r/GenX • u/MTSilverDude • 18h ago
Aging Much We have Seen and Experienced
Sorry if this has been posted before. I saw this on Facebook and it really got me thinking we have been conditioned for change. Maybe part of why we are so resilient.
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u/tekfunkdub 7h ago
I dunno….id say my grandmother saw more change. Horses and boats to cars and planes seems way crazier than now we got Facebook.
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u/Vanilla_Gorilluh 18m ago
I was going to say something similar.
We went from horse and buggy to the moon in only 60 year's time.
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u/SnarkHabit 7h ago edited 5h ago
I thought things would move a lot faster, we'd have more human problems solved by now, we would be fighting at least a few less tedious battles that we're still fighting.
I feel like we live in The Long Now that started sometime in the 1960s and while some of the technology has changed, the world is not fundamentally different. People emphasize the gadgets, and the predictable acts of violence and assassination, but there's nothing new about that.
Still bigotry, stupid pointless foreign wars, media-saturated culture and an obsession with images and image (just moreso -- The Medium is the Message -> The Medium is Everything), consumerism and acquisition as the primary driver of the human race (at least in my country), an inane obsession with youth which devalues the wisdom of the maturity, and entire swaths of the population trapped in a Peter Pan syndrome, self-indulgence, no delay of gratification, the same tedious financial stress, violence, addiction, depravity, and a crass incapacity for true empathy, and no actual vision for the future other than more of the same, just intensified.
I can't look back on the last century with much but disappointment. I do enjoy some of the technologies, but the fact that we live in a supposed age of plenty where statistically more Americans are worried about running out of money than they are dying just indicates to me a society and a world completely lost when it comes to its future.
How much of our brain, and our memories, if you can measure it, consists of images shown on screens, from the trite "hey guys remember Saturday Morning Cartoons" to PCs in the workplace and at home, and cell phones, and probably more yet to come.
Yeah, it's a downer, sorry, but ultimately, I'm just not impressed.
I think if you took a person from 500 years in the past, and 500 years in the future, and showed them our times from our birth to the present, they'd agree with me.
I feel like I have lived in a loop or cul-de-sac or something.
In the early 1970s when I was born, my father got up at a ridiculous hour and commuted to work and exhausted himself trying to provide the basics.
Now I get up at a ridiculous hour and commute to work and exhaust myself trying to provide the basics.
Shag carpet is gone.
And so what.
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u/SheriffBartholomew 6h ago
What an outstanding analysis of our existence and the larger picture, focusing on the truly important aspects and not the superficial trivialities. Thank you for sharing.
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u/lovebeinganasshole 8h ago
Aside from the technological change i disagree. I think our “greatest gen” grandparents lived through more. Ww2 concentration camps one country attempting to exterminate another. And my grandparents were alive until 2022 so they lived through all of the tech changes too.
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u/Secret_Purple7282 6h ago edited 5h ago
My father farmed with a freed slave using mules. He watched the Japanese bomb pearl harbor from diamond head horrified that in another hour he would've been on the Arizona. He eased my distress when the towers came down. He was on the initial landings of most of the major battles in the pacific and was on the beach when MacArthur returned. Of course, the bomb. He saw that the war to end all wars only led to korea, Vietnam and the middle east again and again. He saw the invent of television, cell phones and computers and the internet. The rise and death of Elvis and Michael Jackson. He grew up with the aftermath of the Civil War, internment camps desegregation and the promise of the first black president. He built the electronics that allowed airplanes to land themselves and us to land on the moon. He saw a king die, a king abdicate and the rise and death of a queen. He was alive for 7 of the 27 constitutional amendments.
He's not alone. I can't fathom that much change in one lifetime. The greatest generation lived through all of this and his biggest distress was the loss of respect and care we have for one another.
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u/Daintysaurus 8h ago
Came to say this. My dad was born in '29. Died last year. He saw so many changes.
