Longtime readers will know Generation Y as the gaslit generation. Baby Boomers instilled them with a false view of reality that left them unprepared to survive in the real world. As a result, the “mugged by reality” experience is a Gen Y touchstone.
Now that Gen Y has hit middle age, the realization is becoming inescapable—even for them—that the the lifelong job, the nice house in the suburbs, and the loving wife and 2.1 kids aren’t materializing. It is what it is, and no one is coming to help.
It was to be hoped that significant numbers of this cohort would come to terms with the facts and accept their fated role as chroniclers of the pre-Ground Zero world. Sadly, a troubling number of Ys are doubling down on the fantasy. It’s not that they’re pretending everything is fine while the house burns down. Even worse, they’ve adopted the attitude of “My parents said my life should work out like it did for them, so I’m going to keep playing by the old rulebook, even though it can only end in my crushing defeat.”
What’s behind this generational despair? Pop psychology threw around the term “fear of failure” a lot during Gen Y’s formative years. It was a meme, but most stereotypes hold a grain of truth. Go-along-to-get-along kids’ shows and tolerance conditioning in school made Ys pathologically conflict averse. That neurosis makes them loath to try any undertaking whose outcome isn’t assured beforehand.
The Boomer roadmap leads to a dead end, but at least it’s a map. Many Ys would rather follow the established path to their ruin than blaze a new trail. Because at least failure is a known quantity. They really will always accept the plan, even if the plan is horrifying.
Strauss and Howe’s Fourth Turning theory gives some context. They claim that generations come in cycles of four archetypes at recurring turning points in history.
- A cultural High fosters a Prophet (Idealist) generation.
- An Awakening brings about a Nomad (Reactive) generation.
- An Unraveling gives rise to a Hero (Civic) generation.
- A Crisis brings forth an Artist (Adaptive) generation.
The mistake is hard to miss. While they correctly defined their generational archetypes based on shared formative experience, they erroneously stuck to an arbitrary definition of a generation as a twenty-year period.
As I’ve argued previously, the Awakening sparked by the Boomers has led to such runaway societal Unraveling that people born twenty years apart no longer now have vastly different formative experiences. Shortening the duration of each turning after the Boomer High fixes the problem. That correction also gives us ten extra years between the Boomers and X-ers where Generation Jones fits perfectly, plus ten more between the X-ers and Millennials sized just right for Gen Y.
Applying those adjustments to the whole cycle, we get:
- High: The Baby Boomers: Prophet-Idealist
- Awakening: Generation Jones: Nomad-Reactive
- Unraveling: Generation X: Hero-Civic
- Crisis: Generation Y: Artist-Adaptive
Artist (Adaptive) generations enter childhood after an Unraveling, during a Crisis, a time when great dangers cut down social and political complexity in favor of public consensus, aggressive institutions, and an ethic of personal sacrifice. Artists grow up overprotected by adults preoccupied with the Crisis, come of age as the socialized and conformist young adults of a post-Crisis world, break out as process-oriented midlife leaders during an Awakening, and age into thoughtful post-Awakening elders
The generation that entered childhood under the threat of global nuclear war, grew up during a brief return to conformity and consensus under Reagan and Bush, were conditioned by the post-1960s entertainment industry, had sheltered upbringings, and grew into adults looking to go along to get along has been thoroughly documented here.
One reasonable objection to my adjusted generational cycle lies in the Fourth Turning‘s definition of a Hero generation:
Hero (Civic) generations enter childhood after an Awakening, during an Unraveling, a time of individual pragmatism, self-reliance, and laissez-faire. Heroes grow up as increasingly protected post-Awakening children, come of age as team-oriented young optimists during a Crisis, emerge as energetic, overly-confident midlifers, and age into politically powerful elders attacked by another Awakening.
Gen X-ers are probably nodding at that definition’s first sentence. They grew up in the Sexual Revolution’s aftermath in the individualistic early 80s. But they almost certainly object to the “increasingly protected” part. Gen X is infamous as the “raised by wolves” cohort.
As a result, they’ve not exactly overconfident team players. And we know Gen X will never be handed the levers of political power. They and Gen Y will be skipped over in favor of Millennials.
So, what went wrong? How did a cycle of each generation passing the baton to the next get interrupted after working for centuries?
Strauss and Howe originally labeled the Millennials as a Hero generation. Others have argued that this category is accurate, but the Millennials’ chance at heroism was thwarted. But stronger evidence points to the X-ers as the Hero generation whose collective vocation was ruined by their parents’ failure. Before the Boomers, no other generation in any prior Turning collectively hated their own children.
That’s no exaggeration. Boomers murdered half their offspring in the womb.
It’s becoming clearer by the day that civilization won’t survive the damage. To Strauss and Howe’s credit, there probably hasn’t been such a generation as destructive as the Boomers since the fall of Rome.
Getting back to Generation Y, Strauss and Howe point out that past Artist-Adaptive generations broke out of their shells in midlife to assume leadership positions. But as we’ve established, Ys won’t get to lead. Those who manage to escape the nostalgia prisons where they’ve locked themselves will have to settle for mentoring younger cohorts. But to fulfill their Artist archetype, Ys will have to embrace their Adaptive calling.
The greatest obstacles Gen Y must overcome are their pathological attachment to the past and obdurate aversion to change. To keep Gen Z from repeating their failures, Ys must embrace that failure and learn from it.
And lesson number one is: Return to Christ.
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