In praise of the uncomplaining generation

TWAM-20170304 EMBARGO FOR TWAM 4 March 2017NO REUSE WITHOUT PERMISSION TWAM dinkus Bernard Salt pic : Nick Cubbin

I quite admire the quiet determination of Generation X, the cohort of mostly 40-somethings born between 1965 and 1983, between the baby boomers and the millennials. But before I explain why I hold this not-so-secret admiration for an entire generation, let me place the whole “Gen” shtick into context.

I do understand that some people regard generational generalisations as being akin to astrology. How can collective traits be determined by year of birth, let alone star sign? And yet there is a fundamental truth to the impact of shared experiences associated with specific points in time. Those who endured World War II and/or the Great Depression were unquestionably shaped – some might say scarred – by these frightening experiences for the rest of their lives. They were frugal; they were grateful; they placed their faith in the government, in the military, in the church; they believed in an afterlife, perhaps because they thought the next life would surely be better than this one.

Not every person held these views, of course, but there was a sufficient number to make the group that shared this experience discernibly different from, say, the baby boomers born after the war and raised during a period of relative peace and prosperity.

If big events such as economic depression and war can shape a collective view, why can’t an era of peace and prosperity? The baby boomers (born 1946-1964) lived through Australia’s cultural revolution, starting in 1968 and culminating in the social agenda of the Whitlam government. Boomers, who packed a punch because they numbered roughly half as many again as the preceding generation, were like a cultural wave rushing ashore. They were destined to be cultural warriors: they had spending power; they had the pill; they embraced the women’s movement; they shaped the modern world. I think they got used to being at the forefront of change.

The millennial generation (born 1984-2002) are the children of the boomers; much of their youth was lived during the long period of growth that followed Australia’s last recession in 1992. Rightly or wrongly, boomers measured their success as parents by how much they could give their kids. All of a sudden, a road trip to the Coolangatta caravan park was not enough. It was a holiday in Bali, or Fiji, or Phuket, or all of the above.

Stuck in the middle is Generation X. It was Canadian author Douglas Coupland who, in the early 1990s, first talked about a lost generation following the brouhaha of the baby boomers. He called them X because they lived in the shadow of the boomer mountain. Baby boomers got free tertiary education; most Xers paid via HECS. And when many Xers first entered the workforce they ran slap-bang into a recession. They worked diligently and waited patiently for boomer management to hand over the reins, which they did around the time of the global financial crisis.

Amid the demands of the millennials and the bemoaning of the boomers there sit the doers, the non-complainers, the quiet achievers, the ordinary people going about their business, paying off mortgages, going to sports events, helping out here and making a contribution there, many of them all the while raising teenagers. It is these top-of-their-career Xers who are most likely to be now paying the top marginal tax rate. And yet nary a word of complaint does one hear from them.

These are the stories of everyday life lived by everyday people unused to special attention. That is why I admire Generation X.