Does Generational Character Exist?
The answer is yes, unless you believe that the experiences people have don’t shape them.
At a given time and place, we experience similar things. In the America of the 30s, we experience poverty, desperation and the hope of FDR. In the 50s we have prosperity, but also stifling expectations of behaviour and a closing of possibilities for women. In the 60s we experience the flowering of youth culture, traumatic assassinations and civil rights victories. In the 70s we grow up during inflation and terrorism and the end of the good times. In the 90s we grow up in helicopter households, under stifling levels of supervision unknown to previous generations.
Character is formed by genetics and environment in concert. A generation which has one set of experiences is different from a generation which has another set of experiences. The average personality of Boomers is different from the GI Generation, the Silents, Xers or the Lost Generation. They grew up in affluence, expected smooth sailing, grew up in a world which worked and in which their youthful experience was a bend toward justice. This is very different than the Xer or Millenial experience of growing up in an economy which was growing worse than that their parents had lived in; and of the Millenial experience of a world where civil liberties beyond identity rights were actually constricting as they grew up.
To argue that generational differences don’t exist is to argue that nurture doesn’t matter, or to argue that there are no significant differences in the experiences of different generations in the 20th and 21st centuries. I will be frank: anyone who believes either of those things is wrong.
Likewise Generations make different decisions at different points in their life cycle. The choice of the GIs, Silents and Boomers of 1980 to abandon the Democratic party either because they were racist southerners responding to the southern strategy (and yes, that was a racist strategy, and the people who created have said so); or who voted for Reagan in northern Suburbs because they wanted those suburbs to stay white, and fuck the black people, made choices. White flight was a very real phenomenon: it is what those Boomers, GIs and Silents did.
This does not mean all Boomers/Silents/GI Generation types made those choices, but enough did to make the Reagan revolution possible. Being racist or keeping their suburban housing prices up was more important to them than anything else, and they voted those values. They voted repeatedly for tax cuts: again and again. You could not run except on tax cuts and expect to win. That was what they wanted, that was what they voted for, that was their character.
The massive deregulation of securites which took off in the 80s could not have happened while the Lost Generation were still the majority of decision makers and one of the largest voting blocks. They would not have allowed it, and in the early 70s when an attempt was made to get rid of the uptick rule (that you can only short sell on an uptick of a stock) was quickly abandoned because they came out ferociously against it.
Certainly they had their flaws. But that generation, having lived as adults not just through the Depression, but through the Roaring Twenties, understood that you don’t allow securities markets to get out of control.
There is far too much special pleading today, mostly from Boomers, that America just went to hell when they were the largest voting bloc and later, had the majority of politicians, “because of a few bad people”.
No, that doesn’t happen. They were complicit, they chose to vote racism and fear, they chose to vote, again and again, for tax cuts which hurt the weakest amongst us. They backed three strikes laws, they ate up Reagan’s bullshit about Welfare Queens. If they lost control of their political parties (a questionable claim in 1980, well that too was a choice: a choice not to participate actively in internal party politics.)
Generations have character, tendencies in common, and they make decisions. That some of them disagree with their peers does not change this, any more than the fact that many people in Democratic elections vote for the losing parties. A decision was still made and that decision reflects their values.
This does not mean there are not other causal factors: the failure of liberalism, the oil shocks, the strategies of the rich to fund an ideological apparatus outside the universities, the concentration of capital, the idiotic war in Vietnam, and so on. There are always plenty of factors: but generational character, and generational choice played a part, and until the Boomers have shuffled off the stage, and the Millenials move to the fore, our problems stand no real chance of being fixed. (I leave Gen-X out, because while on the balance our generational character is abysmal, and our most prominent politicians are people like Rand Paul, we are too few in number to really matter: the Millenials will take over from the Boomers, in the same way that the poor Silents were essentially skipped over in favor of the Boomers.)
Character is destiny, for nations, individuals and generations. And character is formed by the experiences we have.
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Thanks for this. A boomer myself, I’ve been arguing for some time that my generation has been largely responsible for mass incarceration, global warming, endless war, and the end of effective governance. Most of those to whom I make this argument refute the idea that a generation can be held responsible. I think it’s indisputable that my generation, enormous in size, has had since the sixties the ability to create the world we wanted, and we did, much to our shame.
While it is obviously the case that people sharing similar life experiences will tend to form similar perspectives and even characters, it doesn’t seem right to me to rip a particular generation out of historical context and hold it fully accountable for long-term historical trends which happened to come to fruition during their lifetimes.
The “every man for himself”/”he who dies with the most toys wins” mentality that the boomer generation is accused of epitomizing, is simply the logical end of neo-classical economic theorizing that began long before the Boomers were on the scene. Hayek was born in 1899, Friedman in 1912.
