Here's a question related to how mysticism is often a mode of aesthetic: Why moderns scoff so easily at the superstition of zodiac readings, as though it's ridiculous that those who are born in the same 30 day time frame would have similarities on the average, and yet when we increase that time frame to a span of 10 to 20 years, and call it names like "Baby Boomer", "Gen X", "Millennial", and "Zoomer", it's now perfectly rational to expect this cohort to have similarities across the average? Is generational obsession simply star signs for a materialist age?
That's a really interesting question! I hadn't thought about it from that angle. It's a great example of something that people use to have explanatory power about their lives... whether those trends are real or not they at least occasion self-reflection.
Well, the thing is that when you get to 10-20 years you go through common experiences and have major historical events happen to you at similar ages. As an Xennial I was well into adulthood when the towers fell; a Gen Zer will have faint memories of the War on Terror. Boomers and Xers had a much easier time accumulating wealth, because the economy was in better shape. Millennials got raised on self-esteem books and were disappointed when the workforce wasn't the way they turned out. That's not really the case for people born in January.
I recommend Jean Twenge's Generations, which has enough graphs of employment and so on to make a good case.
That said it's absolutely true that a rich Millennial and a poor one are going to have totally different experiences of the same time periods; same for male, female, black, white, straight, gay, etc.
Here's a question related to how mysticism is often a mode of aesthetic: Why moderns scoff so easily at the superstition of zodiac readings, as though it's ridiculous that those who are born in the same 30 day time frame would have similarities on the average, and yet when we increase that time frame to a span of 10 to 20 years, and call it names like "Baby Boomer", "Gen X", "Millennial", and "Zoomer", it's now perfectly rational to expect this cohort to have similarities across the average? Is generational obsession simply star signs for a materialist age?
That's a really interesting question! I hadn't thought about it from that angle. It's a great example of something that people use to have explanatory power about their lives... whether those trends are real or not they at least occasion self-reflection.
Well, the thing is that when you get to 10-20 years you go through common experiences and have major historical events happen to you at similar ages. As an Xennial I was well into adulthood when the towers fell; a Gen Zer will have faint memories of the War on Terror. Boomers and Xers had a much easier time accumulating wealth, because the economy was in better shape. Millennials got raised on self-esteem books and were disappointed when the workforce wasn't the way they turned out. That's not really the case for people born in January.
I recommend Jean Twenge's Generations, which has enough graphs of employment and so on to make a good case.
That said it's absolutely true that a rich Millennial and a poor one are going to have totally different experiences of the same time periods; same for male, female, black, white, straight, gay, etc.