Talkin bout Your Generation

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The human body can generate hundreds of BTUs of heat per hour. So I'm feeling pretty good about my generation.

why are cell phones so GD complicated?

People try to put us down (millennials) just because we get around (you know, prior to the coronoapocalypse anyways).

Funniest moment on Full House was when Danny rocked out to that song , lmfao

Nitpicking, but I believe in this context the word is bloc, not block.

More on topic, isn't Ukraine's identity largely informed by being 'one of the Russias', but also the one with a more ingrained sense of liberty? (what with being the outlands between Poland-Lithuania and Russia where people were exiled). It seems like the Russian identity/mindset is inherently more accepting of authoritarianism than the Western/Central Europe one, whether that's a result of the Tatar yoke or something else.

That is a good cutoff point. I was born in ‘57. While I remember Woodstock, the protests, the assassinations etc I was to young to participate. The big political event in my teenage years was Watergate. While what is considered “boomer” events were over, we were left with the hangover symptoms of divorce, crime, recession and inflation at the same time etc. While over the events of the ‘60s had a dominating affect on the events of the 70s but they were not exactly the same. Heavy Metal and Disco would not have been possible without the 60s, and the influence of 60s rock and soul on those genres is unmistakable but they are not exactly the same, post counterculture music genres if you will. The disco scene would not have been possible without the “free love’ and drug experimentation of the 60s but it was not the same. The Symbionese Liberation Army, Black Liberation Army, FALN would not have been possible without the SDS and the Black Panthers.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 18 Sep 2020, 4:56 am, edited 3 times in total.

Where my X's at?

Ignored because the boomers and zoomers(Gen Z and mellenials) suck up all the attention.

Ukrainian identity is more complex than that.
Kiev and Veliky Novgorod were capitals of the first Ruthenian (Eastern Slavic) state, before Moscow was even founded - Kievan Rus'. This is where the Orthodox, cirillic-writing Russian culture comes from.
This state fell apart, like many other European states of that time, into multiple, largely independent, duchies. They never succeeded to unite again - the duchies got conquered by Tatars, Lithuania and Poland. Neither of these three empires of the time was interested in kulturkampf, so the cirilic-writing, Constantinopole Christian culture of Ruthenian (Russian) people was strongly present between catholic Poland, muslim Tatar empire and pagan Lithuania. Kiev was in "hot" area, conquered and reconquered multiple times; Veliky Novgorod, being far North, led much more peaceful existence, forming very specific, Scandinavian-influenced merchant culture.

Then comes Moscow - a duchy inside Tatar empire slowly gained power and fought for autonomy. Their goal was to unite Russia and form a powerful empire.
However, Kiev and Veliky Novgorod did not want the form of unity promoted by Moscow. When Constantinopole was conquered by the Turks and Moscow claimed herself "the third Rome", Kiev patriatchs decided on strenghtening bonds with Catholic Poland, resulting in Union of Brest - a religion with Orthodox rite but in unity with Rome.
Veliky Novgorod got conquered and later massacred by Muscovians, who left little of it and its culture. Kiev remained in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until the Partitions of Poland.

What is now Ukraine, has a mixed history of bonds with Moscow, Poland-Lithuania and Habsburg Empire, with influences of political cultures of all these states. Moscow likes to claim that Ukrainians are "just Russians". Moscow-influenced East Ukrainians agree. Central-European-influenced West Ukrainians despise the idea and brutal autocracy of Moscow, that stems from the history in Tatar Empire that differs them, not the older Russian identity that they share.

To make it all even funnier, as I mentioned, Kiev is the older capital of Russia than Moscow, so technically, they could claim to be "the heart of Russia"

So Ukrainians are basically catholic Russians?

No.
Nowadays, little of them are Greek Catholic and they never were Roman Catholic in any significant number.

When you say "Russians", you think - Moscow.
But Ukrainians are non-Moscow Russians. They are older-than-Moscow Russians who have good reasons to oppose Moscow's claims to all Russia.

