[Ronin]

I think generation x and y are going to have a pretty tough time mentally adjusting between two worlds.

Its going to be a laugh if the Boomers are still around when the SHTF so they can see everything they build is worthless. I agree that generalizing is pointless, there are all sorts of people in every gen.
A moron is a moron no matter when they where born.

Also does anyone find it scary that after Y there is only Z and that we are so close to the end of one chapter and the beginning of another(whatever it may be)?

masterless

[Windmills]

Worries about the lack of morals, character, strength, or any other quality valued by the previous generation have been aired since the dawn of mankind. If anything, it's the previous generations' screwing up the works and rolling the crap downhill to the next generations that is the real source of the problems.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

--Socrates, 469 BC–399 BC

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint

--Hesiod, 8th Century BC

I'm sure these concerns go far beyond written history, yet we have not all become extinct because of our snot-nosed and careless children. Every great generation that we admire started out as a bunch of incorrigible losers that exasperated their elders. It'll always be that way and people will constantly expose themselves as being old geezers by carrying on these traditional proclamations of doom at the hand of the next generation.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('benzoil', 'G')enX will do fine. Or at least, as well as can be expected. Gen X is used to change. Gen Y is already used to getting less. I expect to see more problems from Boomers freaking out that their retirement just evaporated than X'ers freaking out because they have to change careers...again.

[topcat]

This has to be one of the best I have read in a long time, thank you Cloud9!!!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')efore you decide to eat me, remember this: I’m old and stringy and probably have several communicable diseases.

[Arsenal]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', '
')Get ready for no inheritance and having your broke elderly parents move in with you. The burden will shift.

[Blacksmith]

Help Momme, Daddy.

Cheeze with your wine?

[sittinguy]

Gen X will do OK

Gen Y is the one that will be fun to watch. Food or cell phone? They will go hungry.

[RedStateGreen]

@ poll

We X'ers never get any respect, especially from the losers that put us in this mess to begin with and expect us to do their dirty work while they moralize about how it's to be done.

[lowem]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', 'G')et ready for no inheritance and having your broke elderly parents move in with you. The burden will shift.

[mos6507]

I really don't know whether Gen X will be capable of dealing with scarcity. Some will, some won't. Gen X was the "slacker" generation before the dot com boom happened. You, know, the whole flannel grunge thing, depressed over being invisible. Nobody paid attention to us when we were growing up. The world catered to what the boomers wanted. All we could really latch onto that had any meaning as a generational touchstone was Star Wars. The dot com boom completely changed that. Gen Xers became the center of the universe, the superstar neo-yuppies with the ponytails and the cell phones. Suddenly we were going to transform the world and get rich doing it with the IPOs and the Porche Boxster trophies. I was at the epicenter of all that so I know of what I speak first hand. The dot com bust never totally erased that whole phenomenon. It just rebounded with social networking and youtube. GenXers (Y is a lot worse) have become very narcissistic and addicted to gadgets. The only difference between X and Y is that Gen Xers at least remember the way it was before we had all these things. Y and onward were born right into it from day one.

[TreebeardsUncle]

Hi.
Am 37 and born in 1971. Remember dealing with type-writers, record-players, backyard gardens, and only half a dozen active tv channels. Life was just fine then. In fact did without the tv much of the time. The boomers and y's will have a hard time because they are more intitled to plenty. The xers weren't treated as though they were that important. Yes, they are narcissistic but that comes as much from isolation in a rootless exploitative ephememeral detached atomized society than from their own characeters.
g

[gnm]

Hmmm, we didn't all get in on the fun Mos, I spent most of the dot bomb broke, paying off college debt. Agree completely on the souless existence the previous poster mentioned. I was a dreamer who hated suburbia before I knew why. I spent HS and later looking for visceral adventures. From ill fated backpacking trips to climbing 1000 foot walls. Anything to escape the trap I saw opening - becoming just another drudge working for a boomer suburban dream of stuff. I escaped but only after waking up to how useless those goals were and shifting my own personal paradigm and notions of "success". Now I have few gadgets, never got cable, satellite, etc, Now I consider whether or not to purchase something by such variables as "will it last until my grandkids could use it?"
I'm a sadder but wiser X'er now... I wasted a lot of time trying to be something I didn't want to be but chasing it because I was told that it was "success"

-G

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.')..favored by genetics...

