Lost Generation?
It's a funny thing, about my family. (In all likelihood, it's true of all families, so I should say, It's a funny thing about families.) There's a certain very specific thing that we share which colors everything about how we look at and interact with the world, but we spend so much time concentrating on the weirdnesses and the tensions and the history and the conflicts and the silences and the differences that we never notice how hugely that one common thing infects everything, tying us together in a most fundamental way.
In my family, that one thing, the one common thread, is a certain type of intellectual cast. None of us (except technically my dad, and by identification, me) are actually intellectuals, but it doesn't matter. It's a way we look at the world. In terms of constructs expressing concretes, or language revealing links. The small being the face of the large. It's a weird habit, and I think I'm the only person (save maybe one) that I know outside of the family who thinks it's normal.
This is why I am thinking about this: Today we had a family birthday event. We have group birthdays, because the parents hate birthdays, and today was the spring birthday. Historically these things have been rife with built-up tension, bit-back differences of opinion or life choices, and governed by the silences that result. Today, Dad and I talked about statistics, my sister's boyfriend and my step-aunt and my kid brother talked about all manner of things, my sister and my stepmother talked about art and clothes and business. And then we sat down and ate a fine meal and had a wide-ranging conversation about generations. It was a conversation only we could have had, spattered with short-hand references to family commonalities that shepherded us to the same conclusions before we stated them, or made it pointless to try to come to the same conclusion at all. Like we'd in some ways already had the conversation before we had it.
The conversation started from two things: My kid brother, J, feels that his generation has nothing left to define itself by. My stepmother, L, recently saw a parent my age let her young child wander into Manhattan traffic and then walked into a coffeeshop. We linked these two things and talked about how my generation is a mess (which we had trouble defining, partly because it's hard to properly deal with a cultural construct overlaid on a sociological construct) and how the flow of culture to J's generation leaves him in a very different place than my parents' generation. There could be no Vietnam today, not just because it's been done already within the cultural memory and therefore represents no renewal/unique identity/generational possibilities, but also because the public or perceived context in which politics happen is so un-straightforward. JFK's election was just as complex and corrupt as the last one we saw, but the public's understanding of it can be assumed to be radically different.
All the abolute idealist activism of my parents' generation has helped make us thirtysomethings broadly uninvolved (in a host of ways that we as a family alluded to but did not unpack), ironic, and prejudiced towards futility. My sister points out that NPR and other sources have been doing stories lately about how parents in my generation push responsibility for their children on neighbors, grandparents, schools, police and anyone else who can be picked on. Which to my stepmother leaves J and his cohorts in a sea of pointlessness, without our protective irony or Generation Y's protective cocoon of...willful blindness? My step-aunt reminded J that he's not like other kids, which led my sister to bring up how poorly the average guy does without a fixed context. Which led me to some of the ideas a couple of posts ago, about how interdependence saves energy for those who are suited to it, and how poorly they do when their ideologies are not functioning. Which brought my step-aunt and stepmother back to how ideologies cohere and how J's generation has not yet progressed to ripening. All in good time, you see. (J shows a certain apocalyptic tendency that should suit him well till he turns 18. It worked for me. I think we like to indulge it even as we argue against it.)
I got lost in all this fun and never managed to get my point across: That in some ways it is possible to see my generation (whatever "generation" means, seeing as how most people actually use the word for kids in a 10-year period, which is a cohort not a generation, and how no one can get together and agree what ages are included in what generation, and how definitions on the generations and their characteristics are invariably even looser and messier than statistics in uneducated hands would produce) -
In some ways it is possible to see my generation - Gen X, the Busters, Goonies - as a Lost Generation, just like Hemingway's generation. My step-aunt reminded us all that Hemingway shot himself.
