I'll be 60 this year. So that makes me a leading edge Gen Xer. Around 1990, when I was working two jobs and hoofing it all over town because I didn't have a car, I didn't much care for the slacker label affixed to my generation by the boomers. So I have been careful not to give the younger generations shit about not wanting to work or whatever. When I was 20 years old and rented my first apartment, it was $250 a month, and I was being paid $200 a week. It was at least manageable. The cost of living now is insane, and I don't know how young people do it.
That's not a lot of money when rents are up to a thousand a month. Just because they're 20 doesn't mean they can live for free. Why do you think so many kids have to stay home until they're in their mid-20s now? The housing market has priced them out.
My first apartment was in a house that had been broken up into separate residences. The elderly couple who owned the house were my landlord and landlady. There were more expensive options if I had been willing to have roommates, but I was coming out of my parents house after a chaotic childhood in an 1100 ft² house with five kids 😂 So nothing doing on that score.
I think the reason that a lot of younger people are priced out of the marketplace is that the kind of arrangements that were available for me in 1985 simply aren't anymore. Most apartments are owned by conglomerates, not by individual landlords who live on site. In fact, looking back at most of the apartments I've lived in on Zillow, A lot of them were bought by big companies and redone, and they rent for a lot more than they did when I was living in them.
Thank you for sharing this thoughtful and reflective essay. As a late boomer, I felt informed not condemned by the tone of the writing which opened up doors for thoughtful sharing between generations. In this spirit, I hope, may I suggest that all of us are the products of social environment in which we developed as people. In my case, I have had a privileged life in a WEIRD country during a time of “progress” and a growing economy fuelled by billions of person years of work derived from fossil fuels. I thought I was well educated and well informed, but, although not unaware of the downsides of this western economic system, it is only in the years since Covid that I have realised how blinkered my view on reality was. Now, I know that my life has been largely wasted chasing false gods that were societally determined. Most of my generation and that following are likely to be in the same boat. I seek not to avoid responsibility for trashing the biosphere and your futures but, in the spirit of your words, to explain how blind we have been.
Our “developed” social and economic system is a human construct that is fundamentally broken, flawed and corrupt at its very core. We knew this from the seventies on, but ignored the warnings. This system will soon break down and there are many signs that the “Great Simplification” (sensu Nate Hagens) has begun. Your generation will bear the brunt of this, for which I beg forgiveness in advance. But you are also the generation which can build something better, more grounded and more socially cohesive.
Obtain the power you need, organise via the social media systems you are expert in and give yourselves a future which you can believe in.
There was real momentum in the Obama years behind recalibrating the US economy to account for the value of wise resource stewardship into our idea of "economic health," and I think that such a correction is still the first thing that has to happen to impact the spiral of generational malaise you're describing. We are at that nexus of increasing technological prowess and faltering institutions that forces generations to reconsider the structure and rules of the game or allow the game to play us. If the concept of rational behavior remains limited by "preferences" without accounting for the human capacity to account for long-term consequences in our essential sensibilities, and the concept and measurement of national accounts continues to neglect accounting for the cost of pollution and destruction (to balance the value of natural systems operating with integrity), at this critical juncture, we will get steamrolled by the consequences of systems our forefathers put in place in a very different context, and it will be our own fault.
Thank you for writing this. I feel seen and heard, because I am not yet of legal drinking age and yet I wake up every morning at six, turn on the news and hear about the world falling down around me. Then I go, wow. And I go eat my breakfast. Then I come home and have to resist breaking down, because it’s all insane. I’m doing my best to prep, and best of luck to you, too.
Your youth I is happening to you RIGHT NOW. I don’t know what your generation’s great things are, but I do know that if Satan’s greatest trick was convincing the world he doesn’t exist, his second-greatest was convincing the world that the Internet brings us together. You’ll never learn what the great things of today are until you put down your phone and find out.
And yeah, I know I’m being hypocritical right now. I’m 60. I can do what I want. So can you.
I was born in late 1964, which makes me a latter-day boomer, or just less then 7 weeks early for Gen X (which is how I identify). This is an excellent summary of your generation’s woes, and it’s to be taken seriously, but I also think it’s fair to point out that every generation has their woes.
