I suppose one needs to acknowledge that generational identity isn’t exactly new. In the age of identity politics, though, where membership criteria are crucial and exclusionary lines are drawn, capital-G Generation has taken on a new shape and form. And there’s been an obsessive attention to these birth-year categories as well. Generation Z. X. Millennials. Baby Boomers. If you follow any sort of media, you can’t go a week without hearing someone criticize or praise one of these “generations”. I won’t dignify any of them by listing what people say comprise their characteristics, because they’re all depressing bullshit. I’ll give you at least three reasons why:
One: they’re really about social class. Each generation supposedly comprises a group of age-range related people with shared experiences and interests. But tease apart any of them and you’ll see age has nothing to do with what’s being described. Young people are more invested in the environment than old? Please. Baby Boomers are making it tough for younger people to get by? Yeah, the problem here is home ownership (just wait until they die and pass along their mortgage-free houses to their kids!) as if there aren’t plenty of poor and exploited Boomers. Peel back the onion of each and every presumed characteristic or shared concern of a generation and you’ll find a class-based characteristic or concern. The young are fundamentally different in worldview than the old? As a 2015 survey suggested, “Millennials are just about as racist as their parents.” The imaginary characteristics of a given “generation” disappear once crucial factors like race and class are accounted for.
Two: how is Gen X different than Z? It’s really a marketing gimmick. Late Capitalism loves to do this, as Bill Hicks perfectly described, segmenting consumers into identities they can then sell to and persuade. “Gen Z has finally snapped over climate change and financial inequality,” a recent New York Times article excitedly proclaimed. How’d they snap? By purchasing “OK Boomer” merch to express their condescending disdain! Whereas in the past, perhaps “my generation” was a youthful way to express a set of ideas or a political stance, “generation” now is about differences and, indeed, antagonistic if not competitive opposition between. (Guess what Gen Z, money wins!)
Three: what an awful way to do any serious social or cultural analysis. Imagine focusing on the differences between 20- and 30-year-olds in the late 1400s. Or how about during the American Revolution? We live in a “larger moment” ourselves here. To reject the category of “generation” isn’t to deny or overlook that some age groups have experienced events in ways younger or older ones haven’t. School shootings come to mind. But to suggest those events prove to be defining characteristics of one group – and often one group alone – is, well, extraordinarily limited if not just sloppy thinking.
All three of these aspects of generation identities destroy solidarity. We’re in this social and political moment together, regardless of your age. So, let’s please end this ridiculous focus on generations? Crass behavior and self-interest can be found in any age. Same with collaboration and empathy. I sometimes like to think we’re collectively living in the era of a new Enlightenment and not on the cusp of a quick return to the Gilded Age. But in either case, we’re only going to rise above this moment or continue to perish together. It may be obvious, but we need to build shared lines and work towards our common interests without attention to age. The only generation we should be worried about is the one that accounts for all the living and will be.
