevolence of institutions prior to high school (you don't get to be an Eagle Scout without a good dose of that belief and trust in institutions).

I spent most of 1972 trying to get my parents to see reason over the Presidential election. I'd desperately wanted Maine's Senator Muskie to win the Democratic nomination but he didn't get much past New Hampshire. When news of the Watergate break-in came out, we would dash to the Boston newspapers every morning to get the latest on the investigation. I can't find the words to explain just how much I despised Richard Nixon by that time. And I had grown up idolizing many of the previous presidents.

It was turbulent socially as well. Free love and all that meant that you had to learn in a hurry how to take care of yourself both physically and emotionally. I distinctly remember being treated to a stunningly powerful blowjob one year on my birthday. Thing is, she and her sister both lived in the same house of students where I lived. Everywhere you turned in your relationships, you were on a tightrope between friends and friends of friends. Sure, there was plenty of sex but we also had to deal with the complexity of responsibilities from having multiple partners at a time when, even if they would have been willing to advise us, our parents didn't have a clue what we were experiencing. No one did.

And then there were the drugs. I long ago lost count of the college friends who dropped out after discovering that being high all day was a helluva lot more fun than studying Kant and Virginia Woolf.

During my freshman year, the draft was changed to a lottery system. One night in October, as I recall, everyone on campus tuned to the campus radio station to hear the national feed of the draft numbers that were drawn for each birthdate in the year. My number was ridiculously high but from my dorm room I could hear young men wailing and crying because their birthdates had been called early on. A low number meant that you almost certainly would go to Viet Nam if you lost your college exemption. Now there was an incentive to keep the pot to a minimum and keep up with your studies. The odds of coming home in a box were absofuckinglutely frighteningly high.

I suppose that we developed strengths from these difficulties, but it didn't feel like it at the time. Instead, it felt like we had all been transported to a parallel universe, a Bizarro world, where good was bad and bad was uncertain. If you find someone from my generation who claims that he or she knew exactly what they were doing in those years and has no sense of confusion from those years, you're talking with someone who took way too many drugs or you're talking with Dick Cheney.

 

[Keroin]

I graduated from high school in the year that Keroin was born and from college in the year that Netzach was born. That puts me almost precisely in the middle of the Boomer years, right after the first big spike in births.

Now, what was the question? Oh, right, what was it like?...

Wow. MWY. Just...wow.

You've brought me to the brink of tears. Thanks so much for your honesty.

Yes, in last night's documentary, it was a photo from the shootings at Kent State that really drove home the difference between your generation and mine. I came into a world already disillusioned, you were there when those illusions were torn away.

I met a couple from Minnesota who came of age in the sixties. The woman said that there was a time when she was attending a funeral for one of her fallen classmates almost every week. Something like 70% of the male population of her graduating class died in Vietnam. I have no way to relate to that. But it still makes me very sad.

 

[DVS]

There were both good and bad times in the 1960s. I was born in 1953 and so I got to experience the late 60s with hippies, flower power, Haight-Ashbury, and the many bands that sprung up from that San Francisco area.

At first it was beautiful, but before long the free drugs started becoming bad drugs, cut with anything that would get by, and killing people. The love, sex and rock n roll age was tainted by the few that had greed on their minds.

I was in the music scene and it was good up to and including the 70s. Pot was the drug that was always around, but there was also LSD and Psilocybin, heroin, and the more things lasted, the more hard core many users got. The hard core scene was what finally killed the flower power hippies and Haight-Ashbury.

Haight-Ashbury was just an intersection in San Francisco and that's where they also had a free clinic for those who got strung out on drugs and those who took the bad drugs that were going around. Like anything else that has a good beginning and good intentions, someone always tries to make a buck from it. Then, the next step is cutting corners, getting more product by cutting the quality to get more.

The majority of the Haight-Ashbury groups were too naive to know what was happening and many suffered a harsh reality from it. Woodstock was the last great time for that generation. There were other attempts to top it, but none of them even came close.

We were the first to protest what our parents were teaching. We were the first to protest in song, in hair style, and in clothing we wore. We protested the Viet Nam war. I never liked how the soldiers were treated, because most of them were drafted and forced to go fight. But, when they came home, many were seen as baby killers.

We had Hanoi Jane, The My Lai Massacre, sit ins, love ins, and make love, not war. We had the Kent state murders, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, the Watts riots, freedom marches, KKK church bombings in the south, lynchings, civil rights murders, black water fountains and white water fountains, and Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus and Walter Cronkite to explain it all to us.

We had Black Power groups like the Black Panthers to counter the KKK. They tended to go overboard as much as the KKK did. It was all in a very emotional time. There were very few who didn't seem to have an opinion, one way or the other.