If the Boomers are guilty of something, istm, it is only of believing what their economists had taught them. If the Boomers have been corrupted, it’s the economics profession that is accountable, imho.
I would rather light a candle than curse the darkness. And when I cannot afford a candle I practice living the night with the moon and stars.
As a boomer I am a part of a long proud tradition of enlightened failure going back to the beginning of history.
I’ve learned to accept this sort of thing from being Southern. No matter what my actual views, practice or personal history, I am always the designated Racist and Sub-literate in any gathering of mainstream American middle class people. Same with being a boomer.
“they ate up Reagan’s bullshit about”
Or
“they ate up Milton Friedman’s bullshit on “greed always self corrects and businessmen will do the right thing or the market will punish them*” in 10 part series, of one hour apiece shown repeatedly [something like 10-15 times] on PUBLIC TV for FREE**.
Q: Who gets that kind of airtime for a singular political view?
A: Nobody.
Apparently, free lunches ARE available to Ayd Rand adherents.
*See:
Fukushima,
Rana Plaza factory building killed more than 1,100 workers,
Apple workers conditions in China
Amazon’s Warehouses Threaten Image…workers who fainted from the heat were fired.
Most Walt-Mart workers receive taxpayer welfare
**Who funded “Milton Friedman” “Free to Choose” series can not be Googled…hmmm, does that sound like we choose freedom?
I never voted for any of those things, not Reagan, not tax cuts. I did notice that the news media changed around the time of Reagan’s campaign, becoming complicit in the disinformation campaign as well. It was such a stark change that I remarked about it at the time. Talking heads chortling about Ma and Pa Kettle in the White House to be replaced by the supposedly more sophisticated Reagans. It was as if we had turned into an electorate of stupid wise-asses cheering on the class clown. Was it so important to be led back into a macho “We’re No. 1” attitude? I knew people who thought so.
Generalizations can lead to many different conclusions. “[Boomers] grew up in affluence, expected smooth sailing, grew up in a world which worked and in which their youthful experience was a bend toward justice.” So I don’t conclude from that statement that Boomers then decided to vote for decreased affluence, stormy seas, a world that doesn’t work, and a bend away from justice. Despite the whole “never trust anyone over 30” meme, the very oxygen of the time was that progress would continue because of our technical advances. So when the leading academic economists shilled shamelessly for neoliberalism, it was hardly surprising that people who don’t spend all their time reading the opposition didn’t recognize them for the mediocre hacks they were. After 40 years of failure, they’re still lauded as maestros and masters of the arcane formula that proves that the confidence fairy is our only hope of salvation!
In short, I can agree that there’s some generational character. I have great difficulty with the notion that the character translates very simply into immorality and stupidity.
I love these conversations most of all, and I know you’ve discussed this multiple times, but for the life of me I can’t remember any good books on this subject past Strauss & Howe’s The Fourth Turning.
http://fourthturning.com/
I know I learned about it from you, Ian, but are there any others that go into his kind of detail, showing how there is still plenty of hope in re: millenials, given how their growing experiences make them into GI Generation-style optimists + go-getters? Or is it just 1 big community revolving around that 1 book and its terms?
Pitting generations against one another is currently extraordinarily comforting to those in power. It’s also a driving theme and narrative in the contemporary corporate media.
Back in the day, pitting the generations against one another was considered deeply, fundamentally anti-social and uncivilized. As in fact the rebel factions among every previous generation including the Boomers were considered anti-social and uncivilized by their elders and by the majority of their own generations.
Something changed, between the mid-Sixties and the early-Eighties of the previous century, however, to make antagonism and antipathy between generations seem both longstanding and appropriate. What could it be? And why is antipathy between generations being marketed so strenuously today?
Any analysis will require some categorization (subjective “fact”). To say that different generations have different interests doesn’t itself pit them against one another, and to deny that interests may be misaligned within a society’s standard M.O. seems to delude rather than enlighten – e.g., Dick Cheney sent the young to die and lied to them as to why, as evil old men have always done, or that I need the tail end of the boomers to take retirement so I can advance, the old who have had their turn need to die to make way for the young (Ray Kurzweil notwithstanding (I recommend the documentary on Joseph Weizenbaum “Plug & Play” which addresses that among other themes).
My father, an early boomer, who both owned his own business and then worked for large corporations, cannot understand that there is far less opportunity where hard work can pay off than in prior years and seems unsympathetic to the plight of those who borrowed to sustain themselves because he does not recognize that the relationship between the citizenry and the government is so substantially changed. My grandfather retired with a good pension and health care, I will have only whatever is left of social security and medicare, and when I am old, I will have to keep working and hold a job that should go to a young person.
