Adjacent to discussions of Cultural Ground Zero theory is speculation as to what went wrong. Generation X was passed over for any position of authority. Gen Y creatives can only churn out shallow pastiches of superior 80s and 90s entertainment. It’s an open secret in the video game industry that Western game aesthetics were pretty much destroyed by risk-averse Millennial artists.
So the question remains: Why can’t the three generations now entering, in, or exiting their prime sustain the culture we inherited? Comedian Charls Carrol offers a potential answer in a recent live stream.
There’s an entire generation of youth that’s been abused. It’s indicative of something way bigger.
Has nothing to do with, “Oh man, this guy’s a creep! He was talking to some some boy or whatever, he’s like 14, 13.” No no no no. It’s not an isolated incident. It’s an indicator that the entire generation is rapped.
You know what that means? what else do you think happens when the culture gets ultra-sexual, hypersexual? What do you think? Just like fees and taxes, they get passed down to the consumer. Sex gets passed down to the children in a hypersexual culture.
[It’s] indicative of a generational abuse. It’s not a good sign because … that’s the next generation you see with everything now: the people that are hired to make movies and video games and all this. It’s a generation that got abused.
Related: Ground Zero
Why do you think everything’s like this? People that are abused wish to pass on the abuse.
They’re learned behaviors, you guys understand? Like hyper sex or hyper violence is a learned behavior. It’s not inherent, it’s generational. There are textbook … There are blueprints just like 1984, okay? In Brave New World … hypersexuality is required for brutal enslavement.
You can watch the replay here:
Is Charls’ take somewhat extreme? Perhaps.
But keep in mind that neglect is also a form of abuse.
Whether kids were left alone to be easy game for predators or left alone after school to raise themselves, the common thread running through the formative experience of today’s adults is having been alone.
Related: A Lonely Existence
It stands to reason that generations who were never properly inducted into society have difficulty maintaining that society.
The saying goes “Show me someone who has failed, and I’ll show you someone who was failed.”
It holds true on the macro scale. Failed generations are abused generations.
That’s not an excuse for wallowing in our disorders. It is a reality check that means we’ll have to work twice as hard to keep what good we’ve got, let alone cultivate more.
The only way out is to show up and do the work.
So let’s get up and get going.
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“The saying goes “Show me someone who has failed, and I’ll show you someone who was failed.””
I genuinely don’t understand people who point at the failures of the youngest adults as entirely their fault. It seems to me that a failure apparent at 18 years old belongs to the parent, not the young adult.
Even as adults, you don’t know what you don’t know. We have legions of adults who were neglected or had to figure it out on their own. Without formal passing of the torch, there’s no quantifying the information lost between generations. So even if an adult makes a mistake, it may not be their fault, however a general rule of thumb is how are we to view failure moving forward?
The school system instills fear of failure and a hatred of it. Barring an astronomical mistake that leads to nuclear war, there’s nothing that can’t be salvaged when someone trips up. There is a great relearning that must be undertaken and part of that is owning mistakes and ignorance and trying to do better next time. Those who aren’t on that train are gonna be in the dark for the rest of their lives.
Baby Boomers were generally very bad at passing on knowledge to their kids. It’s not just giving bad or outdated advice but also outright not informing them on general things they should know. The random things you’ll find when talking to any younger generation member in regards to information or skills they just plain didn’t even realize was an option, could be considered, or existed in the first place, is not an uncommon experience.
I’d say maybe it was the Boomers parents who failed them, but enough arm twisting usually reveals the hidden information was there all along–it was just, for whatever reason, not deemed important enough to share.
I heard a saying once that you can judge how good of a parent you were based on how your grandchildren turn out. Not entirely sure how much that holds water but to you point about Boomer’s parent’s quality of parenting, that saying might shed some light on the answer.
First they neglected their children by failing to teach them, then they mocked them for not knowing the things they failed to teach. I doubt that particular form of abuse has many precedents.
“I’d say maybe it was the Boomers parents who failed them, but enough arm twisting usually reveals the hidden information was there all along–it was just, for whatever reason, not deemed important enough to share.”
