Originally posted by Fussbudget
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Gen X v Boomers
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostNo, I think the entire concept is complete bullshit and that the idea that one is of a different generation that one's parents blindingly obvious.
Originally posted by Bruno View PostFor now I think it makes more sense to divide the "generations" between pre- and post-internet if you want to make big generalizations.
My son is an early millennial, as I was an early boomer. Home computers arrived at about the same time as he did, the internet not much later. He doesn't remember a time without them. However they're not completely 'organic' for him. His childhood reference points (the most important kind) are TV and, especially, film. Ever since he was 11 or 12, he's asked me for 'viewing lists,' especially from the late sixties and seventies. The time just before he was born. I'm not sure he knows why exactly, I certainly don't. But I do know computerisation represents losses as as well as gains, so maybe the answer lies somewhere in there.
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostNo, I think the entire concept is complete bullshit and that the idea that one is of a different generation that one's parents blindingly obvious.
Sure 20 year cohorts acting as a group are bollocks. And obviously people at the different ends of Gen X grew up in very different settings. But it is obviously true that people of similar ages grew up in the same political and cultural environment, with broadly the same concerns and broadly the same approaches. So in the context of the story at the front of the thread it’s not a total surprise that different age groups have different breakdowns in the way they vote.
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Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
But it is obviously true that people of similar ages grew up in the same political and cultural environment, with broadly the same concerns and broadly the same approaches.
Thi8 is also complete bullshit, at least in the context of any diverse polity, let alone any region, continent or the world at large.
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Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View PostI had a response to something Rogin said but keep getting a 403 error. Sorry, Rogin
My mum grew up knowing one of her dad's brothers died in World War II. She was named for him. But that loss was tempered by winning the war, and defeating the Nazis who were then known to be properly evil. So her dead uncle was a hero.
But if you grew up in the 70s and a family member died in Vietnam that would feel massively different.
So I suspect "Generation X" in the USA is different to "Generation X" in Britain, where the cynicism is just rooted in common British pessimism.Last edited by Patrick Thistle; 22-05-2022, 21:05.
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For pop culture, which so many of these generational generalizations are about, it appears to make a difference if something happened when one was in high school vs just a few years later in college or wherever one went after finishing school and/or moved out of their parents home.
In that way, people just a few years apart will have a very different experience.
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Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View PostFor pop culture, which so many of these generational generalizations are about, it appears to make a difference if something happened when one was in high school vs just a few years later in college or wherever one went after finishing school and/or moved out of their parents home.
In that way, people just a few years apart will have a very different experience.
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Shows, films, cover bands, etc, are popular now partly because, in the 20th century, there was such a thing as “mass culture.” Kids, especially, were all largely consuming the same films, shows, songs, sports, etc. So even if only a fraction of that audience wants to remember it and only a fraction of the kids born later are interested in it, that’s still a huge audience.
I don’t know how that’s going to work in 30 years for stuff being made now for increasingly niche audiences across infinite channels. Then again, people are more passionate and loyal about their niches than they are for things that feel like they were made to appeal to everyone.
On the other hand, I get the feeling that bits of youth culture that were actually just local or regional used to feel more important to young people because they didn’t have social media telling them they were not important.
Like I was watching a YouTube of some very local TV coverage of high school lacrosse on Long Island in the early 80s. And the energy of the commentators, the players, the fans, etc, makes it feel like it’s the most important thing that ever happened, even though almost nobody not in that stadium cares about the outcome and very few people in the US, let alone outside of the US, even knew high school lacrosse was a thing.
Nowadays, I get the impression that kids are taught to believe that something like that only matters insofar as it connects to something that matters outside their immediate world - a national championship, college scholarships, Instagram fame, etc.
Perhaps my first point contradicts my second.
Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 22-05-2022, 22:05.
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- Jan 2015
- 9590
- Wrexham... ish
- R. + R. McReynold's Travelling Circus, The Jurgen Klopp Farewell Tour XI, Page's Boys
- Ginger Nut
The biggest bullshit of the lot is the generalisation that "you get more right wing as you get older". Can someone tell me when? Because as I head towards middle age, I'm finding the opposite is true.
