Generations Update 2019

I’ve added a great deal to the Generations table I posted up in 2018, so I thought I’d post up an updated version with some addendum comments.  The new table reaches back to the Republican Generation (b. 1742-1766), which grew up during the Boston Tea Party, the American Revolutionary War, and the Declaration of Independence.  The Compromise Generation (b. 1767-1791) that followed witnessed the birth of the United States, with its new Constitution, Bill of Rights, and president, George Washington.  I have highlighted all subsequent presidents in blue, and all states, following their induction to the Union, in brown.  It’s interesting that the Fifty Nifty States took almost 200 years to assemble, and that the USA as it is known to Generations X, Y and Z has only existed for about six decades.

Speaking of Generation Z – I’ve rebadged them the Disoriented Generation.  I’m aware that this label may intimate some degree of criticism, but I observe that the “True Norths” of our culture are under heavy scrutiny, and that many are being summarily discharged in the name of “social justice.”  While some of these changes have yielded legitimate humanitarian advances (e.g. gay marriage), others have been casualties of persistent and commonly vicious memetic warfare, largely waged by antagonistic foreign agencies.  Our awareness of this insidious strategy is growing, but it caught our nation flat-footed nevertheless, and has succeeded in dividing it along the fault lines of identity politics, both reactivated (e.g. race relations) and new (e.g. gender identity).  The Disoriented Generation is growing up in a battleground of authentic and contrived conflicts that they cannot distinguish or evaluate without being assigned to some “group” that is sneeringly disdained by those with different views.  Fear of this outcome has already limited the lexicon of acceptable noises, inverted bigotries, and depreciated men, and the Snowflakes seem to have largely embraced these changes.  Whether their successors will follow suit remains to be seen.

I have changed the name of this younger subset (b. 2005-2012) from the Fluid Generation to the Andro Generation (or Androgen) for two reasons: first, as a nod to the increasing integration of people with technology (think “android”); and second, because they are growing up amid a cultural experiment that has recast gender identity as a strictly social construct without contribution from one’s genetic sex.  This idea has admixed with rhetoric that deems traditional masculinity (e.g. strength, assertiveness, competence, etc.) a virtue if it’s promoted in females (e.g. girl power), and a toxin in males unless it be tempered with ostensible feminist ideals.  While older generations can weigh these perspectives against their own experiences, they have become dogmas in the institutions that shepherd the development of today’s youth (e.g. schools, social media, etc.), and claiming “non-binary” gender identities has caught on with the Androgens like a social contagion.  Such claims will prove authentic for some, but children develop according to the most potent cultural carrots and sticks of their time, and the desire for prestige invites pretense and injury.  As time shall try, I guess.

-G