All that said, it is certainly worth evaluating whether a society’s standard M.O. should be transgressed or rethought or changed so that interests are less misaligned. But change like that has always come at a high cost (Egypt, in a current state of counter-reactionary terror, the latest lamentable example).
I think we can discuss the generational differences – it is perfect reasonable to observe that those who absorbed the shockwaves of the JFK assassination, or the Challenger disaster at a particular age of impression will approach the world with an eerily common attitude.
The thing is, it need not be interpreted as “judgment” or finger-pointing. We’re simply exploring ourselves to better understand ourselves. While it’s true that there are good and bad actors within each cohort, there still remains a certain theme as to how these good and bad things emerge.
Choices? As my dad once told me, “The last politician I voted *for* was Ike. The rest of the time, I was voting *against* somebody.”
There is a grain of truth to your essay’s original theme that the Depression generation understood that government had an important role to play, and by 80’s that lesson had been forgotten.
But it is also true that, as Noam Chomsky puts it, there is only one party in the U.S., the business party. No matter which business party we vote for, the business class wins. It’s not even clear that one business party is a lesser evil compared to the other business party.
My view is similar to Howard Zinn’s, that America has always been ruled by the 1%, for the 1%. The New Deal was an anomaly and FDR was a “traitor to his class.”
Then the cold war put pressure on even conservatives to treat the working class decently for fear they might turn against capitalism. After the Soviet Union collapsed, that fear evaporated, and the ruling elites were free to resume treating the working class like dirt. And that’s where we are today.
Back in college I read the biographies of famous people and came to a similar conclusion to Ian’s. My “theory” was that the key points in personal decision-making were the first ten year of adulthood and the last ten years. That’s a gross over simplification. For many people the effects of childhood or strong experiences in another part of life (say 10 to 20 years ago as an example) affect decision-making, too.
I was really disappointed to learn that Erik Erikson, the psychologist (not the Red State guy) had beaten me to the punch with a more rounded theory. Erikson believed that individuals went through similar stages of development but that the environment and events could impact that development as well.
Boomers like myself, for example, went through a terribly disillusioning era. Between 1969 and 1979 (ages 18 through 28, personally), we encountered the out of control Vietnam War with “the government” blatantly lying, the energy crisis, Watergate, a slow up in the formerly awesome economic growth machine and a few years of hyper inflation. At the least, it made us cynical. Too many just bought the new line, as Ian suggested.
Personally, I didn’t sell out on civil rights or civil justice but enough in my generation (Boomers) did to spoil things for the society. And they were convinced so they kept selling out. Until they had little of value worth selling out about. As Paul Simon wrote about a similar disillusionment, “All lies and gests/Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
I could be mistaken, but it’s my recollection that Reagan got more voter support from both the WW2 generation and from GenX’ers than he did from Boomers. As for generational “common attitudes”, my very Southern, right-wing Christian, Fox-watching sister and I have absolutely nothing in common, despite being only three years apart (we are both squarely in the middle of the Boomer cohort). During my lifetime at least, I think public opinion has been much more shaped by massive public relations and marketing campaigns than by real shared experience.
This wasn’t even always a bad thing — propaganda in itself is just a tool after all. For instance, contrary to the current “shiftless & clueless hippie” narrative, what really happened back in the Sixties was that a lot of Boomers actually bought into all that 1950’s “Truth, Justice and the American Way” mythology. That caused some major headaches for the ruling class — go google “Powell Memo” for their response. To put it simply, they deliberately and consciously changed the messaging. If you’ve been around for several decades and are paying attention at all, it’s hard not to notice this stuff, but the manipulations are so blatant that it’s actually hard to credit that it could be largely intentional. One shouldn’t underestimate what barrels of cash can accomplish, though, especially in a country that has always worshipped money.
In the mid-Seventies there was a very noticeable media-led wave of stranger-danger paranoia and post-Vietnam jingoism, both of which mind rapes continue to this day, with all sorts of negative ramifications. Then in the early Eighties, suddenly every other magazine on the newsracks was named “Money” or “Entrepreneur” and everyone was going to get rich by “Investing” just so long as they maintained a Positive Attitude (just like in the 1920’s, by the way — some scams never get old). This campaign is also still ongoing, and was overlaid in the Nineties with a layer of “New Economy” and “Third Way” bullshit. That was also about when I started to notice a lot of generational warfare themes being pushed, and all along the way what passes for the Left has also been kept distracted by various identitarian concerns. The fact that real issues were involved didn’t make them any less useful as divide-and-conquer distractions, but that’s a rant for another day.
Despite what I said earlier, there is something that rings true about the notion of generational attitudes. If you are too young to remember what life was like pre-Reagan, I can tell you that it really was a different world. Even those of us who were getting the dirty end of the stick could believe that progress was coming, and that makes a big difference.