I think this is by far the most disturbing aspect of the Boomer generation. They were indeed the first generation subject to raising by TV. But they were not entirely raised by TV. Their parents did have access to alternate information, and frankly a bit of cynical side that quite often goes overlooked. Much of that alternate information/view did not get transmitted beyond themselves.
For instance, many (most?) Boomers appear to have known somehow that MLK Jr was a serial adulterer. They seem to have had some idea of why he was in a hotel room when he got shot. However, it appears to have been almost a group decision to suppress that information to create a “hero” whose name would later mark bad neighborhoods all over the US.
I was appalled when I found out at post 30 what he was doing that night. When I asked online of self identified Boomers, most in my tiny survey did seem to know. I think the hard part is that it was almost a casual?? decision. Like there was right to make that sort of decision and it didn’t really matter. What mattered was unity or racial progress or something.
If my parents are anything to go by, it was some combination of their youthful we’re-going-to-change-the-world idealism and the later disappointment of the reality. They rejected all the practical “square” stuff about their own parents’ training, and then… found themselves having to return to being squares in order to make a living, raise a family, etc. They were deeply ambivalent about that, and that made them… really terrible about passing along crucial skills and info.
I’ve been dipping a bit into the early Gen X art era (before the clichés set in) and it really does feel like a lot of it is legitimate cope for abuse.
The seeking authenticity and the disdain for poseurs ultimately reveal a generation that wants something to believe in but cannot connect with those older than them because said older generation not only won’t look at them twice, they see them as little more than a novelty, quaint. They do not take their kids seriously.
And I think this is where the infamous Gen X attitude came from. I always wonder where the irony and sarcasm came from, and I think it’s actually a lot more depressing than we think. The truth is that it was a reaction to how they were overlooked and seen as not important–so they thought it would be a badge of honor to think that their life’s work is “whatever”, it doesn’t matter. In essence, they were trying to embrace how they were treated, reflect it back on their parents, and perhaps show that there was more to them than those old folks thought.
But that never happened, and it instead turned to bitterness as their youth gave way to adulthood, as any chance of control or power over how everything was crumbling around them slipped away, and how they are now halfway to a century old and no closer to being thought of as the adult in the room (outside of their own house, obviously), as the old generation blissfully continues to ignore their efforts to be seen.
I think this is why you still get a lot of posing from Gen X about how tough and independent they are. And I don’t doubt they are–they had to be. The problem comes with the fact that they ended up there in the worst possible way, and I fear that cynicism might never entirely go away. It feels like they’ll be trying to prove to Mom and Dad that they matter long after the Boomers are already gone from this mortal coil.
And I honestly find that sad.
“I’ve been dipping a bit into the early Gen X art era …”
Would that mostly be from the 80s, then?
I’m working on a post for Wasteland & Sky about it. It’s a bit complicated. But you can definitely see, if you look close enough, how their art goes through stages, and how it almost entirely evaporates by the end of the ’90s.
You’ve analyzed Gen X well. I can only offer anecdotes, but they match what you’re saying from perspective.
My sister in law is still trying to somehow process my in-laws. Friends from church are still dealing with parents looking to alternately ignore and then control situations. Heck, even my little Catholic parish is subject to the same generational dynamics. The Boomers are still firmly in charge and get millennials to do the work in at times a bizarre rehash of their own attitudes at 30. The Gen Xers in the background are just there, in the background as they always were.
That said, hopefully some of us are gaining some wisdom by 50. I am less cynical than I was. I’ve also learned to embrace the lack of respect. I am blessed to have also found God in those decades. God has many servants that nobody ever noticed in their earthly lives. Running groups/organizations is harder than it looks. If it’s God’s will to be in this generation, then there’s also freedom in that situation.
I wonder sometimes what happened here: it’s like the transitional generation between “children are assets because they can work on the farm/homebusiness/household maintenance” and “children are a status symbol because they’re expensive”. What happened in the middle there? I think it was, perhaps “children are an obstacle between me and my career fulfillment/self-actualization”.