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What about voting patterns by age and the fact that more than 3x the percentage of people over 70 voted Tory compared to under 25, and that figure increases for every age group?
How Britain voted 2019 age-01.png
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That's not evidence of change, though, is it? Young people voted for Thatcher in 1979.
I'd expect some increase in the average right-wingness of people, given that rich people live longer etc. And there might be some other effect too, but no-one even seems to think they need to show an effect, which for me would involve some longitudinal study.
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostAs people are continuing to use these flawed constructs without any attempt at definition, is there a general acceptance at the "generational" boundaries suggested by Pew?
e.g. if you remember the second world war you're whatever is pre-boomer.
if you remember the era preceding hegemonical neoliberalism in the west but not the second world war you're a boomer
if you remember the cold war but not the era preceding hegemonical neoliberalism you're gen x
if you remember the pre-smartphone era but not the cold war you're millennial
if you don't remember the pre-smartphone era you're gen z or whatever it is.
I think generational politics are mainly bunk and the main thing that impacts your politics is the assets you control and the resources you have access to - for example someone in their late twenties who owns their own house in Gresford is much more likely to vote Tory than someone in their seventies who lives in a Broadwater farm council flat.
That said I do think memory of specific world events or political alignments in the world has an impact on how you relate to the world in a more interesting way than simply in terms of voting patterns. I was chatting to someone who was a long-standing member of CND and they mentioned that their CND chapter was like all in their 70s and 80s. And though I completely agree with nuclear disarmament I don't view it as the same sort of tangible existential threat that people born immediately after the second world war do.
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Originally posted by 3 Colours Red View PostThe biggest bullshit of the lot is the generalisation that "you get more right wing as you get older". Can someone tell me when? Because as I head towards middle age, I'm finding the opposite is true.
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Originally posted by Bruno View PostAssuming broad awareness of "hegemonical neoliberalism" seems like a stretch to me -- a description of reality that most couldn't identify as such.
But the transition between the post-war social democratic consensus - which was cracking but still in tact in 1975 - of readily available state welfare, of secure employment, of mass trade union membership, housing as a universal service rather than an asset class - and the rampant individualism of Thatcherism/Reaganism - births two very different political worldviews.
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostThough I think that demonstrates why BLT's taxonomy is more robust than simple age cohorts.
Members of a cohort who are not only aware of hegemonic neo-liberalism but identify it as such will likely share a number of political beliefs.
Neoliberalism broadly refers to deregulation, getting the state out of the economy (setting aside the foreign policy aspect that many have also in mind). In economic terms I would guess there's more of a perceived continuity from pre-Boomer all the way to Gen Z: the awareness of living in a commercialized, materialistic world where everything's for sale and money is the measure of all things. I see present-day neoliberalism as an intensification of that rather than a wholly new thing. Neoliberal forces aren't actually new, they're coterminous with capitalism itself.
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Originally posted by Bizarre Löw Triangle View PostBut the transition between the post-war social democratic consensus - which was cracking but still in tact in 1975 - of readily available state welfare, of secure employment, of mass trade union membership, housing as a universal service rather than an asset class - and the rampant individualism of Thatcherism/Reaganism - births two very different political worldviews.
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Yes. This is very much a British context.
Originally posted by Bizarre Löw Triangle View Post
But the transition between the post-war social democratic consensus - which was cracking but still in tact in 1975 - of readily available state welfare, of secure employment, of mass trade union membership, housing as a universal service rather than an asset class - and the rampant individualism of Thatcherism/Reaganism - births two very different political worldviews.
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The demonisation of "socialism" in the US is about as old as the existence of avowedly socialist parties and candidates here, with it being particularly virulent in response to the post-Civil War labor movement, the election of socialist mayors in cities like Milwaukee, Eugene Debs getting more than six percent of the popular vote for President in 1912, and the AMA's crazed campaign against "socialized medicine" beginning after WWII. Reagan plowed very well furrowed ground.
One of its many continuing effects is the continued promotion by the right of the idea that the Nazi were Socialists.
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