Generation Jones

[sKePTiKal]

This is something recent I've run across. Between the Baby Boomer and GenX, exist this cohort of people born between 1954-1965. We're Generation Jones. We have attributes of BOTH adjacent generations... and some distinctively our own.

We overlap with Boomers culturally, in that many of us remember the signal events of the 60s, but we were a bit too young for Woodstock. With GenX, we share some music preferences, distrust of the gov't and other institutions, and fierce independence. GenX is forged in fire; we created the path.

The popular mythology goes, that Jones people have a craving to "keep up with the Jonese"... altho' personally, that wasnt on my priority radar. Surviving was. Our cultural events include the first gas crisis, Nixon/Watergate, closing the gold window, and the moon landing. Oh yeah, and DISCO.

Decent explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-X01D2oIcY


Professor hat removed: whomever picked the name "jones" for this generational cohort, should be roundly rediculed! It's beyond silly; it's absurd. Personally, I began to critique some of the boomer's ideas long before anyone would take me seriously and I've mostly only gotten more critical since. But not all people embody the whole "stereotype" definition neatly. In boomers, jones & X, I see a thread of individualism running - X being the most empathetic to others who are different from themselves, for instance. But, there are the surface appearances - and more personal level differences in all 3.

So, is this evolutionary?? or just dressing the pig in a different colored tutu and lipstick?

Fodder for pondering. Observing. Maybe finding a conclusion or two in the process.

[sKePTiKal]

Here's another one. This one deals with some shared social psychology attributes of the generation. It's about 20 mins long - and the video is all AI - but it is a real human speaking. I think - these days it's getting harder and harder to tell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvU7N6C7yfY&t=5s

[Hopalong]

Viet Nam was a cauldron for me (born 1950) and so was the Civil Rights movement.
My brother was a medic in Nam and a boyfriend, a helicopter pilot in Nam and got shot down. Landed into a tree in his parachute, hung there helpless for three days, broken like a bag of sticks. When we went to visit at a kind of "plantation" home his family owned in Florida, I'll never forget his father dragging this handsome, broken track star down the hall to deposit him in an armchair so we could talk. It was hard then and ever after to understand his speech from the head injuries, but he married and lived a real life. Pre-internet, we all watched that war close up on our televisions every night and it was absolutely horrifying. Gave rise to some of the most amazing peace demonstrations ever. We all lived during those years with the fear of the draft....some male friends got drafted and never came back. It hung over us all four years and beyond.

In HS, Civil Rights snapped me out of my naievete when I heard a TEACHER berating black students with the N-word, so I joined their walkout from school, threatened with expulsion. I was one of 5 white kids with 200 black students. It was a big drama in the town and ever after, I followed the civil rights movement passionately. When I lived in Baltimore I took part in some strategy workshops with people who had marched in Selma and with Dr. King, my hero. I could feel their knowledge of suffering and their grace. Baltimore, with its urban deserts and lack of resources for poor populations, was another wake-up call. (I taught poetry in some of these neglected schools in "ghetto" areas and the skinny, desperate kids broke my heart often. Their creativity and musicality in poetry blew my mind.)

I hope people of upcoming generations will really study the 60s -- we were more than Woodstock (though the creativity and music explosion hasn't been matched since.) I'm so senile I've probably told these stories here before...thanks.

hugs
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

I remember all that too, Hops. But I wasn't old enough to participate; I'm '56. Hol was '78... so definitely GenX... but with overlaps because of paying attention to things in the world, asking questions, thinking about things... looking for answers at a younger age. She started thinking for herself around 8 or 9. Some of that isn't so much generational, as personality type I guess.

I'm fully aware that the 60s weren't all Woodstock, peace love & rock & roll. It was a scary dark time to be a kid with a functional brain and big eyes and ears, reading all the time. Heck, I even remember the grade school PA announcement about Kennedy being shot. But not all the "Jonesers" were paying attention that early.

So you and I have memories & experiences that overlap - yes, the War hit home for me too and I saw it on the news every night. I read the front section of the newspaper before the "funnies". I read Time, Life, the New Yorker... any magazine I could get my hands on. Library books too... I kept sneaking into the Adult section coz the kids books were boring.

[Meh]

I miss serious people.

I feel everybody lives inside YouTube while they buy virtual Pokemon cards.

There was a coworker I had and I told him one day that when he said good morning or asked me how I was doing I felt he really meant it. He said it was because he was in Vietnam and he said he didn't take a day of life for granted after he got out of the war.

[sKePTiKal]

There is something to that observation, Meh. Serious people, which is what we call them too, are getting pretty scarce. People who think about little things, big things, who ask more questions of life than what are they going to eat next meal. We also call those people real or authentic, and I think it does involve some bit of not taking each day for granted.

Not all the Jones generation are serious. Some of the boomers got that way - life has a way of adapting people - some GenX are too. I think it just depends what they've experienced in life and how they responded. Maybe. I used to be more sure of my conclusions in the past - these days, it's all probability and maybe. LOL.