Gen X had to deal with Reagan; possible instantaneous vaporization if a panicky Soviet junior officer misread a radar screen; AIDS back before there were any treatments whatsoever; blatant homophobia (things were so backward that transphobia wasn’t even on the map as something you could do because nobody knew anything at all about transgender issues); and even though DC, where I lived when I was your age, was cheap, it was also overrun with crack and PCP. And everyone I knew was just out of college and making next to nothing and except for cheap beer, most of our calories came from Top Ramen.
But there were also some pretty great things, like live shows at the 9:30 Club on F Street; midnight movies; dancing all night to Detroit house (a totally new thing); Milan Kundera (look him up); learning to code (another totally new thing); De La Soul; “Paul’s Boutique;” R.E.M.; “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back”; the video rental store; self-published fanzines; and thousands of other things that would require dozens of their own Substacks to reminisce over.
But you don’t need, to quote LCD Soundsystem, “borrowed nostalgia for the unrembered eighties.”
A lot of this applies to millennials (like myself) as well. I think Z is angrier and more liberal. Millennials are just a SMIDGE better on the education front from growing up with the Dewey decimal system but I am pretty sure we’re all about as mentally punch-drunk at this point.
Reminds me of the snarky piece I did on the ‘24 election:
I was born in 1970 (Gen X?). All of these feelings and experiences are familiar. My parents divorced when I was 5 and I grew up with a single mother who was also a drug addict. Despite all fairy tales to the contrary, my parents (boomers?) who grew up in the 50s (supposedly the greatest generation!) came from completely dysfunctional families. Which explains all the drugs they did in the 60's and why they are fucking things up today, I suppose. Point is no generation has an easy go of it. The realities of life hit hard and fast. Nothing is easy, nothing is given out. We did not have the internet and social media to blame, but we did have our own counter-cultural movements and distractions (punk, heavy-metal, grunge, etc.). I spent a good chuck of my teens and early 20s blaming everyone else before finally getting my shit together. I suppose its a right a passage?
"mindset gurus who encourage us to see the joy in less" - this reminds me of the "Satoshi" generation in Japan born after the 90s crash, where you basically give up on trying to change the world and focus on your personal happiness and friendships.
If you are younger than 25, you are unusually wise.
Going out and making your way has always been challenging for young people. You have to engage, you have to pick yourself up and keep going. You can't quit.
Here's some unasked for advice. Notice how simple and natural all this is:
You should distinguish between "liberal" and "lefty". The right wing propaganda machine conflates "liberal", "left-wing", "progressive", "socialist", and "communist" into a single deplorable lump, but that's just intentional intellectually lazy name calling.
Our nation was founded by Liberals (although the term didn't acquire political context until the next century); the Conservatives were (and still are) the Tories, preferring a monarchic oligarchy and a state religion. Liberal politics brought us the Emancipation Proclamation and the Constitutional Amendments guaranteeing civil rights and the right of women to vote. More recently, they brought us the Civil Rights and Voting Acts - and in those days, Republicans were still the party of Lincoln - almost 90% of Republicans in Congress voted for them. It's the current so-called "Republicans" who are RINOs.
"Merit" is an amorphous term, impossible to quantify in any given situation, and largely in the eyes of the beholder. "Ability" is equally hard to quantify, and can only be demonstrated by challenge and response. "Performance" and "accomplishment", on the other hand, are more readily quantified, and are important components of qualification, even though they're not always accurately assessed. But accomplishments in high school are no guarantee of success in college; accomplishments in college are poor predictors of job performance in the real world. As a result, personality, social skills, appearance, and compatibility with a n interviewer have more to do with landing a job than 'merit".
So the world has never been "merit-based", regardless of how comfortable the term seems. One need only look at the current administration. They righteously (and speciously) characterize the attack on DEI as the return of merit-based hiring, while appointing completely unqualified and incompetent people to the highest positions in government.
I'll be 60 this year. So that makes me a leading edge Gen Xer. Around 1990, when I was working two jobs and hoofing it all over town because I didn't have a car, I didn't much care for the slacker label affixed to my generation by the boomers. So I have been careful not to give the younger generations shit about not wanting to work or whatever. When I was 20 years old and rented my first apartment, it was $250 a month, and I was being paid $200 a week. It was at least manageable. The cost of living now is insane, and I don't know how young people do it.