Jeff Wegerson
January 7, 2014
I would rather light a candle than curse the darkness. And when I cannot afford a candle I practice living the night with the moon and stars.
As a boomer I am a part of a long proud tradition of enlightened failure going back to the beginning of history.
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Thanks for that; I’ve been racking my brain for a way to post my view of 68.6 years of experience.
If I may; I’ll ride the tail feathers of your wonderful post.
Born at the tail end of the baby boom, I never felt of that generation. Always wanted to have come of age at the time of Emma Goldman, the suffragists, the labor movement’s rise, John Dewey and progressive education, etc.
I work with lots of millenials and they seem to have bought in to the neoliberal line. I tell my children, born 99 and 01, it will be up to them to set things right after what my generation has wrought.
alternative view–for the most part–on the how Reagan et al came to power:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Walter_Karp/Reaction_Launched_LUS.html
You’re focusing on generational experiences rather than the system that causes the conditions that lead to those experiences and generate the zeitgeist. And, across generations under capitalism, it’s basically the same old gang of thugs over and over again — serving up what C. Wright Mills called “the main drift.” Of course people are influenced by their environment, but this is trivial in the power scheme. What matters is the system that endures.
You’re also a bit selective about what the Silents and Boomers did and didn’t do. Silents and Boomers, for instance, were part of the civil rights struggle, opposed the Vietnam War and imperialism and served for a while as rather drug-blurred opponents of what came to be known as “the establishment. ”
But that still doesn’t amount to much. Giovanni Arrighi’s “The Long Twentieth Century” tells a pretty good story of capitalism dating back to the fabulous city states of northern Italy. The pattern repeats over centuries, moving from Italy to the Dutch United Provinces, thence to England, the U.S. and now, maybe, China. Generations in this context just don’t matter . Capitalism extracts from each what it wants and moves on.
Do you have any sense that the population has any agency at all?
Ian,
You’re right about the existence of a generational character. There’s also a national one.
mfi
If there is an error the assertion of ‘generational character’ it is the error of conflation, specifically the conflation of ‘eras’ and ‘generations.’
Eras overlap generations. Eras are far more important to understanding than generations are, in large part due to that overlap. Social eras may indeed demonstrate distinctive character whereas generations may only partake of the character of the eras in which they are embedded, while expressing themselves through somewhat different interests or fashions.
Several generations, for example, have occurred since the advent of Reaganism, a political, economic and social paradigm that I trace back to Ronald Reagan’s first election as governor of California (an episode which is largely ignored in President Reagan’s hagiography.)
Reagan’s first Gubernatorial election was in 1966. He took office on January 1, 1967. His election was premised on these things: ending the student rebellion and making anything like it impossible in the future; bringing “law and order” to ghettos and barrios, halting and preventing uprisings therein by main force; and “liberating” California’s good citizens from the burdens of onerous taxation, regulation, and civic/social duties. Those premises still form a large part the paradigm of the era in which we live today, several generations beyond Reagan’s election as Governor of California nearly fifty years ago.
Several generations elected Reagan, not just one; several generations continue to accept the Reaganite paradigm today. Whether Reaganism (or Reagan/Thatcherism) will ultimately be definitive of the era remains to be seen, but by comparison, generational interests and differences within this era are essentially matters of fad, fashion, and marketing, not fundamentals of character.
markfromireland
January 8, 2014
Ian,
You’re right about the existence of a generational character. There’s also a national one.
mfi
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The national one is most dangerous/deadly…
> Something changed, between the mid-Sixties and the early-Eighties of the previous century, however, to make antagonism and antipathy between generations seem both longstanding and appropriate. What could it be? And why is antipathy between generations being marketed so strenuously today?
So that when the revolution comes, us Millies will tear our parents apart, instead of the 1%.
No, I think that was a choice the Boomers themselves made. They dissed their elders and said “never trust anyone over 30.”
@millicent
Exactly
@Ian
Most Boomers never bought the rhetoric and slogans of the rebels. Never.
I’m getting rather weary of generational generalisations.
There are cultural, religious and national characteristics but they usually vary widely among individuals. I was born in 1947 and that puts me in that dreaded “boomer” class. But I don’t fit the stereotype and I have no doubt that many others of that generation (with its artificial borders) are the same in their own way.
There is only one significant fact in all this bullshit about generations – it is playing the blame game and that is productive of nothing positive. If we are going to solve the problems we have then we need a positive outlook. Nothing else will pass muster.
If you want to sit in corner and cry poor fella me then go for it. Just keep the noise down to a dull roar.
Podargus,
If you want to solve a problem you need a realistic perspective, incorporating both positive and negative aspects. Keep your brightsiding to the office…