What's Next? A Brief History of Generation X

Where did we come from? Where are we going? Where are we now? These questions have plagued mankind for many generations, and yet, it seems, questions of time and place have never been more relevant than this day and age. Ironically, existential questions are now intrinsically intertwined with those of the collective consciousness (i.e. how did "I" become "we"?). How did we, the generation of great change, arrive at this point in history? Let's site the temperment of this point in Time. We are living through what feels like the craziest times EVER. The word "conflict" is a universally understood term and many people are conflicted. Many things are at odds. But history is a chain of events and the present does not exist without the past. Our generation is a RESULT of the choices and circumstances made by those who made decisions for our parents. Every generation is a solution to the previous generation's limitations.

The Baby Boomers were limited in their scope of vision for the future. Their lack of vision foresaw the invention of madness. The Vietnam War, the Housewife, the Ghetto, the MAN, the Hippie, the Cold War, the advertising, the toys, the sex symbols were all resulting factors of their generation and contributing factors of madness. They severed the very essence of togetherness that  many policy makers had worked so hard to uphold. The "Golden Age of Television" played a destructive game of show and tell with the American people, who, again, found themselves conflicted. Are we the democratic robocops of the world or the intrusive judgmental eye on differing ways of life? Is a soldier a hero or a villain? Is perspective everything? The Baby Boomers were torn apart by the dangerous double edges of such rhetorical questions, but CONTINUED to digress from REAL resolution. 


They had seen too much. Their bubbles had been "POP"-ed by the mainstream. "Popular culture," as it became known, took a note from "the hippies" they once ostracized.The youth started dancing their stresses and pain away with the arrival of the MTV Network and the advent of the music video. Of course, once an independent lifestyle becomes mainstream, it becomes detrimental. The glorification of the vices of "Miami life" confused the first wave of the "MTV generation." They began abusing drugs and desensitcizing relationships by romanticizing romance wiith larger than life stars and surreal movie scenes. It seems that after the war, everyone went "fucking" nuts! The G.I. Joe Act from decades before had created a schism between suburbia and the inner city ghetto, and the affects of popular culture on low-income "hoods" created several subcultures to perpetuate the vicious cycle of capitalism. They overpopulated the already over-crowded inner city and masked the problem by distorting hip hop culture, BLACK culture into something gaudy and materialistic. Meanwhile, the upper class increased their wealth. Big Businesses were on the rise again after an industrial collapse. And together, the classes, with their varying institutions of thought, continued to increase the birth rate...

And birthed GENERATION X. The most CONFUSED generation to date...

We may have discovered AOL and advanced technology, but the Baby Boomers saw TRUE LOVE. For that, they forever have one up on us. Generation X, the "Second Wave" of the MTV generation, is also the ADD generation. We can't focus on any one thing for too long because we have too many options. The Vietnam War, the first televised war, made the parents of Generation X insane. Women were fighting to get out of the kitchen and into the work force. Pedophiles moved into the neighborhoods. Veterans were drinking in cardboard boxes on street corners, raving mad about a system that had forgotten about them. Overworked fathers, still clinging onto the American Dream, became alcoholics. Psychology and Sigmund Freud began diagnosing after the fact. The time span of wars became highly concentrated and people lived in fear of the Soviets, of Communism, of Atomic Energy. Generation X was birthed into a world that worked on fear. Kids were kept indoors and in front of a TV, being programmed to obsess about "things" they didn't need to boost the suffering economy.

The parents of Generation X were being swindled by prospering "Mad Men." The TV became a baby sitter. The baby sitter became a gossip, attentive in all the wrong ways. And the advent of Home Entertainment became a new psychological addiction. Video games, Teen Dramas, Wrestling, Commercials, Hollywood...The Industry! Big TVs, big stereos, COMPUTERS! The Patriarchy, once upheld by the nuclear family, was now upheld by a new type of "digitized" Matrix! Sound waves and high frequencies from all directions blocked people from thinking on their own. Subliminal messages were everywhere and inescapable and the media, with it's negative overcast, pretended to be confused about Columbine, JonBonet Ramsey, Anorexia, armed robbery and unabombers when they perpetuated the insane images to begin with!

And so, Generation X, a generation born into fear, clung onto the fairy tales that the "Disney World" provided them. But cartoons "stopped being polite, and started getting REAL." Then violent. The "anti-hero" was placed on a pedestal as a protagonist, while supermarkets profited. Cartoons were used to advertise foods lacking nutrients and kids were more concerned with the toy in the happy meal than they were with the fat saturated burger. GENERATION X became obsessed with bringing to life a fantasy that wasn't real to begin with. We started making barbies and robots out of ourselves, without even realizing what we were doing! Divorce rates sky rocketed. It seemed the parents of the era of the first wave were late in concluding that fairytales don't exist. They were stubborn and couldn't give up on their American dream. They fooled themselves into believing they were making progress, despite the fact that their minds and their spirits were conflicted.


With depleting resources and down sizing, the Middle Class and their youth became the topic of debate. Politics became entertainment as Liberals and Conservatives took the stage, playing two sides of the same coin. And here we are, the second wave of the final current. A generation with so much potential for change, but no direction. We have no definitive stand points but progression at any cost. Knowledge, science, numbers, are the only universal truths. Religion is not the crazy glue for most families and communities that it once was. 

Today's youth barely pray and are desperately searching for their spirituality, often turning to basic Astrology as means for knowledge of self. So NOW... our generation faces our own set of double-edged questions. Do we progress in an unhealthy direction or regress to aid those suffering at the hands of neglect? Do we continue to seek enlightenment, perhaps to the defeat of morality, or do we remain ignorant behind the veil of comforting fairy tales?

We don't know. We don't give a fizzuck. "SHOTS,SHOTS, SHOTS!!!"

So, we smoke more potent marijuana then the hippies did. So much so, its legalization has become politically debated as a solution to yet another recessing economy.  We self-medicate worse than the first wave so we can escape the fact we're feeling pressured by the uncertainty of the future. And because its fun. Middle school students are drinking. High school students are fainting from intoxication. College students are dying, for the relationships they wished they had or that their parents had. We party to the beat of hypersexuality. Contraception is wide spread and necessary. It's also unhealthy and unnatural. And scientists are claiming that the end of the human being is close, with the nearing of the next stage of our evolution...Homo Evolutus. The World is over populated. China instituted the "one-child rule." Other countries let people STARVE. Water will soon be an expensive commodity and, if we are not careful, the endangerment of the middle class will be REAL. Socialism is coming to America and it's not coincidence that music videos have begun portraying the militia-state.


Learn from your past. We are NOT exempt from drastic change. We are change.... A beat poet was handed a lobotomy for dishing out the truth about the Vietnam War and politics. Now, the beat poets are heroes...and vegetables... Or dead. People should have heeded the warning of the concerned for the unaware.

Unfortunately, it's about time for a civil war.It's about time for a renaissance. It's about time for a reconstruction of the system. It's about time for self-awareness. In 50 years, we will be history. What will they be saying about us? They'll say we lived through terrorism, lived through cloning, lived to see the first Black president. What's next for Generation X? Z...the end, because no one can figure out why.

Coming full circle, how did "I" become "we"? Group think. Help yourself and afford yourself a life. Social entrepreneurs will see the future. They handed you a dream but remember you have your own. Resist brainwashing.