An interesting thought I had regarding boomer-millennial animus:
Boomers seem to operate from the viewpoint that life got better with age. You don't see them reference their childhood all that much unless it's to humblebrag that they had it rougher than subsequent generations.
Boomers seem to operate from the viewpoint that life got better with age. You don't see them reference their childhood all that much unless it's to humblebrag that they had it rougher than subsequent generations.
Whereas for millennials, the world has just gotten worse as we've aged, particularly around the decline after 2007. Which one could mistake for a viewpoint of "It doesn't get any better than this" and an endless referential relationship to childhood.
A great childhood juxtaposed by the death of the world and culture that childhood was experienced in as they came of age, vs a rather ordinary childhood with an adulthood filled with opportunity and material prosperity.
Which probably explains why so many millennials act like adult children & the "kidult" phenomenon. The latter crawl into hedonistic bubbles that reference the "better times" while the former fight to preserve their own better times and extend that into their halcyon years.
The danger of this hyper-nostalgia for millennials is that it often borders on self-infantilization when taken too far. While the boomers are so pre-occupied with preserving the standards they came to enjoy, even if it's at the cost of their descendants.
The irony is that both generations are similar in that they are clutching to preserve the artifacts of their experiences during better times, with a white knuckle grip.
Millennials cannot bring back "the good times" so they curl up into a ball of infantile nostalgia.
Millennials cannot bring back "the good times" so they curl up into a ball of infantile nostalgia.
The boomers have the accumulated resources of "the good times" and seek to make them stretch to the ends of their lives. This includes the entire spectrum of material wealth, social capital, etc. It's why so many keep going to work, despite often being unproductive.
The Zoomers haven't had anything really approaching "good times" yet, and are wondering if they ever will or have resigned themselves to the idea that they never will.
They cope with this by acting like caring about anything at all is uncool.
They cope with this by acting like caring about anything at all is uncool.
Which is a defense mechanism, because if they cared about the state of affairs (which they can't do much about) then they'd be forced to confront and viscerally feel what an uphill battle it would be to improve anything, and would naturally feel it was hopeless.
Gen X is a bit harder to figure out, they mainly seem to just try to "go away" and live their lives as if no one else exists. The most generational expression I get out of them seems to revolve around boomer tier "our childhood was rough and tumble" yet they remember it fondly.
They'll always remind you that they were "latchkey kids" and that their childhoods were filled with rampant divorce etc, yet they say it with pride. They reflect on their childhoods as hard(like boomers) but with reverence(like millennials)
But I think the singular thing that comes from all of this, is that the last 4 generations are very preoccupied with bracing themselves in various ways, like sailors on a ship in a storm. Protecting themselves from the "hurt" of addressing our present circumstances.
There isn't a fundamental aspect of the zeitgeist of any of them that is focused on actually fixing any of it though. All of us are preserving what we have or battening down the hatches to weather the storm we're in, which looks to get worse.
But at the macro level generational zeitgeist, no one is planning a mutiny in order to steer the ship around the storm, or to turn around and head back to less choppy waters. As a civilization none of our generations have any widespread will to power.
I have a more developed theory that I occasionally share, though Zoomers would probably hate it. But they are an army, a sword waiting to be picked up by the switched on millennial or gen X'er who can give them a dream they actually have the audacity to hope for.
For most normie zoomers, there is no real frame of reference for what non dysfunction would look like. Millennials have memories of a time like that through rose colored glasses of childhood, X'ers remember at least some of it as adults.
The way the paradigm changes is when someone who is absolutely tired of this shit figures out how to activate Zoomerwaffens small ember of hope that they still have the ability to harness. They have so little to lose, they might fight & die for that hope.
Zoomers are like excalibur, waiting for the one true king to pull them from the stone.
Like the crown of France, waiting for their Napoleon to pick them up out of the gutter with a look of ambitious intent.
Like the crown of France, waiting for their Napoleon to pick them up out of the gutter with a look of ambitious intent.
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