Generation X Is Sick of Your Bullshit (2011)

I've had a couple Gen X'er friends tell me the generation is collectively stuck in the past. Are there any plausible theories why that might be? Was it a lack of meaning in the general narrative that made growing old too painful for many to face or something?

The difficult thing for "the kids nowadays" to understand about GenX is the fact that we grew up under the threat of nuclear annihilation. It seems a bit absurd now, but there were times in the 70s and early 80s where it seemed like the grown-ups were going to destroy us all. This led a lot of us to develop nihilistic attitudes to life - it's difficult to take things too seriously when you'll probably die in a nuclear holocaust anyway.

But when the cold war suddenly ended, Gen X was left a bit adrift with its nihilism. You can still hear echoes of those fearful days in everything that Gen X does and says to this day.

There is a concept in/around civil engineering I've heard referred to as the 3 generation rule, though the only place search engines seem to turn it up is Ken Burnside's formulation on Atomic Rockets, which specifically applies it to space stations.

>The Three Generation Rule of Space Colonies states that space colonies have an average life-span of three generations until the life-support and other technical system decay to a point where the colony cannot sustain life. As Rick Robinson puts it "the degree of social discipline needed for a space habitat to survive indefinitely is beyond the capability of "normal" human societies. The human tendency to favor short-term expediency. will, over time, make the habitat ecosystem more and more precarious." See the link for more details.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/glossary.php

Here's the thing, that didn't come out of nowhere. There're actually earlier references I've stumbled across from various veins of engineer or policymaker with regards to how difficult it is to get funding for proper maintenance of civil engineering projects.

The meme formulation of hard times, strong people, yada yada, is a glib restatement of a rule that to me seems to be at the very heart of information theory:

If you ain't lived it, you don't get it. I can tell you stories til I am blue in the face, but until people [start dropping dead from cholera in the streets], [get trapped in elevators due to widespread power failure], [start suffocating in the mal-maintained subway tunnels], [having their homes blow up because of long deferred natural gas pipe maintenance], you will not give me the resources to get done what needs to get done.

To generation n-1 it's theory, generation n-2, they paid for it in blood, to generation n, it's the crazy ramblings of old people and the world don't work that way anymore grampa.

Except it do. And it will continue to. This the cycle continues. Even the creation of an ennui consumed generation is predicted in the sense that a generation sees the problems, but isn't in touch with history enough to figure out how far to roll back thinking to safely start retraversing a new path.

You either get an extremely luck person who stumbled on it randomly, or you get hard times when the next demagogue wrecking ball's shit and everyone has to figure out how to pick up the pieces.

I wasn't updated on the terminology change, apparently. How unfair to "boomers" to be lumped in with the most coddled and swaddled and useless children to ever inherit the earth.

More education of how the US government works is what's in order here.

People look at everything trump did and think "why can't Biden do the same, but for good?" and the problem is, the government is built to be torn down, not built up.

Biden has no power to take climate action. The EPA doesn't have the ability to just subsidize solar panels or enact taxes on CO2 emissions. They've actually tried to do that for CO2 and that was struck down by the supreme court. [1]

That leaves congressional action to force climate action and, unfortunately we have a 50/50 split in the senate with 2 democrat senators that are weak on climate issues. (50 republican senators that will not support any climate action).

Once you realize this, you understand the solution is voting for democrats to the senate in 2022/2024 so those 2 holdouts don't matter as much. Move the balance of the senate by 2 more democrat senators and you might see some climate action.

Stop being disappointed in biden for not doing what he can't do. Start being mad at the 2 democrat senators and the 50 republican senators who stand in the way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_Air_Regulatory_Group_v...