Boomers are guilty of inventing “generational difference” as a valid way of dividing people from people. Well, maybe Boomers were not the first inventors because there are signs of such nonsense in the 18th century habit of denoting “the last age” as so different from the wonders of the Enlightenment that the two “ages” simply had nothing in common. Still, it’s the Boomers who invented the generational cry, “don’t trust anyone over thirty” meme—or what would have been a meme had there been such a thing back in those antique days of yore.
But even back then generational differences were just so much nonsense. I remember lots of people my age who were as aggressively pro-Vietnam War as “we” who were definitely against it; as many go-get’em protocapitalists among my peers as among the “over thirty” crowd; as many folks in my age group who cared nothing at all about the ecosystem as folks who were all for the first Earth Day and beyond. By the same token, as I think back to the “Jews will not replace us” crowd at Charlottesville, I note that almost none of them seemed to be anywhere close to being Boomers—and the same for the crowd at the Jan. 6th event, for that matter—whereas the arguments against the Charlottesville rednecks and the Jan. 6th insurrectionists include many Boomers.
I have no basis for thinking as I do, but nonetheless I will assert that there are jerks and assholes as well as wise and compassionate people in every generation.
That’s not to say that generational differences are null and void as ways of analyzing how people behave. Shared experiences produce shared perspectives and behaviors. People who were faced with the challenges of the 1940s shared a commitment that people who grew up in the 1960s simply did not have. That difference in experience no doubt produced differences in behavior.
At the same time, the scarcities of the Great Depression and WW II compared to the foison plenty of the 1960s did not necessarily produce predictable outcomes. My stepfather, one of the generation raised in the 1930s during the Great Depression and gone to war in the 1940s, scrimped and saved throughout his entire life. But then, I, raised during the great times of the 1960s and gone to college in the 1970s, scrimped and saved throughout my entire life as well.
Scarcity vs. plenty did not produce difference in behavior.
On the other hand, my stepfather was much into command and control, whereas I am absolutely not at all in that ballpark—even in that game, for that matter. Is that difference a product of the difference between being raised in the 1930s as opposed to the 1960s? Maybe. Maybe not.
At any rate, I think that any generational truism, about any generation at all, must absolutely be undermined. Are Boomers selfish? Sure. They are also quite generous. Are Gen Xers grumpy? Sure. They are also quite sweet. Are Millennials lazy? Sure. They are also quite driven by values. And so on. Similarly, some Boomers are grumpy and lazy, and some Gen Xers are selfish and lazy, and some Millennials are . . . .
The only thing that the blanket application of generational notions accomplishes is to divide—and as the very old generation of Romans used to say, divide et impera, divide and conquer. In each historical period, for each generation, it’s always the same category of people who cherish such divisions. You can see who they are at a glance. Without exception, they chortle their way to the bank.