I remember when President Kennedy sent the National Guard down to Georgia in 1963 to allow black kids to go to school, because Gov. George Wallace had his police denying the black's civil rights to attend school. He was very much against desegregation of schools, allowing black students into white schools. Eventually, Wallace was shot and spent the rest of his life in a wheel chair.

Movies like "A Time to Kill" "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Mississippi Burning", were good examples of how the times were. Blacks were lower class citizens than whites. It wasn't so much thought that, but it was just understood. Blacks were kept in "their place". Eventually, there were riots where police would break up the riots with high pressure water hoses. I remember scenes like those on the evening news quite often. You'd see a young black kid literally getting blown down the street by high pressure water stream.

The message of the boomers was a good one, and it made a difference in the world. A lot of the movement was lost, but not all of it. Our generation was seen as inspired to make things better. We were seen as caring for what became of the world. I think that has a lot to do with why Gen X was seen as the "me generation", selfish and not caring for others. It wasn't so much that they were that way, as much as the boomers had been first and being first at anything always brings with it the clout.

All in all, it was a great time to be alive. Free love, good music, good drugs and good friends. But everything good eventually comes to an end. Unfortunately, the good dwindled longer than it should have, and it became bad. A lot of that bad is what history remembers.

 

[midwestyankee]

Wow. MWY. Just...wow.

You've brought me to the brink of tears. Thanks so much for your honesty.

Yes, in last night's documentary, it was a photo from the shootings at Kent State that really drove home the difference between your generation and mine. I came into a world already disillusioned, you were there when those illusions were torn away.

I met a couple from Minnesota who came of age in the sixties. The woman said that there was a time when she was attending a funeral for one of her fallen classmates almost every week. Something like 70% of the male population of her graduating class died in Vietnam. I have no way to relate to that. But it still makes me very sad.

When I went back home for my 25th high school reunion, I checked the Viet Nam memorial in the center of town. Only one man from my high school class died over there, but many from slightly earlier classes gave their lives to that monumental and immoral stupidity.

My guess is that the young men dying in Iraq and Afghanistan will leave similar, though possibly less stark, feelings. The current generation has known unrest and war in the middle east nearly all their lives. Men who are now 25 were six years old when we put up Desert Storm to re-take Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. There has been some kind of American military involvement in Iraq since then. The friends of the dead from the current immoral stupidity in Iraq may not be so shocked by war as we were, but they will hurt just as badly I'm sure. It will scar their generation just as war scars every generation.

 

[Cattypuss]

I born in 1967, in the UK.

I was 11 when Mrs Thatcher came to power and I was 23 when she fell from power. I was 30 when her party fell from power.

That fact is a huge fact. Thatcher changed the face of this country. I came of age in a country where the gap between rich and poor was ever-widening, where our much-loved free health service was being starved and mismanaged into near-oblivion, where utility providers and transport providers were privatised and the public got shafted as a result..... I could go on but I won't.

 

[Keroin]

The message of the boomers was a good one, and it made a difference in the world. A lot of the movement was lost, but not all of it. Our generation was seen as inspired to make things better. We were seen as caring for what became of the world. I think that has a lot to do with why Gen X was seen as the "me generation", selfish and not caring for others. It wasn't so much that they were that way, as much as the boomers had been first and being first at anything always brings with it the clout.

All in all, it was a great time to be alive. Free love, good music, good drugs and good friends. But everything good eventually comes to an end. Unfortunately, the good dwindled longer than it should have, and it became bad. A lot of that bad is what history remembers.

Yes, I think that nothing my generation could have done could have changed the perception that we were a bunch of narcissistic slackers. And don't forget, youth likes to rebel. If we were overly materialistic and self-centered, that was probably largely a reaction to what had come before us. (Though I don't think we fit that stereotype).

More later...

 

[Keroin]

When I went back home for my 25th high school reunion, I checked the Viet Nam memorial in the center of town. Only one man from my high school class died over there, but many from slightly earlier classes gave their lives to that monumental and immoral stupidity.

My guess is that the young men dying in Iraq and Afghanistan will leave similar, though possibly less stark, feelings. The current generation has known unrest and war in the middle east nearly all their lives. Men who are now 25 were six years old when we put up Desert Storm to re-take Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. There has been some kind of American military involvement in Iraq since then. The friends of the dead from the current immoral stupidity in Iraq may not be so shocked by war as we were, but they will hurt just as badly I'm sure. It will scar their generation just as war scars every generation.

I think you're right. It must be strange for the latest generation of war veterans. There isn't the pomp and pageantry of WWII and there isn't the massive protest and vitriol of Viet Nam, either. It's as if we're tired of it all. Sure it's happening, but we just can't, as a society, muster the energy, (publicly) to care anymore, one way or the other. I wonder if vets these days feel forgotten?

I born in 1967, in the UK.

I was 11 when Mrs Thatcher came to power and I was 23 when she fell from power. I was 30 when her party fell from power.