That's not a lot of money when rents are up to a thousand a month. Just because they're 20 doesn't mean they can live for free. Why do you think so many kids have to stay home until they're in their mid-20s now? The housing market has priced them out.
My first apartment was in a house that had been broken up into separate residences. The elderly couple who owned the house were my landlord and landlady. There were more expensive options if I had been willing to have roommates, but I was coming out of my parents house after a chaotic childhood in an 1100 ft² house with five kids 😂 So nothing doing on that score.
I think the reason that a lot of younger people are priced out of the marketplace is that the kind of arrangements that were available for me in 1985 simply aren't anymore. Most apartments are owned by conglomerates, not by individual landlords who live on site. In fact, looking back at most of the apartments I've lived in on Zillow, A lot of them were bought by big companies and redone, and they rent for a lot more than they did when I was living in them.
Thank you for sharing this thoughtful and reflective essay. As a late boomer, I felt informed not condemned by the tone of the writing which opened up doors for thoughtful sharing between generations. In this spirit, I hope, may I suggest that all of us are the products of social environment in which we developed as people. In my case, I have had a privileged life in a WEIRD country during a time of “progress” and a growing economy fuelled by billions of person years of work derived from fossil fuels. I thought I was well educated and well informed, but, although not unaware of the downsides of this western economic system, it is only in the years since Covid that I have realised how blinkered my view on reality was. Now, I know that my life has been largely wasted chasing false gods that were societally determined. Most of my generation and that following are likely to be in the same boat. I seek not to avoid responsibility for trashing the biosphere and your futures but, in the spirit of your words, to explain how blind we have been.
Our “developed” social and economic system is a human construct that is fundamentally broken, flawed and corrupt at its very core. We knew this from the seventies on, but ignored the warnings. This system will soon break down and there are many signs that the “Great Simplification” (sensu Nate Hagens) has begun. Your generation will bear the brunt of this, for which I beg forgiveness in advance. But you are also the generation which can build something better, more grounded and more socially cohesive.
Obtain the power you need, organise via the social media systems you are expert in and give yourselves a future which you can believe in.
There was real momentum in the Obama years behind recalibrating the US economy to account for the value of wise resource stewardship into our idea of "economic health," and I think that such a correction is still the first thing that has to happen to impact the spiral of generational malaise you're describing. We are at that nexus of increasing technological prowess and faltering institutions that forces generations to reconsider the structure and rules of the game or allow the game to play us. If the concept of rational behavior remains limited by "preferences" without accounting for the human capacity to account for long-term consequences in our essential sensibilities, and the concept and measurement of national accounts continues to neglect accounting for the cost of pollution and destruction (to balance the value of natural systems operating with integrity), at this critical juncture, we will get steamrolled by the consequences of systems our forefathers put in place in a very different context, and it will be our own fault.
Thank you for writing this. I feel seen and heard, because I am not yet of legal drinking age and yet I wake up every morning at six, turn on the news and hear about the world falling down around me. Then I go, wow. And I go eat my breakfast. Then I come home and have to resist breaking down, because it’s all insane. I’m doing my best to prep, and best of luck to you, too.
Your youth I is happening to you RIGHT NOW. I don’t know what your generation’s great things are, but I do know that if Satan’s greatest trick was convincing the world he doesn’t exist, his second-greatest was convincing the world that the Internet brings us together. You’ll never learn what the great things of today are until you put down your phone and find out.
And yeah, I know I’m being hypocritical right now. I’m 60. I can do what I want. So can you.
There's one thing and only one thing standing between my 3 gen z'ers and success: those bloody phones.
I was born in late 1964, which makes me a latter-day boomer, or just less then 7 weeks early for Gen X (which is how I identify). This is an excellent summary of your generation’s woes, and it’s to be taken seriously, but I also think it’s fair to point out that every generation has their woes.
Gen X had to deal with Reagan; possible instantaneous vaporization if a panicky Soviet junior officer misread a radar screen; AIDS back before there were any treatments whatsoever; blatant homophobia (things were so backward that transphobia wasn’t even on the map as something you could do because nobody knew anything at all about transgender issues); and even though DC, where I lived when I was your age, was cheap, it was also overrun with crack and PCP. And everyone I knew was just out of college and making next to nothing and except for cheap beer, most of our calories came from Top Ramen.
