Reality bites

IT HAS been a nagging suspicion that now may finally find confirmation. It has been said that those born in between 1965 to 1981 comprise the lost generation.

Sandwiched between the overachieving baby boomers and the exciting millennials, Gen X’ers are considered the average and boring middle children to their precocious elder and younger siblings.

The former experienced the ravages of war and rebuilt their societies from the rubble while the latter has the dizzying prospects of the digitally interconnected present and future in their hands.

As members of the so-called lost generation approach middle age with the older ones in the twilight of their years, is it now prudent to make that declaration about the sad fate of my gener at i on ?

A recent online article has been making the rounds lately that tried to placate the unenviable position of Generation X as a nondescript generation given our unremarkable achievements.

Before arguing that Gen X’ers now occupy high positions in business and are actually responsible for the technological and organizational innovations that everyone enjoy nowadays, the report also praised the demographic set between the ages of 53 and 37 as a group that is as tech savvy as the millennials.

According to a CNBC research, they actually spend the most time shopping online and are habitually addicted to social media compared to any other generation. It is curious that the worst observations that we hold against the millennials as internethooked online addicts are actually our own traits!

But the same article also cited a Pew Research that has found my generation to be less distinct politically than other generations.

Between the conservatism and the liberalism of the baby boomer and the millenials respectively, the Gen X’ers as a whole, take on a safe vaccilating position in between.

Queried on a host of items about their political beliefs, the Gen X’ers, on average, are found to take either a conservative or liberal position with almost equal chances giving credence to the observation that indeed, the generation is lost and confused.

I am reminded of the 1994 Ben Stiller film, “Reality Bites” and how it eloquently raised what it considers to be the main problematique of my generation. Caught between two dominant proclivities: pursuing the yuppie lifestyle and selling out, on the one hand, or refusing to participate in the phony inherited world created by their parents, the Gen X’ers are supposed to make tough choices between the two.

The romantic option was, of course, to follow Holden Caulfield’s rejection of the adult world which in my generation manifested in the grunge and slacker ethos. This was an anti-intellectual unconscious resistance very well represented by pop culture antiheros such as Beavis and Butthead and Bill and Ted.

Until, of course, the demographic traps set in and once rebellious rockers become parents themselves. The horrors of domestication then set in properly documented in the most recent sequel to the Before Sunset (to Midnight and Sunrise) movie franchi ses.

For all our generations vaunted rebellious cred, most of us, actually became just like our parents with the same inherited ambiguities and uncertainties despite our best efforts for control and micromanagement.

We ended up taking on the same phony duties and responsibilities that we abhorred in our youth because there are children who must be sent to school and ageing parents to take care of.

All these without the same kind of unbridled affluence and excess that the global political economy allowed during the heady 70s and 80s. As global capitalism experience greater cycles of bust as opposed to growth, the postmillennium era saw the demise of job security and tenure.

Actually, the millenial generation is also facing the same losing proposition in a few decades or so as global capitalism continue its downward spiral. It may even be the case that they will have it much worse with the looming resource wars and environmental crisis.

Every generation face the same question eventually. Are they going to continue with the path their parents’ generation laid out for them or will they blaze their own trail towards uncharted territories?

Generation X, my generation, in general, has abdicated on that chance to chart new worlds in favor of deadbeat jobs that pay mortgages and college tuitions.

The feigned confusion and cultural rebellion were no match to the material need for survival in an increasingly precarious world.

But there are genuine rebels in every generation who have turned their backs on these limited life options to choose truly alternative lifestyles.

There were already baby boomers questioning the hegemony of global capitalism just as their Generation X heirs continue to bring this struggle after the turn of the millennium all over the developed and developing word.

Now, they are joined by courageous millennials who, like them before, have come to the awareness that, across the generations, a radical overhaul of this cyclical system is our only guarantee of true and genuine change.