1 Retrieved /15/2017 on 8 from https://scholarsandrogues.com/2014/04/10/how-generation-x- will-save-the-world/ How Generation X will save the world What is Generation X? Maybe our last, best hope for change. by Sara Robinson You can’t blame Gen X for having had eee-freaking- nuff of the whole generational identification thing. Americans born between 1960 and 1980 (give or take a couple years on either end) have spent their lives squeezed in between two over-hyped cohorts who have consistently hogged the spotlight, the jobs, the money, the social concern, and all the other cultural goodies that matter. To the temporal north, there are the Boomers — idealistic, moralizing, hyper-creative visionaries who still can’t entirely let go of their youthful golden years when they were so determined to Save The World. To the south, X looks down on the Millennials, the over-coddled, over-hyped, over- connected Indigo Children whose future is vanishing before their eyes — and who are now being held up at the next generation that just might Save The World. Gen X just gets tired looking at both sets of overachievers. X doesn’t want to save the world. It just wants a decent job with benefits, some health insurance, and a reasonable place to live. Now that it’s hitting middle age, it wonders how it’s going to get its kids through college, let alone scrape together enough money to retire. Also: it’s not too keen on this whole generational thing in the first place. The Boomers may see themselves as some kind of epic history-changing wave, and the Millennials are permanently wired directly into their whole generation’s collective consciousness via their online social networks; but X has always had to go it alone. The idea that there’s some kind of coherent, unified group interest to be discerned from the arc of their lives so far is dismissed with a shrug. It’s just some Boomer marketeer’s sick way of making us look bad. Again. So what’s new? But that dismissive attitude just might be a mistake. Because these stories that we tell about the character and fate of generations are rooted in a far larger and more complicated historical story. And in this story, time and again at history’s biggest crisis points, the generations that are most like Gen X have been the ones who’ve stepped in — quietly, competently, expertly, without much in the way of fuss or heroics, at exactly the right moment in time — and actually did save the world. Let me explain. 2 Generation X In The Grand Scheme Of Things Contrary to the suspicion of a lot of skeptical Xers, these generational identities — Boom, X, Millennial — weren’t just conjured out of some deranged marketer’s trend-addled head. They’re actually artifacts of a much broader theory of change that was laid out by historian William Strauss and economist Neil Howe. In their 1991 book, Generations, they argued that American history (and English history before that) has been governed by a recurring 80- to 100-year cycle of Renewal, Awakening, Unraveling, and transformative Crisis — and that this four-phase cycle was driven by four distinct generational archetypes, whose unique characters, choices, priorities, and interactions each exert a strong tidal influence on how history unfolds. Briefly, these four archetypes are: > A Civic generation (for example, the Millennials, and also their GI grandparents). Civic generations are raised to play as a team, sacrifice individual rights for the greater good of the collective, and self- organize quickly into effective tribes. These generations are children during an Unraveling, and are called to remake the entire world anew when the Crisis hits in their early adulthood. They usually rise heroically to the task, branding themselves forever after as history’s golden children. After the crisis, they are the supremely confident midlife managers of the post-Crisis Renewal — a confidence that is shaken when their own Prophet children rebel against the world they made come the Awakening. > An Artist generation (for example, the Silent retirees of today, and also the post-Millennial Homeland generation, which includes the kids now under the age of 15). Artists are the sheltered children of the Crisis, the conforming young adults of the Renewal, and the midlife enablers who open the doors to the next Awakening. They are sensitive, thoughtful, committed to justice and social improvement, and very invested in building and improving strong systems of every kind. Mad Men is, more than anything, the story of the Silent Generation in their grey-flannel-suited heyday. Bill Moyers and Martin Luther King revealed the Silents at their wonky, hopeful best; Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld showed them at their technocratic worst. The Artists put forward a powerful social critique that inspires their younger siblings to question the old order, and to affirm the rights of the individual against the smothering collectivism of the aging Civics. > A Prophet generation (for example, the Boomers — but also the Missionary generation that produced FDR, Jane Addams, Winston Churchill; and the Transcendental Generation of Whitman, Lincoln, and Alcott before that). These generations, raised in the bright optimism of the Renewal, are visionary, idealistic, individualistic, and typically aggressively confrontational and uncompromising in their politics. In their youth, they always experiment with new religions, unconventional sexual arrangements, and drugs. More importantly: even as they begin actively dismantling the old social, political, and economic order brought about by their Civic parents — a task they will begin in young adulthood, and finish in late midlife — they also create original and compelling new visions for the world that will be shaped in the next Crisis. > A Nomad generation (for example, Generation X, the Lost Generation of the early 20th Century, and the Gilded Generation of the mid-1800s). Nomads are the children of the Awakening — a time of huge social ferment and laissez-faire parenting. Since they (more than any other generation) pretty much raise themselves, they learn early to question big utopian visions and distrust authority (both parents and government). They enter adulthood during the Unraveling, when society’s institutions are being actively torn apart by the two generations ahead of them. Immensely practical and deeply skeptical of institutions of any kind — because they come of age never seeing any of them function properly — Nomad generations prefer real results to high-flown theory, and tend to rely most heavily on themselves and a few close friends. 3 Nomad generations have produced our greatest novelists (including Hawthorne, Twain, and Hemingway) and also our greatest generals (Washington, Grant, Lee, Eisenhower, and Patton). They don’t open frontiers — Prophet generations generally do that — but they’re almost always the first ones to move out onto the new territory to create permanent settlements, build communities, raise families, and establish civilization where none existed before. Whether it’s the American West or the World Wide Web, the first barns and schools and businesses in any new wilderness have historically raised by intrepid, self- sufficient Nomads. A Coming Season of Change In their 1997 book, The Fourth Turning (the most concise book to read if you want to understand more about this theory), Strauss and Howe explain that every 80 years or so, we come to a moment where a certain constellation of generational types stacks up in a way that’s ideally suited to massive, long-range change on a scale that’s possible at no other time. When it does, a Crisis era begins — an era in which a new order comes into being, transforming the entire world in a matter of 15 to 20 years. This moment can happen only when the generations line up just like so: A Prophet generation — in this case, the Boomers — approaches elderhood. This cohort has spent 40 years dismantling the old system (in our case, the postwar world that rose out of the ashes of the Depression and WWII, which defined the last Crisis era), and sketching out the blueprints for what a new and better order might look like. They are are sure of their visions — and as age overtakes them, they become increasingly determined to launch one last crusade before they pass. A Nomad generation — in this case, X — slouches into middle age. This group has lived their entire lives in a country where nothing has ever worked right — in fact, things have been breaking down year over year since they were born. Learning to survive in an environment of accelerating social and economic decay has made them intensely pragmatic realists who, more than any other generation, know how to kick ass, take names, and get things done. While the Boomers talk, Xers do. As they get older, they become increasingly determined to restore accountability, rebuild what they can, and leave something better for their kids. And to a greater degree than either of the other generations, they both understand what needs to be done, and possess the practical skills required to do it. A Civic generation — in this case, the Millennials — arrives at adulthood. They have no allegiance to a dead past that has nothing to offer them; all their hopes lie in a future that will not come to pass unless they are willing to fight for it with everything they have. They’re not big on philosophy (and a bit too cavalier with rights and liberties, which is their dark side), and they’re too young to have much in the way of skills; but with Prophets to guide them toward the goal and Nomads to offer them solid, trustworthy management, they’ll self-organize and deliver in a way that the other two generations find absolutely incredible to watch.