How much of who we are is defined by the people around us? Who are these people around us anyway? Are we largely also defined by the generation in which we are born?
In 1991, Strausse and Howe published Generation, a book which describes an Anglo-American history which follows saecula (seasonal cycles).
1883-1900 Lost Generation
1901-1913 Interbellum Generation
1914-1924 Greatest Generation
1925-1939 Silent Generation
1943-1960 Baby Boom Generation
1961-1981 Generation X
1982-2000 Millennial Generation (Gen Y)
2001-present New Silent Generation (Gen Z)
I'm a Gen-Xer, which means in my youth I grew up with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in office. My political experience was shaped by witnessing the end of the cold war and the fall of the Berlin wall. My generation saw the inception of the home computer, the rise of video games, CDs and DVDs, the ubiquity of cellphones, the discovery and spread of the Internet for social and commercial purposes, dot.com businesses, MTV, grunge, hip hop music and culture, and AIDS.
My generation is preceded by the Baby Boom Generation, the veritable pig in a python generation, and succeeded by the Millennial Generation (a.k.a. Generation Y), comprised of digital babies that are accustomed to instant gratification that comes through instant communication technologies (email, texting, IM, Facebook, Twitter and such).
I like that we bridge such disparate generations. We're the glue that keeps families together. We have just enough historical context to be grounded and just enough savvy to succeed in the 21st Century.
When you cast your eyes upon the skylines
Of this once proud nation
Can you sense the fear and the hatred
Growing in the hearts of its population
And our youth, oh youth, are being seduced
by the greedy hands of politics and half truths
The beaten generation, the beaten generation
Reared on a diet of prejudice and mis-information
The beaten generation, the beaten generation
Open your eyes, open your imagination
We're being sedated by the gasoline fumes
and hypnotised by the satellites
Into believing what is good and what is right
You may be worshipping the temples of mammon
Or lost in the prisons of religion
But can you still walk back to happiness
When you've nowhere left to run?
And if they send in the special police
To deliver us from liberty and keep us from peace
Then won't the words sit ill upon their tongues
when they tell us justice is being done
and that freedom lives in the barrels of a warm gun
Punchlines
Well, that'll be the day...
...the earth stood still. Silence envelopes the world. Suddenly a whisper, the faintest sound you've ever heard and then the cataclysmic fumes begin to roll towards you from the distant horizon where you see a small speck: a bashful raccoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment