Nostalgia Goggles: Defining the Generation Gap

Hey everyone.  It's late and it's been kind of a long day, so consider my lack of enthusiasm for writing this blog noted.  That being said, here we go... (takes swig of Vanilla Coke)

Organization makes us human.  We love throwing things into categories, dividers, and boundaries.  Honestly, it is a truly identifying trait of mankind as a whole.  We categorize and organize everything.  Our computer files, our CD cases, our pens, our shoes, our phone contacts, everything.  We even do it subconsciously.  I am, right now, thinking about the cereal rack we have in the kitchen at my house.  I'm picturing the cereal boxes that I shuffle through at hours so early in the morning that I could possible do anything but subconsciously.  There are cereals that I don't eat (Chex), the cereals I do eat (Honey Bunches of Oats), the cereals I eat when the cereals I do eat are gone (Rice Krispies), and even cereals I eat when those cereals are gone (my brother's Raisin Bran).  I have never consciously thought about categorizing my breakfast cereals but, tell a brand of cereal and I can easily place it one of those four categories.

But, it doesn't end there.  We, as human, love, LOVE to categorize each other.  Oh Lordy, do we love to categorize other humans.  We have friends, good friends, best friends, spouses, fiancees, significant others, co-workers, bosses, associates, students, teachers, bullies, kids, children, preteens, twentysomethings, middle aged men, cougars, Facebook friends, followers on Twitter, user on Reddit, Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, liberals, American, British, Mexican, Canadian, French, Spanish, German, old, young, weak, strong, you, me, us, them, and the list goes on and on and on and on.  We have subcategories within subcategories all to describe a single person.

Say, for example, you see someone you know walking up towards you and you say, "Hi Joe!"  That's what your conscious mind does, but here's that your unconscious mind does: "Oh, that's Joe.  He is a good friend of mine.  I should say hi.  I hope he doesn't ask me to borrow my notes from class today because I didn't take any.  I wonder if I will see him at Bible study this Thursday.  He looks hungry.  Maybe we should go eat lunch together.  I hope we don't run into any of his lacrosse friends.  They eat the weirdest things.  We could go to Amigos because I know Joe likes Mexican food.  I should ask if he can afford some fast food.  Oh wait, he owes me twenty bucks as it is."  All of these thoughts can happen in the blink of an eye, but, in that brief time it took to think of all of that, you have categorizes Joe subconsciously into numerous categories: friend, good friend, classmate, needy classmate, fellow Bible study member, eating companion, lacrosse player, fan of Mexican food, and debtor to state a few.

Now, none of this is bad really.  In fact, the categorization of people is completely necessary for day to day operations.  We come into to contact with thousands of people over our lifetime and our brains would surely overload with we had to remember the personal data of every single person we know in order to know how to act appropriately around them.  Instead, we make shortcuts.  Oh, Amy is my boss, so I better not talk about the late night I had with my girlfriend around her.  Oh, Carl is a good friend of mine but he is much younger than I.  I shouldn't convince him to come to this rated R movie with me.  This all seems fairly obvious and simple when put practically, but that is simply because we do it all the time.  So much so that, by our adult life, we can interact with a myriad of different kinds of people with professionalism and grace.  Some people call it maturity.

So what does all of this have to do with what I'm talking about in this Nostalgia Goggles blog?  Well, I've thought about how we categorize and organize the people we know and one mode of categorization has jumped out at me as bizarre: generations.  We have defined the people that populate the Earth by generation for many, many years.  There is the Lost Generation, the Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation, the Baby Boomers, Generation X, the Millennials, Generation Z, the Beat Generation, the Stolen Generation, the MTV generation, and the list goes on and on and on and on.  These generation are generally used to refer to the group of people born with a certain time period and, more often than not, used by marketers and pop psychologists to pigeonhole an entire age bracket of diverse people under one unifying definition of likes, dislike, preferences, tendencies, and likelihood.  You may note the dismissing tone in the way I'm writing and that is mostly because, to me, the ideas of "generation" are fairly loose and generalized.

Take me for example.  I, by the year I was born, am considered to be a Millennial by the people who define such things.  I am supposedly "civic-minded," meaning I strive towards a better, more harmonious community around me.  I am also increasingly liberal and will most likely be more supportive of gay marriage rights and the legalization of marijuana.  For those of you that know me particularly personally or are in fact Millennials themselves, you can see how the definition of a generation can miss its mark.  This not to say that all the parts of the definition are false though.  However, each person in a generation comes with an unique set of personal experiences that exist outside of the fact of which year they were born.  I, being raised in Nebraska and living in a middle class community, have lots of individual traits and values that make me who I am.  Multiply that by the thousands and thousands of people that were born between the early 1980's and the early 2000's, people from all corners of the western world and from all socioeconomic levels, and you get millions upon million of factors that make up the so-called Millennial Generation.  How can one even think one can generalize an entire group of people like that with any kind of justified accuracy?

This is not even mentioning another aspect of society that is blowing this whole "generations" thing completely out of the water: the mother-freakin' Internet with a capital I.  For most people, the concept of a generation gap works kinda like the Grand Canyon.  The ever-flowing river of time eats slowly away at the walls of the generational canyon, causing a deeper and wider divide each and every year.  In my opinion, however, the generation gap in much more dynamic.  It is as if some parts of the Time River flows through the Grand Generation Canyon have some how been affected by some sort of time reversal beam that undoes the erosion and brings the edges of the canyon closer, instead of further away.  That "time reversal" is the internet we all know and to which we are extremely addicted.  The internet is an unique tool that has only been available for the more recent "generations" to use and adapt to.  The internet provides a glimpse into the world these past "generations" have been living.  The kids of the modern generation now have the movies, books, television shows, music, and all things cultural that are associated with their parents generations.  In fact, it has become fashionable and cool to be connected to previous generations.  It is much cooler to like Led Zeppelin and it is to like U2 and it is much more fashionable to wear bomber jackets than jean ones.  Instead of moving forward and away from the past, the members of the new generations are embracing the past with open arms and the lines of the generation gap are beginning to blur.

Of course, there are many things about people my own age that separate us from our parents, and I am in no way saying we are becoming more like them.  In fact, by most scholars' opinions, the current "generation" is spouting out some of the most independent people in US history.  However, I think that is clear that the so-called generation cap is not as cut and dry as experts will make it out to be.  I for one think that the similarities between generations are just as important, if not more important, that the differences between them.  The embracing of these similarities and difference is what should define a generation and not the similarities and differences themselves.  If that makes any sense.

Well, that ended up being much longer than I intended, so kudos to all y'all that made it through with me.  It is technically Wednesday now, so I guess this blog is technically late.  But, hey, I'm pretty satisfied by the way it turned out.  I hope this all makes as much sense on paper as it does in my head.  Either way, thanks for reading everyone!  I'm too tired to edit right now so excuse any major errors.  Thanks!