But there were also some pretty great things, like live shows at the 9:30 Club on F Street; midnight movies; dancing all night to Detroit house (a totally new thing); Milan Kundera (look him up); learning to code (another totally new thing); De La Soul; “Paul’s Boutique;” R.E.M.; “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back”; the video rental store; self-published fanzines; and thousands of other things that would require dozens of their own Substacks to reminisce over.
But you don’t need, to quote LCD Soundsystem, “borrowed nostalgia for the unrembered eighties.”
Thank you for writing this.
Great read!
A lot of this applies to millennials (like myself) as well. I think Z is angrier and more liberal. Millennials are just a SMIDGE better on the education front from growing up with the Dewey decimal system but I am pretty sure we’re all about as mentally punch-drunk at this point.
Reminds me of the snarky piece I did on the ‘24 election:
https://open.substack.com/pub/noelkeith/p/theres-no-sense-in-the-nonsensical?r=4c7psw&utm_medium=ios
Well considered and interesting. Thank you.
Thanks for sharing! I can totally relate.
I was born in 1970 (Gen X?). All of these feelings and experiences are familiar. My parents divorced when I was 5 and I grew up with a single mother who was also a drug addict. Despite all fairy tales to the contrary, my parents (boomers?) who grew up in the 50s (supposedly the greatest generation!) came from completely dysfunctional families. Which explains all the drugs they did in the 60's and why they are fucking things up today, I suppose. Point is no generation has an easy go of it. The realities of life hit hard and fast. Nothing is easy, nothing is given out. We did not have the internet and social media to blame, but we did have our own counter-cultural movements and distractions (punk, heavy-metal, grunge, etc.). I spent a good chuck of my teens and early 20s blaming everyone else before finally getting my shit together. I suppose its a right a passage?
https://www.mattball.org/2024/04/how-to-make-life-better.html
As a 30 year old, most of this applies to me too.
"mindset gurus who encourage us to see the joy in less" - this reminds me of the "Satoshi" generation in Japan born after the 90s crash, where you basically give up on trying to change the world and focus on your personal happiness and friendships.
Thanks man for saying this. About to comment and say the same but you already put it perfectly
If you are younger than 25, you are unusually wise.
Going out and making your way has always been challenging for young people. You have to engage, you have to pick yourself up and keep going. You can't quit.
Here's some unasked for advice. Notice how simple and natural all this is:
1. Put down the phone
2. Stop gaming
3. Be physical
4. Drop all lefty, woke politics
5. Drop all "woe is me" bullshit
Signed,
boomer married to an x'er with 3 z'ers
What’s wrong with liberal politics?! I agree with all but that.
Imagine, if you will, a society based on merit, on ability, on performance, on accomplishment.
There's a thousand other examples out there as to the failings of lefty politics.
Open your mind.
You should distinguish between "liberal" and "lefty". The right wing propaganda machine conflates "liberal", "left-wing", "progressive", "socialist", and "communist" into a single deplorable lump, but that's just intentional intellectually lazy name calling.
Our nation was founded by Liberals (although the term didn't acquire political context until the next century); the Conservatives were (and still are) the Tories, preferring a monarchic oligarchy and a state religion. Liberal politics brought us the Emancipation Proclamation and the Constitutional Amendments guaranteeing civil rights and the right of women to vote. More recently, they brought us the Civil Rights and Voting Acts - and in those days, Republicans were still the party of Lincoln - almost 90% of Republicans in Congress voted for them. It's the current so-called "Republicans" who are RINOs.
"Merit" is an amorphous term, impossible to quantify in any given situation, and largely in the eyes of the beholder. "Ability" is equally hard to quantify, and can only be demonstrated by challenge and response. "Performance" and "accomplishment", on the other hand, are more readily quantified, and are important components of qualification, even though they're not always accurately assessed. But accomplishments in high school are no guarantee of success in college; accomplishments in college are poor predictors of job performance in the real world. As a result, personality, social skills, appearance, and compatibility with a n interviewer have more to do with landing a job than 'merit".
So the world has never been "merit-based", regardless of how comfortable the term seems. One need only look at the current administration. They righteously (and speciously) characterize the attack on DEI as the return of merit-based hiring, while appointing completely unqualified and incompetent people to the highest positions in government.