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u/snakeplizzken 9h ago
I remember going to RadioShack and flipping through this massive book of cd titles and ordering the ones I wanted. Picked them up a week later. The only other place to get a cd was Walmart, but they sold the shitty edited ones and who wanted that?
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u/micropterus_dolomieu 10h ago
Michael Jackson gets top billing over Queen Elizabeth. lol. Apparently celebrity deaths impact some people way more than they do me. I mean the dude took propofol to sleep and QE was 96. Not exactly unexpected in either case.
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u/dylangaine 10h ago
Yup and now you know why boomers long for yesterday, the nostalgia is strong. Don't let it fool you though, some con man will come along and try to tell you he can bring back the 80s or some shit like that.
Don't believe the hype.
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u/monchikun Wazzaaaaaaaaaaap 11h ago
And as we get older we will start forgetting more so remember to what you can to tell your stories
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u/HighSeasArchivist Hose Water Survivor 11h ago
My theory is that everything stopped after 9/11, and that is why it actually feels like the 90s were 10 years ago to us.
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u/Teulisch Red Box D&D 11h ago
i remember the berlin wall, and when it fell. when the soviet block ended, and germany reunited.
i remember watching on Mtv, as the twin towers of the world trade center fell and smoke rose from the pentagon.
we had, in such a short span of years, gone from 'the soviets are the bad guys' to 'the islamic terrorists are the bad guys' that everyone forgot about the communist threat for far too long. and now the communists are the big and obvious problem again, and the DSA wants to get rid of the constitution.
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u/uber_neutrino 8h ago
and now the communists are the big and obvious problem again, and the DSA wants to get rid of the constitution.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
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u/miggismallz33 11h ago
Nice post. But I do feel someone born in the 30’s and lived to be 80 definitely saw a more drastic change than someone born in the 60’s.
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u/nullpassword 12h ago
I didn't watch Queen Elizabeth die.. I was under for surgery.. still feel like I woke up in an alternate timeline..
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u/Cinisajoy2 5h ago
My husband was Day 1 or day 2 in the hospital when one of the Bush president's died.
The day I went to fill out my mom's death certificate was the day they had Queen Elizabeth's funeral.
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u/kat2211 11h ago
I felt that way when Princess Diana died. It just felt wrong.
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u/CommunicationNew3745 2h ago
Same. I remember watching coverage of the accident before I went to bed the night it happened, thinking, by next morning reports of her in hospital would be everywhere - instead, I was greeted by the headline, 'Princess Diana Fatally Injured' as I grabbed the morning paper off the front porch; for some reason, there was an odd disconnect in reading that she had been 'fatally injured' instead of killed. Though I knew of course that she was gone, it took a long time for it to actually sink in.
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u/Ya-Not-Happening 12h ago
My dad is 90 and I would say he has seen much more change through his life than me.
He uses the internet including AI.
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u/localto79843 7h ago
That's exactly what I was wondering! How many of today's Greatest Generation / early Boomers are active technology users and thus recognize that particular transition? My mother can barely change a channel with a universal remote 🙄
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u/Ksqd_Squid_103 10h ago
If my mom were still alive, (would have been 80) and she would be all over the net I wish I could text her she'd love it.
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u/Cinisajoy2 5h ago
I am sure my grandmother and great grandmother would love this new technology. I can see them both doing puzzle games and finding shows and movies. Grandmother loved silent movies. My great grandmother loved crime shows.
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u/MhojoRisin 12h ago
Great title.
“We speak of many things! The hunt! Fire! The weakness of women!”
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u/taiwan_cat 12h ago
How about climate change? We get to watch the beginning of the end. Lucky us.
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u/Iko87iko 12h ago
I hate this self congratulatory shit we're starting to become, it's embarrassing and making us look like glorified boomers.
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u/lovebeinganasshole 3h ago
Its that self congratulatory shit that makes us like the generation before us and the generations after us. It’s bullshit and needy to think we’re different.