[galacticsurfer]

I remember my Grandma, born 1899, English. I visited her in 1981 for 6 weeks in England, member lost generation. Strauss and Howe describe the memory of Lost generation(same as Gen Xers) grandparents as having a naughty twinkle in their eyes. They experienced growing up the era like the 60s with boomer types born after civil war. People were inot women'S rights and there was muckraking yellow press and seances then in the 1920s everybody either being explotied or speculating just like now. Then they got a depression. The whole timethey had the Missioanry genaration breathing dwon their necks and bing self righteous (FDR, STALIN, Einstein). We are doing the same thing. I am so cynical and realistic and full of humour. I read the thread at TOD today and yesterday about Hanson's Dieoff with all that arguing and all the ideological arguments and opinions mean nothing to me. I just live now. It is an attitude. Maybe the boomers were idealists and we just got the whole concept beaten out of us. Ideals are for suckers. Take the money and run or live for the moment, whatever works best. At any rate don't overcommit and don't be anybody's sucker. We will survive by pure flexibility in the moment. We are realistic Tao Zen Ninja warriors for the highest bidder. Pirates or loners. Still I think in the crisis to come the survival instinct according to Strauss and Howe works well to communicate between Boomer leaders and their Hero chldren (millennials/Gen Y) born after 1982, now 26 y.o. Since boomers are on some sort of crusade (Bush types) and their kids believe in it. Gen Xers(Obama and younger) act to modrate the excessive idealism of Boomers combined with simplistic Gen Y Hero instinct.

I will love to see this play out. My cynical humour and survivalist low-life tactics set against boomers (say Heinberg,etc.)high road goal commitment to get something done. Xers do whatever is necessary, quick and dirty in politics, press, etc. to pomote on local level, business, not because we really believe but maybe because it makes us a buck or because it promises a sweet revenge against a system that always grinded us down our whole lives. We can tear down the F***ing sytem and get something we can maybe control. At any rate the younger people are the promise for the future. The have teamwork and idealism. the millenials are not a burnt out case but don't expect to talk philosophy with them either. A massive build out of windmills or permaculutere will be the real deal for them. Number crunchers, straight line squares. This is what Strauss and Howe lead us to expect. Of course this is on average. Like saying all black people are alike or all women it is more than a bit a bit simplistic but if you have to draw a curve on a paper to describe why history works their theory explains a lot in the big view and you can fill in the detail later.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.')..favored by genetics...

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RedStateGreen', ':')roll: @ poll

We X'ers never get any respect, especially from the losers that put us in this mess to begin with and expect us to do their dirty work while they moralize about how it's to be done.

[Loki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'T')he only difference between X and Y is that Gen Xers at least remember the way it was before we had all these things.

[PrairieMule]

Here is a good idea of what Generation X might look like Post Peak Oil...

[Minvaren]

Gen X covers a lot of ground.

I like to think of it as the generation of cynicism - we grew up as latchkey kids, we exited college to find no jobs, the jobs we got had no security, we discovered all the money we're putting into Social Security we'll never get back, and that noone had really put much thought into the future...

Plenty to be despondent about, until the Boomers start to retire. And then we get to try and crash-land the plane that is Western (American) Civilization.

As TreebeardsUncle said, we remember being unplugged. Y'ers not having that means they will have to relearn rather than remember. They will have a far harder time adapting than we will.

[TreebeardsUncle]

Hi.
Am happy with the favorable reaction from a few posters ( g... and m... etc). Have heard it been told that the 70's were the last time that one could find a sense of innocence in general in America. The pace was just enough slower. Remember there was more of a sense of wholesomeness. That era specifically spanned the time of around 73 - 83. The 80's didn't really belong to the x'ers. We just watched for the most part the boomers carrying on their excesses on MTV. There were a few other shows besides Star Wars that the x'ers claimed, perhaps BattleStar Galatica, Billy Jean, American Werewolf in London. Take your pick.
Actually grew up in a fairly semi-rural environment in Sacramento. Though we were in the inner suburbs we had a full acre, a pool, and at times vegetable gardens. Was perfectly happy reading, playing with toys etc. Agree that the xers came of an age of awareness before getting plugged in electronically when computers came in around 1983. Actually the cool kids were into bicycles in the 70's and early 80's. Remember ET? Can say that one thing that signifies the xers is participating in a wide variety of sports and outdoor athletics. The yers and millenials are more attached to their eletronic gadgetry.

Geoff