It was a two-stage process unless I’m very mistaken, and boomers were themselves stage 1. The generation before them still worked, as children. All my great-aunts and -uncles told stories about the jobs they started between age 9 and 15: store clerks, bowling-alley pin monkeys, telephone operators, weld-checkers, secretaries (and that was in addition to milking the cow, feeding the chickens, and boiling the laundry in the yard)… legally or not, they all had jobs that contributed materially to supporting the family. Boomers came after that. Their labor was non-essential. They were useless appendages to their families. Probably why they did the whole hippie rebel thing. They weren’t needed at home. *Their* parents failed to pass on a lot, because their own lives had changed so radically between the 20s, when they were born, and the 50s, when they were raising kids. They went from four kids to a bed and a family cow, to washing machines and air-conditioned suburban houses, in less than 30 years.
I think you absolutely nailed it. This explains a lot.
I think you absolutely nailed it. This explains a lot.
“*Their* parents failed to pass on a lot, because their own lives had changed so radically between the 20s, when they were born, and the 50s, when they were raising kids.”
This is fair assessment, too of the WWIII generation.
“Whether kids were left alone to be easy game for predators or left alone after school to raise themselves, the common thread running through the formative experience of today’s adults is having been alone.”
Speaking as a Zoomer, definitely true. Outside of school, most of my teenage years were spent behind my PC listening to a hodge-podge collection of ’70s-’80s music on YouTube whilst browsing the internet for a mix of personal hobbies and later political content. It’s actually how I stumbled on figures such as you, JD Cowan and David Stewart in the first place.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a two-parent household with some familial connections, though the family history was littered with an ample amount of skeletons in the closet, which led to any further discussions I sometimes tired to start out of interest being met with subtle rejections. I also have a pair of uncles who I haven’t seen since high school and (for all I know) have basically dropped off the face of the earth, with virtually no contact whatsoever.
Secondary school was a frankly bizarre experience: I spent five years going through lesson after lesson (with few exceptions) of apathetic, likely over-stressed teachers who pretty much didn’t care for their job and who’s only response to those who had questions regarding the way things were done was almost always ‘everyone has to go through this’, with a fair few variants of the ‘you don’t wanna end up at McDonald’s’-reply regarding college.
Outside of that (and a few family trips), there’s basically nothing. No real cultural connection to the past beside some historical curiosities. There’s a giant Catholic church literally on the same street as my parents’ house, and the first time I so much as walked in the door was at the age of 20. My first knowledge of the contents of the Gospels came from listening to the soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar.
We’ve got some serious work to do…
I had a great experience growing up in the 90s, parents who loved me, a mom who stayed home to raise us, a good Christian school. There was a lot of sitting in front of the TV and maybe retail therapy, but overall I dodged a lot of the bullets, and have much to be thankful for. But I reached adulthood in much the same boat as Gen Y as a whole, I think, that of being unsure of my purpose and lacking clear direction.
Thinking about this, I believe much of the problem is that the way we were raised as a generation was too open-ended. My parents didn’t, couldn’t really, through no particular fault of their own, give me any real vision for who I was or what I should do. Do good in school, go to college, get a job, ???, profit! I was just told to do the same thing they did. Yet they grew up, and I didn’t. Something was missing.
By the time I was an adult I felt like I couldn’t grow up because there wasn’t anything to grow into. I’m in my mid-thirties and have two kids and I still constantly feel like I’m flailing and have no idea how to be an adult because nobody ever taught me. Of course interpersonal failings are just one aspect of it, much of it is environmental – from a lifetime of being poisoned by microplastics and phytoestrogens and toxic food, to the fact my entire generation is a live test subject of psychological manipulation and over-stimulation at the hands of novel technology.
Yeah, Boomers failed us, but it feels like the tip of a much more malevolent iceberg constructed of the combined interests of international finance and big business, mass media, and technocracy. Gen Y got run over by the Machine going at full throttle, and the consequences have been so expansive that just trying to dissect it all feels like an impossible undertaking.