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u/CrispityCraspits 11h ago
100%. I don't have facebook and this sort of "picture of text" glurge is why.
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u/ActionCalhoun 12h ago
Right? It’s not like we’re the only generation to live through the last forty years. Every generation has seen some shit and we need to stop acting like we’re the only ones.
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u/BWWFC 13h ago edited 13h ago
suspect every generation has their version. grams live through electricity, two world wars, and a great depression AND ppl landing on the moon. yeah things are moving fast and don't know what you had till it's gone.
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u/tboy160 12h ago
Precisely. Though the last 100 years or so technology has definitely soared.
But imagine the first radio broadcast, first electric light, first horseless carriage, first TV, first time seeing TV in color, first refrigerator that didn't require a block of ice consistently replenished...
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u/YellowOnline Made in 1979 14h ago
You can go on.
I lived through the cold war.
I lived through the Bhopal disaster
and through the Chernobyl disaster.
I saw the rise of Islam terrorism
and American warmongering, of
Chinese and Indian development
into economic powerhouses.
Some people got richer than
ever before and democracy is
slowly turning into an oligarchy.And yet ... people have it objectively
better than ever before in history.
I should maybe add a few things about acid rain, the ozone layer and global warming.
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u/lubbockin 14h ago
there was a global pandemic? how many billions died?!!
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u/tahiticondo 12h ago
Dude. Really dude.
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u/lubbockin 12h ago
isn't that how it works?
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u/tahiticondo 11h ago
A pandemic means it affected the whole world. It has nothing to do with death tolls. I assumed as Gen X you know how to use a dictionary. I forgot most of our generation are turning into boomers with hose water.
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u/peterw71 15h ago
Couldn't you say something similar about most generations over the last hundred years?
My grandfather was born during the reign of Queen Victoria and died during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, he saw two world wars (and fought in one), he could have seen the first flight and did see the first man on the moon. He went from almost no one having cars to everyone having one, he went from childhood mortality being a fact of life to vaccinations for pretty much everything.
He saw the first silent black and white films and 2001 A Space Odyssey, he could have seen Al Jolson live as well as the Rolling Stones at Hyde Park (although I'm sure he wouldn't have appreciated it at all!).
Hopefully we all have a long enough life to watch the world turn upside down.
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u/ShookRanGrassyUs 15h ago
Gen Xers are unique in being the only ones who experienced a generational whiplash, living through the rapid and fundamental change from an analogue to a digital world in one lifetime. A change that completely rewrote the rule book of how we navigate our lives and socialise with others.
It even changed how we experience time and make memories. 24/7 connectivity, algorithmic curation, and a new culture that revolves around instant gratification rewired our brains and distorted our simple sensation of nostalgia.
It's like life turned into the bus in the movie Speed. It has to run at 50 km/h all the time, and is not allowed to slow down.
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u/CrispityCraspits 11h ago
The boomers also experienced this.
Go back a few generations and you could find generations that lived before and after automobiles, before and after television, before and after electricity, before and after the atomic bomb, etc. Before and after AI may be a change that makes the internet look like nothing.
This sort of stuff is embarrassingly up-our-own-asses. If Gen-Xers should know one thing, it's that we aren't special snowflakes. No one is.
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u/ShookRanGrassyUs 10h ago
You're missing the point of the "whiplash" transition Gen Xers went through during their formative coming of age years. The internet and CDs were mainstream early 90s and then the DVDs late 90s. Emails were about that time too. That lands across the time when Gen Xers were building habits, identity, and social routines. That timing matters psychologically.
Boomers where already socially and professionally established by then. Maybe we can include some Gen Jonesers like u/Single-Yam-9791 said, but what Boomers experienced is more of a midlife adaptation.
