Longtime readers will know Generation Y as the gaslit generation. Baby Boomers instilled them with a false view of reality that left them unprepared to survive in the real world. As a result, the “mugged by reality” experience is a Gen Y touchstone.
Now that Gen Y has hit middle age, the realization is becoming inescapable—even for them—that the the lifelong job, the nice house in the suburbs, and the loving wife and 2.1 kids aren’t materializing. It is what it is, and no one is coming to help.
It was to be hoped that significant numbers of this cohort would come to terms with the facts and accept their fated role as chroniclers of the pre-Ground Zero world. Sadly, a troubling number of Ys are doubling down on the fantasy. It’s not that they’re pretending everything is fine while the house burns down. Even worse, they’ve adopted the attitude of “My parents said my life should work out like it did for them, so I’m going to keep playing by the old rulebook, even though it can only end in my crushing defeat.”
What’s behind this generational despair? Pop psychology threw around the term “fear of failure” a lot during Gen Y’s formative years. It was a meme, but most stereotypes hold a grain of truth. Go-along-to-get-along kids’ shows and tolerance conditioning in school made Ys pathologically conflict averse. That neurosis makes them loath to try any undertaking whose outcome isn’t assured beforehand.
The Boomer roadmap leads to a dead end, but at least it’s a map. Many Ys would rather follow the established path to their ruin than blaze a new trail. Because at least failure is a known quantity. They really will always accept the plan, even if the plan is horrifying.
Strauss and Howe’s Fourth Turning theory gives some context. They claim that generations come in cycles of four archetypes at recurring turning points in history.
- A cultural High fosters a Prophet (Idealist) generation.
- An Awakening brings about a Nomad (Reactive) generation.
- An Unraveling gives rise to a Hero (Civic) generation.
- A Crisis brings forth an Artist (Adaptive) generation.
The mistake is hard to miss. While they correctly defined their generational archetypes based on shared formative experience, they erroneously stuck to an arbitrary definition of a generation as a twenty-year period.
As I’ve argued previously, the Awakening sparked by the Boomers has led to such runaway societal Unraveling that people born twenty years apart no longer now have vastly different formative experiences. Shortening the duration of each turning after the Boomer High fixes the problem. That correction also gives us ten extra years between the Boomers and X-ers where Generation Jones fits perfectly, plus ten more between the X-ers and Millennials sized just right for Gen Y.
Applying those adjustments to the whole cycle, we get:
- High: The Baby Boomers: Prophet-Idealist
- Awakening: Generation Jones: Nomad-Reactive
- Unraveling: Generation X: Hero-Civic
- Crisis: Generation Y: Artist-Adaptive
Artist (Adaptive) generations enter childhood after an Unraveling, during a Crisis, a time when great dangers cut down social and political complexity in favor of public consensus, aggressive institutions, and an ethic of personal sacrifice. Artists grow up overprotected by adults preoccupied with the Crisis, come of age as the socialized and conformist young adults of a post-Crisis world, break out as process-oriented midlife leaders during an Awakening, and age into thoughtful post-Awakening elders
The generation that entered childhood under the threat of global nuclear war, grew up during a brief return to conformity and consensus under Reagan and Bush, were conditioned by the post-1960s entertainment industry, had sheltered upbringings, and grew into adults looking to go along to get along has been thoroughly documented here.
One reasonable objection to my adjusted generational cycle lies in the Fourth Turning‘s definition of a Hero generation:
Hero (Civic) generations enter childhood after an Awakening, during an Unraveling, a time of individual pragmatism, self-reliance, and laissez-faire. Heroes grow up as increasingly protected post-Awakening children, come of age as team-oriented young optimists during a Crisis, emerge as energetic, overly-confident midlifers, and age into politically powerful elders attacked by another Awakening.
Gen X-ers are probably nodding at that definition’s first sentence. They grew up in the Sexual Revolution’s aftermath in the individualistic early 80s. But they almost certainly object to the “increasingly protected” part. Gen X is infamous as the “raised by wolves” cohort.
As a result, they’ve not exactly overconfident team players. And we know Gen X will never be handed the levers of political power. They and Gen Y will be skipped over in favor of Millennials.
So, what went wrong? How did a cycle of each generation passing the baton to the next get interrupted after working for centuries?
Strauss and Howe originally labeled the Millennials as a Hero generation. Others have argued that this category is accurate, but the Millennials’ chance at heroism was thwarted. But stronger evidence points to the X-ers as the Hero generation whose collective vocation was ruined by their parents’ failure. Before the Boomers, no other generation in any prior Turning collectively hated their own children.
That’s no exaggeration. Boomers murdered half their offspring in the womb.
It’s becoming clearer by the day that civilization won’t survive the damage. To Strauss and Howe’s credit, there probably hasn’t been such a generation as destructive as the Boomers since the fall of Rome.
Getting back to Generation Y, Strauss and Howe point out that past Artist-Adaptive generations broke out of their shells in midlife to assume leadership positions. But as we’ve established, Ys won’t get to lead. Those who manage to escape the nostalgia prisons where they’ve locked themselves will have to settle for mentoring younger cohorts. But to fulfill their Artist archetype, Ys will have to embrace their Adaptive calling.