That fact is a huge fact. Thatcher changed the face of this country. I came of age in a country where the gap between rich and poor was ever-widening, where our much-loved free health service was being starved and mismanaged into near-oblivion, where utility providers and transport providers were privatised and the public got shafted as a result..... I could go on but I won't.

Thanks CP.

 

[graceanne]

I was born in 1978. I don't know which generation I'm of, but I've heard it refered to as the 'me generation', which i think if very fitting and very sad.

 

[midwestyankee]

I think you're right. It must be strange for the latest generation of war veterans. There isn't the pomp and pageantry of WWII and there isn't the massive protest and vitriol of Viet Nam, either. It's as if we're tired of it all. Sure it's happening, but we just can't, as a society, muster the energy, (publicly) to care anymore, one way or the other. I wonder if vets these days feel forgotten?

In the Chicago suburbs, it's quite common for towns to hold large celebrations of the lives of every man or woman killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Often their funerals include honor guards from the local police and fire departments and speeches by town officials. I think this is a pretty healthy thing. I wonder if it might also be an effective way of reducing the chances that the "God Hates Fags" people will show up to protest the funerals. I can't be sure of that but there haven't been many sightings of these clowns in my area.

 

[midwestyankee]

I was born in 1978. I don't know which generation I'm of, but I've heard it refered to as the 'me generation', which i think if very fitting and very sad.

And the date-ly coincidences keep on coming! I was married the year you were born, gracie. It was a good year.

 

[FurryFury]

I was born in 1960 and into a very repressive religion that mostly kept me from knowing of world events. I knew nothing about the drugs, free sex, racial conflicts, domestic protests, and very little about Vietnam. That is, until my parents had their own conflicts. For a while, they split up from each other and the church.

I was like a kid who had lived in a black and white world that was really simple, now being allowed to look at colors and complexity. I loved being more of the world. I've never looked back.

It makes me sad that I missed free love, drugs and protests. I'm angry about racial conflicts and Vietnam. Still, I've never felt prejudiced. So I guess some shielding might have helped me in some ways.

 

[Keroin]

All in all, it was a great time to be alive. Free love, good music, good drugs and good friends. But everything good eventually comes to an end. Unfortunately, the good dwindled longer than it should have, and it became bad. A lot of that bad is what history remembers.

I wanted to finish off my thoughts on this.

I think history remembers the "BIG" events and usually that means the "bad" stuff. To me, lots of good things came out of the sixties. As a woman, I credit much of my freedom the bra-burners of that generation.

Thanks ladies!

 

[sb2009]

I was born in 1960 and into a very repressive religion that mostly kept me from knowing of world events. I knew nothing about the drugs, free sex, racial conflicts, domestic protests, and very little about Vietnam. That is, until my parents had their own conflicts. For a while, they split up from each other and the church.

I was like a kid who had lived in a black and white world that was really simple, now being allowed to look at colors and complexity. I loved being more of the world. I've never looked back.

It makes me sad that I missed free love, drugs and protests. I'm angry about racial conflicts and Vietnam. Still, I've never felt prejudiced. So I guess some shielding might have helped me in some ways.

Fury, I have to quote this because it is pretty much me, except for being born in 1969 and that I was in this closed environment until I turned 18 and could leave.

I was taught, and truly beleived until I lived on my own, that Russia was at the door and that Democrats were trying to turn our country communist. That Christians in the US were dieing for thier faith because our country had forgotten Jesus. All kinds of wierd shit like that.

I feel like an outsider when I hear people talk about the "defining moments" of a generation, etc. For me, my defining moments were when I was 18 and learned quickly that the world was not what I thought it was.

 

[midwestyankee]

Fury, I have to quote this because it is pretty much me, except for being born in 1969 and that I was in this closed environment until I turned 18 and could leave.

I was taught, and truly beleived until I lived on my own, that Russia was at the door and that Democrats were trying to turn our country communist. That Christians in the US were dieing for thier faith because our country had forgotten Jesus. All kinds of wierd shit like that.

I feel like an outsider when I hear people talk about the "defining moments" of a generation, etc. For me, my defining moments were when I was 18 and learned quickly that the world was not what I thought it was.

SB, if I might toss in a thought...some people like to think of large events as defining moments. Think the JFK assassination or the protests over the war in Viet Nam or the murder of John Lennon. I don't have any interest in demeaning the defining qualities of those events but I think that more personal defining moments have great strength as well. Despite having lived through all of those things and more that seemingly defined my generation, for me the one event that transformed my life more than any other was the decision to leave Maine for graduate school in another part of the country. I was a rube, a hick - though a damned literate one - and I badly needed to know the broader world. Buying my first car and driving 600 miles to go to school for the first time outside of Maine was such a moment for me. I began to become me in that two day drive.