And the interesting thing to me is that even though I never actually managed to lay this thing out on the table for discussion, dissection and extension, I know that it's ticking away in the minds of my sister and my stepmother and my step-aunt and my kid brother and my dad, waiting to grow legs and put out runners and come to the next dinner as a grown-up idea. Even though we never really discussed it. Even if it doesn't come up again, sometime years down the road someone is sure to refer to some conclusion drawn from it as a fait accompli that we are all familiar with.
Ain't family cool?
In my family, that one thing, the one common thread, is a certain type of intellectual cast. None of us (except technically my dad, and by identification, me) are actually intellectuals, but it doesn't matter. It's a way we look at the world. In terms of constructs expressing concretes, or language revealing links. The small being the face of the large. It's a weird habit, and I think I'm the only person (save maybe one) that I know outside of the family who thinks it's normal.
This is why I am thinking about this: Today we had a family birthday event. We have group birthdays, because the parents hate birthdays, and today was the spring birthday. Historically these things have been rife with built-up tension, bit-back differences of opinion or life choices, and governed by the silences that result. Today, Dad and I talked about statistics, my sister's boyfriend and my step-aunt and my kid brother talked about all manner of things, my sister and my stepmother talked about art and clothes and business. And then we sat down and ate a fine meal and had a wide-ranging conversation about generations. It was a conversation only we could have had, spattered with short-hand references to family commonalities that shepherded us to the same conclusions before we stated them, or made it pointless to try to come to the same conclusion at all. Like we'd in some ways already had the conversation before we had it.
The conversation started from two things: My kid brother, J, feels that his generation has nothing left to define itself by. My stepmother, L, recently saw a parent my age let her young child wander into Manhattan traffic and then walked into a coffeeshop. We linked these two things and talked about how my generation is a mess (which we had trouble defining, partly because it's hard to properly deal with a cultural construct overlaid on a sociological construct) and how the flow of culture to J's generation leaves him in a very different place than my parents' generation. There could be no Vietnam today, not just because it's been done already within the cultural memory and therefore represents no renewal/unique identity/generational possibilities, but also because the public or perceived context in which politics happen is so un-straightforward. JFK's election was just as complex and corrupt as the last one we saw, but the public's understanding of it can be assumed to be radically different.
All the abolute idealist activism of my parents' generation has helped make us thirtysomethings broadly uninvolved (in a host of ways that we as a family alluded to but did not unpack), ironic, and prejudiced towards futility. My sister points out that NPR and other sources have been doing stories lately about how parents in my generation push responsibility for their children on neighbors, grandparents, schools, police and anyone else who can be picked on. Which to my stepmother leaves J and his cohorts in a sea of pointlessness, without our protective irony or Generation Y's protective cocoon of...willful blindness? My step-aunt reminded J that he's not like other kids, which led my sister to bring up how poorly the average guy does without a fixed context. Which led me to some of the ideas a couple of posts ago, about how interdependence saves energy for those who are suited to it, and how poorly they do when their ideologies are not functioning. Which brought my step-aunt and stepmother back to how ideologies cohere and how J's generation has not yet progressed to ripening. All in good time, you see. (J shows a certain apocalyptic tendency that should suit him well till he turns 18. It worked for me. I think we like to indulge it even as we argue against it.)
I got lost in all this fun and never managed to get my point across: That in some ways it is possible to see my generation (whatever "generation" means, seeing as how most people actually use the word for kids in a 10-year period, which is a cohort not a generation, and how no one can get together and agree what ages are included in what generation, and how definitions on the generations and their characteristics are invariably even looser and messier than statistics in uneducated hands would produce) -
In some ways it is possible to see my generation - Gen X, the Busters, Goonies - as a Lost Generation, just like Hemingway's generation. My step-aunt reminded us all that Hemingway shot himself.
And the interesting thing to me is that even though I never actually managed to lay this thing out on the table for discussion, dissection and extension, I know that it's ticking away in the minds of my sister and my stepmother and my step-aunt and my kid brother and my dad, waiting to grow legs and put out runners and come to the next dinner as a grown-up idea. Even though we never really discussed it. Even if it doesn't come up again, sometime years down the road someone is sure to refer to some conclusion drawn from it as a fait accompli that we are all familiar with.