The greatest obstacles Gen Y must overcome are their pathological attachment to the past and obdurate aversion to change. To keep Gen Z from repeating their failures, Ys must embrace that failure and learn from it.
And lesson number one is: Return to Christ.
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I think I can summarize the mindset as “might as well stay comfortable as long as possible, because the outcome is gonna be the same”.
Haven’t seen any older generations make a case against it either. Just endless lecturing about what we “have to do”, then kvetching that we’re entitled and immature if we ask to get paid fair for it.
I’m sure the migrants will run your water treatment, power substations, and nursing homes just fine though.
Even more concise summary: effeminacy.
How much are you paying for me to “man up”?
Also, gonna need a 50% down payment because you guys short changed us for decades to start. If that’s a problem you can probably find some manjawwed gurlbosses that will do it for 65% if you tell them they’re “empowered”.
There’s the problem that the hokey advice given decades ago (“just get any degree and you’ll get any job you want”) turned out to not only be wrong, but that it turned out to be exactly the other way around. I don’t know a single member of Gen Y that has been able to build a career in any of those industries, including ones they don’t want to be a part of, because of lay-offs and transferring jobs overseas continually cutting off any potential momentum for a proper career. It’s been this way for decades.
The harsh truth the older generation doesn’t want to face is that not only are there no bootstraps to pull up–they are the ones who made it that way and block any attempts to right the ship. That’s one of the reasons any real change is going to wait for them to no longer be in the way anymore. That includes the younger generations still sucking up to them and perpetuating their dead memes.
That’s why we keep saying change isn’t happening overnight. Is going to be a long process, and there won’t be any reward for it, but with the right attitude and enough effort, eventually the ship might be righted again before disaster hits.
However, there is no scenario where any member of Gen X or younger is getting their 9 to 5 picket fence scenario. That possibility was demolished ages ago by a generation that wanted to squeeze more out of it for themselves and refuse to let go, abandoning the elder position they were supposed to take on in the process. They’d rather defecate themselves on stage during media conferences decades after their competency left them and cling to their last bit of power then allow anyone else to fix anything they broke.
It’s a giant mess that is going to take a lot of time to sort out.
There seems to be some misunderstanding.
I’m not telling you to man up. I don’t have to. You are a man.
That means, contra the Liberal Masons who founded this country, the pursuit of happiness is not your life’s purpose.
Material comfort is for women.
Struggle is for men. The only way to stay sane is to embrace it.
It turns out struggle is for women too, but in a different form. We have to conquer pain and ourselves.
“Strauss and Howe originally labeled the Millennials as a Hero generation.”
Strauss and Howe showed all their generation in their book. They were talking about Gen Y generally at the time in the comments about Millennials. The gushing over a just barely of age generation was a little cringe. They also showed their Boomer in being unable to process Gen X at all. I remember thinking when I read it, eh just give Gen Y (Millennials) a little time. They’ll sound like Gen X.
What is clear about the current power dynamics is that only people young or silly enough to be sycophants will be set up as the next in line from our Boomer, Jones, and last of the Silents overlords. However, that will only happen on the death of those people. No power will be transferred until then however. Not even obvious dementia will be enough to convince them to exit and least maybe cruise year round. It’s been almost to person “I will maintain this power seat regardless of the impact of anyone else as I die.” for the last several years.
My Gen Z son has been listening to the recent Walt Disney schinanigans. He was disappointed about the board vote (a very big deal on pop culture channels.) I told him that in the end, it really didn’t matter. It was an 80 year old having a fight with a 73 year old like they’re middle aged men in the center/peak of their careers. Yes, assuming that the 80 year old maintains his health he’ll be back next year. Whatever. What we know for almost certain is that the 2 people that will ultimately replace them both will be incompetent.
Iger doesn’t get to use Peltz as an excuse when Disney continues its slide into irrelevance. That should be a comfort to your son.
Just a thought on your Lost Generations article which was excellent overall. It’s mostly a note on the math of offspring at the end.
“By this reckoning, the Boomers are the children of the Greats. The Jonesers are, by and large, the Silents’ offspring, Xers are the children of the Boomers, Generation Jones begat Gen-Y, Gen-X spawned the Millennials, and Gen-Y birthed Gen-Z.”
My husband and I are 100% in the Gen X band from the listing in Lost Generations. We had our children considerably earlier than most people I knew. Our oldest son sits on the twilight year of the millennials/Gen Z. Most Gen X I know have now school age to high school/college students. That would make them Gen Z. Generation Alpha would be Gen Y and the Millennials have just barely started, but please check my math.
After the Boomer working class there’s significant rise in age in birth of first child. My parents were late in having children at 25/30 respectively. My husband’s were much closer to normal at 18/19 respectively, in the same year. By the end of the 1970’s older births weren’t so weird. I believe the Jones generation is the moment where everyone is talking about “yuppies”, where first children are happening late 20’s/early 30’s.
Anyway, age at first birth is a factor too in demographics issues, which I suspect many Boomers don’t really appreciate. I suspect all many know is they “lost” their twenties to children.