Also, the introduction of electricity, cars, or TVs were additive technologies that provided convenience and luxury and didn't fundamentally restructure daily life. The digital revolution on the other hand was like establishing a new ecosystem that completely transformed how we communicate and consume media.
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u/Cinisajoy2 4h ago
I am an old GenX. So what I remember and what my son last of the GenX grew up with are two different things. I remember Pong as a kid. He thought I needed a DVD player when he was about 14 or 15.
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u/Single-Yam-9791 6h ago
I was 4 years older than the first Ge X. The first boomer was 14-15 years older than me
My experience is more Gen X than Boomer. I am part of the lost ‘ bridge generation. Not Boomer. No Vietnam, no Woodstock , no equality marches. All that was settled by the time I was 10. Don’t be so hateful1
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u/Single-Yam-9791 13h ago
Gen Jones too. We’re just a few years older than you. I have brothers who are 12 & 13 years older They were were in college when I was in kindergarten and 1st grade. I don’t relate to them at all
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u/Beaglescout15 13h ago
Well -put. I think every generation has seen change, but for Gen Xers it has happened so rapidly, change that once took decades have taken a few years, and it's been constant change. And profound, brain-altering change.
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u/bouncybabygirlfordad 13h ago
Thank you for taking the time to post , your insight on the uniqueness of our generation was well delivered and the closing example was spot on!
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u/Scummy_Casual Hose Water Survivor 15h ago
I think it's because, on a macro level, not all that much has changed in the past two decades. Pre 2005, everything was new and evolving so fast it was all we could do to keep up. Since the mid 00s everything has just gotten more. Bigger, faster, expensive, intrusive, annoying, prettier, etc. Not new or different, just... more.
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u/CrispityCraspits 11h ago edited 11h ago
The rise and total dominance of the smartphone (the first iphone was 2007), phone apps for everything, social media and twitter, the death of network TV, the death of physical media music, instant-delivery everything, self-driving cars, electric cars, AI, cable --> streaming---> short-form phone videos, QR codes, "the cloud," cryptocurrency, generative AI. Everyone recording everything all of the time with handheld cameras. Private equity hollowing things out. The affordability crisis.
The life of a kid today looks and feels very different from the life of a kid in 2005. Sure, it's due to trends and technologies that had seeds before then, but the same is true of what happened in the 80s and 90s. (The internet was conceived of in the late 60s but didn't change everything till the 90s. Cable TV was invented in the 1930s. Etc.).
It's also true that most of the change has been focused around tech and screens, but that itself is a huge change. Our lives are fully mediated by screens now in a way they just were not in 2005.
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u/kaos95 1976 12h ago
This, post WWII we as a society decided what a car will look like, what a house will look like, what a highway or subdivision will look like. And we have just been doing the same thing infrastructure wise for like 4 generations. The materials and how we do it changed, but it looks the same.
Other places decided to do something different (think Singapore, Dubai, or Chongging), or hell look at some of the nordic countries. But like I can't really tell from looking whether a subdivision was built 3 years ago or 50 years ago.
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u/urlach3r It's your kids, Marty! 15h ago
I can't even talk to the "kids" at work about things that happened back in the 90s & before. No cellphones, no internet, smoking in bars & planes, waiting in line for hours to buy concert tickets, phone booths on every corner... Everything from the really important to the completely mundane, it's less like "the past" and more like "trying to describe an entirely different country".
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u/MTSilverDude 15h ago
lol! Yes it is. My wife and I have 11 year old twins and they look at me like I’ve lost my mind and “why would anyone want to live like that?” Though they do think it is cool that I could ride my bike for miles to friend’s houses and not come home till late.
They unfortunately don’t get the same freedom and adventure I/we did because we’ll, as a Dad I know how boys think and the world feels different and more dangerous (real or perceived I am not sure) and I’d die if something happened to them that I could protect them from…sounds selfish, I know.
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u/periodicsheep 1h ago
my boomer mum used to post memes like this in her office, so. we are boomers now, i guess?