Ain't family cool?
posted by Kira at 5:03 PM
4 Comments:
First, I'm jealous of your family--at least of being able to spend a day having discussions of abstract topics, and approaching them in an 'intellectual' way. I grew up in a family where the only conversations where about concrete events, and usually ones relating to hockey or family finances. I never saw my father read a book, and as far as I know my mother has read nothing but Harlequin Romance novels, at least in the last 33 years.
I'd take "built-up tension, bit-back differences of opinion" and conversation over the vaguely benevolent disinterest that governs relations within my family.
"nothing left to define itself by" -- I'm sure this is an artifact of summarizing the discussion, but this seems like a pretty meaningless sentiment.
"There could be no Vietnam today" -- I assume you are refering to the protests, and not the quagmire, since it's manifestly possible that there could be one of those today.
"because it's been done already within the cultural memory and therefore represents no renewal/unique identity/generational possibilities" -- an interesting corollary of this notion for me is the flipside question of why we seem to be so willfully ignorant of the relationships between things that happen today and other things that have happened within cultural memory. Example: the Red Scare and the whole repressive government/xenophobia/giving up freedoms for safety from external threat to "our way of life"/etc thing and how tightly it maps onto the "war on terror".
"make us thirtysomethings broadly uninvolved (in a host of ways that we as a family alluded to but did not unpack), ironic, and prejudiced towards futility." -- I believe you have very succinctly crystallized what it is about our cohort that most irritates me. Well, that and the way we seem to ignore the cause-effect relationship when understanding it would be inconvenient to us.
"how poorly the average guy does without a fixed context" -- you know this is also a key notion in post-Chandler mystery fiction, right? Which grew out of the Lost Generation, of course.
Now tell me in what way we're a Lost Generation. We don't have the kind of apocalyptic aftermath that the original Lost Generation was dealing with after WWI, and we're not any more disdainful of the moral systems of our elders than those elders were in their day.
Hmm, family....that's a whole nother kettleofish, innit? I didn't know you were a sport. Congratulations on building a family without losing the born one.
As to built-up tension and bit-back differences of opinion - the only difference between yours and mine on that point is that there are various ways mine tries to enforce consistency. Careful what you wish for....
OK, now on to the real stuff. "Nothing left to define itself by": Come on, you know exactly what he meant. Groups define their social character by creating a myth around a shared event, ideal, obsession or habit. And yes, I'm referring to the Vietnam protests as a defining event of my parents' generation, but also the intellectual quagmire it produced.
Dude! "those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it." IIRC, that came up too.
I didn't know you were a sport.
In many ways I am still true to my heritage--I'd rather have a sad song and a merry war than the other way around--but the internal world was both my rebellion and my escape.
My worst fear about parenting is that Sarah's rebellion will be rejection of the examined life.
Congratulations on building a family without losing the born one.
I once spent several months doing iteration after iteration an illuminated page. I'm not artistic, and even the Book of Kells type stuff that has a geometic element is tricky for someone with my limited powers. The quote was "The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof." When I finally got it to a state that I liked, I framed it and hung it in the entrance hall of my house. It was meant as a recognition of, and a welcome for, members of The Tribe.
"Nothing left to define itself by": Come on, you know exactly what he meant. Groups define their social character by creating a myth around a shared event, ideal, obsession or habit.
I agree completely with "Groups define their social character by creating a myth around a shared event, ideal, obsession or habit" so far as it goes, although I suspect that there is also a bit of common axioms or value stuff in there too. I don't see how that connects to "nothing to define themselves by" and I especially don't see how it connects to "nothing left to define themselves by". This is not a rhetorical trick--I really don't see the sequitor.
Post a Comment
<< Home