Mat Honan:
But Generation X is tired of your sense of entitlement. Generation X also graduated during a recession. It had even shittier jobs, and actually had to pay for its own music. (At least, when music mattered most to it.) Generation X is used to being fucked over. It lost its meager savings in the dot-com bust. Then came George Bush, and 9/11, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Generation X bore the brunt of all that. And then came the housing crisis.
Generation X wasn’t surprised. Generation X kind of expected it.
As someone who strongly identifies with this demographic (I was born in late ’69, right at the trough of the “baby bust” that followed the Boomers), I couldn’t disagree with a single thing Mat says here. Especially this part:
Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. It just wants to sit here quietly and think for a minute. Can you just do that, okay? It knows that you are so very special and so very numerous, but can you just leave it alone? Just for a little bit? Just long enough to sneak one last fucking cigarette? No?
Mat’s rant is response to (and links to) an editorial from a twentysomething Millennial posted in New York magazine. Read both.
I’m Generation X as well, and I promise you that, as a generation, we didn’t have it tough. Neither have the Milennials, really. The Baby Boomers lived through quite a few recessions, stagflation, the Vietnam War. The generation before them dealt with the Great Depression (i.e. First Great Contraction), World War II and Korea, and their parents had World War I, flue epidemics, etc. It goes on and on. Every generation of human beings from the first has had to deal with problems, and every generation since the first has probably had things just a bit better than the one before because of the one before. Let’s all stop complaining and just deal with the problems we face and do our best to build something that can outlast us.
As someone born in ’83, I’m ashamed of the sense of entitlement that people of my generation and the ones coming after me seem to possess. We are actually entitled to very little. Aside from basic human rights, there really isn’t much that we are genuinely entitled to possess.
And people in my generation (though by no means merely in my generation) have missed that fact. They’ve missed the fact that it’s not about what is being given to you; it’s all about what you do with the things that you have already been given.
As for tough times, everyone is on the receiving end of those sometimes. Again though, it’s about what you do with what you’re given. There’s a reason they call the generation that fought through World War II the Greatest Generation. Adversity breeds character, and while I do not wish adversity on anyone, I do wish we would embrace it more fully and accept its consequences when it arises, rather than trying to shirk our responsibilities while laying the blame elsewhere.
I’d previously thought I was too young to be part of generation X (1975), but I am going to consider myself part of it anyway. Because I’m used to disappointment, and try to keep my sense of entitlement as low as possible.
I am part of Gen Y and reading the original article I can’t identify with the writer at all. I didn’t graduate from University instead I moved countries right after high school because the job prospects would be better as a rock climbing instructor in Australia. I had some big wins in competitions and thought if I didn’t make it as an instructor I could take a shot at going semi pro. That dream didn’t pan out at all, I failed hard.
Instead of moving home to mooch off mummy and daddy I took an entry level office job and worked my way up from the bottom busting ass all day every day. I have had some shitty jobs to get me to where I am now but I now make a very comfortable living doing something I really enjoy because I worked damn hard for a long time. The sense of entitlement by the original author is astonishing and I completely agree with Mat. Maybe I am just an old bastard at heart but the world owes Gen Y as much as it did Gen X, nothing. I’m reminded of a quote from Denis Leary “Life sucks, get a fucking helmet”.