That's why Moscow takes such an issue with them. There used to be another non-Moscow Russian state - Novgorod Republic - and Ivan the Terrible massacred them to get rid of competitors.

Getting back to the topic of generations as opposed to Ukrainian history, I prefer a different approach to identifying generations. I like to think of the single cultural or historical phenomenon that defined each generation. Here is an attempt at identifying these (admittedly it has a US bias but as magz suggested different parts of the world have greatly different experiences):

1.) Vietnam War Generation (old enough to remember the war in Vietnam)
2.) Star Wars Generation (first cohort born too late to remember the war in Vietnam)
3.) Reagan Generation (self-explanatory)
4.) Grunge Generation (very cynical compared to 3.)
5.) AIM generation (my children's generation, AIM played a major role in their life)
6.) SnapChat generation (actually any social-media smartphone app, I just picked SC)

There is a huge cultural divide between generations 1.) and 2.) whereas 2.) and 3.) have a great deal in common. In particular, White members of that generation form the core of the Republican Right that now dominates US politics. When younger folks blame the Trump Presidency on "boomers" it's really 2.) and 3.) they have in mind. Most people my own age that I know personally despise Trump.

As you can see, most people would consider 1.) and 2.) Baby Boom and 3.) and 4.) Generation X but I tend to shift the main generational divides a "half-cycle" in either direction.

Chronologically, I’m a boomer, and, sad to say, ashamed of belonging to that generation.

I have never trusted anyone of my generation and younger, except possibly generation Z, which is the generation that are suffering because of the sins, of the previous generations, except possibly the so-called greatest generation.


My generation isn’t called the “ME” generation and the greediest generation for nothing. If anything, narcissism defines the boomer generation, since it has always been “ME! ME! ME!”, as well as “I got mine, and f!ck Everyone Over everything else!” (and I’m just as guilty of that attitude.)

I take exception to this generational self-hatred. Before anybody spoke of a "me" generation, there was a "me decade" i.e. the 70s which was so characterized because it exemplified a sort of hangover from the hyper-idealistic, stressed-out 60s. In the 70s, a lot of people, in particular members of the Silent Generation, set aside old inhibitions and believed they could find a "new way" to get more out of life. My wife's uncle, the youngest of the family who is a member of the Silent Generation, saw himself and all of his close friends from High School except one get divorced and typically marry younger women. To me, this narrative is emblematic of the Me Decade. Something not many people appreciate about the late 70s was that it was the most peaceful in post-WWII Western history. The economy sucked otherwise but peoples' lives were relatively stress-free, and in the US there was much more access to Government assistance than we have now thanks to Welfare Reform etc.

Most Baby Boomers entered adulthood at some point during that decade, so of course they internalized the attitudes of the time. But I would be hard-pressed to believe that Baby Boomers are more self-centered or narcissist than members of Generation X (to whom they are sometimes unfavorably compared, although most typically such comparisons are made by conservative-leaning commentators). It annoys me when my wife says the same things about Millennials that you are saying about Baby Boomers, and it likewise annoys me to experience what you say about Boomers.

^
As someone else stated on this forum, I was born in 1957, thereby making part of the later Boomer Generation, the so-called Generation Jones. I barely remember JFK being assasinated. I remember RFK being shot, MLK being shot, Vietnam, as well as Watergate, as well as the Clinton Impeachment (too bad he was exonerated. Ditto with the President whose name I will not mention.) I have learned that it no longer pays to be honest, to work hard, and to keep your mouth shut and your head down. That was literally beat in to my head ever since high school. I have been lied to, cheated, used, and sh!t on so many times and by so many people that I prefer being a recluse and a hermit, mostly by members of my generation.

I don’t know how many times when I did complain I was told “Suck it up, buttercup, and stop being a f!cking pansy, else I’ll beat yer fat a$$ until it bleeds” by my superiors, who, a lot of the time, were of my generation. It is, in my not so humble opinion, the boomer generation was, and is, too entitled, narcissistic, soulless, devoid of compassion, materialistic and predatory, of ANY generation before or since.

Is it any wonder I despise my generation, as well as myself?