My Generation

[midnightpulp]

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In the 60's and 70's, many parents wanted to kill or jail their kids or send them off to a war -- pretty much any war would have been good enough -- or at least do the same to someone else's. There was real intergenerational warfare and anger, and it was a terribly stupid and selfish way to live and think.

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Why was there more intergenerational warfare during these decades? Did it have to do with the drug culture and the hippy attitudes or something? I guess to some degree I thought all generations had some intergenerational anger going.

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I would assume so. The values of late 60s youth was a radical departure from the "God and Country" values of the Brokaw's "Greatest Generation."

On a side note, Hippie is actually a derogatory tern coined by the Beatniks, which means phony Hipster.

I don't see a great departure in the mores from Gen-X to Gen-Next. To me, Gen-Next just seems more culturally apathetic, thinking the crap in their self-contained world as the be-all, end-all of quality. Also they think that world to be somehow unique when in reality it's a patchwork of appropriation from other trends.

For example, Emo music. I understand the concept of subjective taste and all that, but there's no way in hell one of those bands is as great as a band like "The Velvet Underground." But a whiny Emo brat will likely fight you to death trying to prove his stupid band of choice is somehow better.

I guess like all youth, today's kids don't really have all that much of historical perspective.

And remember, this is a generalization. Lot of knowledgeable 20-somethings out there.

[Kimbell175113]

That "60's youth" is a lot more removed from me than it seems. I sometimes assume anyone older than me remembers when Kennedy was shot, but really, my mom was born in 1964. Kennedy was dead, Sylvia Plath was dead (hey, it matters to me, but you can pick whomever, you know what I'm saying). By the time my mother was the age I am now, it was, well, the 80s, and that just doesn't carry quite the historical weight.

It's definitely true that I don't feel as connected to history, especially WWII, as the previous few generations. Conspire, or other young whippersnappers, confirm?