Generalized

Generalized

What follows could be summed up as a generalized statement, but since I am a member of a group that’s being generalized by the statement, I believe the generalization to be acceptable. If I write something offensive, knowing it makes me look bad, then I’m just adding to generalizations already existing about my own kind.

Another way to see it is that if I continue, at the worst I would only further hurt my kind.

I don’t bring this up to warn of some upcoming despicable content which will be insulting to someone. I bring it up because not everyone will find this interesting. Could implying it may not be interesting be seen as generalizing that you personally wouldn’t be interested in reading this or getting answers?

It could be I guess, but for now, I’m moving on and any questions can be taken up later.

When I was a youngster with no internet, smartphone, computer and/or game console (and games), since they didn’t exist, seeking entertainment in play and finding interesting and fun things to do nearly always had to do with playing outside.

When we had to stay inside it was brutal, and that’s not a stretch. The only time we were inside playing was if the weather was too bad to be outside, or if we were sick.

Being made to stay in the house was like a punishment even when it wasn’t. I’m not sure that’s still the case today, but assuming it is, the “punishment” aspect of it today would require the extra step of removing the electronics that have, at the least, compromised today’s child’s view of having to stay inside as a punishment and for the punishment to have some positive effect.

When we had to stay inside, we’d get out the board games that we only played with if we had to stay in, or if we had a friend or two staying overnight. Otherwise they mostly collected dust.

We did things outside that taught us about the life-forms around us. We learned about the environment to an extent by ourselves by being outside in nature, making first-hand observations, and exploring day after day. Outside, we used our senses and our natural wonder of things to make discoveries on our own and honed those skills.

We did in real life then, what the video games do when we’re tired of playing them now - the game is saved and we pick up where we left off the next time we play. Outside, we’d build “forts” for example and play like we were defending them from our playmates who were acting out the part of the opposition force.

When it was time to go in, we “saved” our game too, and we took it up again the next day. It could go on for days.

It should be obvious by now that I am making a comparison. And since we were discussing generalizations earlier, you may have already come to a conclusion that I am going to be generalizing the younger generations. It’s certainly possible that I would, but that’s not my goal.

You may have noticed that I wrote “younger generations.” If you think this is odd, then you are probably an older person. When I was in high school and afterwards, growing up and learning stuff, there was much talk of a “generation gap.” The gap was defined as being between just TWO generations; us and them.

Although I salute them, I personally don’t count the “greatest generation” as a representative generation anymore, as there aren’t a significant number of its members remaining now. It’s just as when I was young, and at that time, the WWI generation was no longer significant enough to be a factor with its remaining numbers.

Since the time I’ve gone from being a child to becoming a man, the number of generations recognized have increased, and now there are something like four or five (or more?) generations alive all at the same time.

I’m not sure I understand how this happened, but we have the old baby boomers, followed by, (I may not get these in the right order), Gen X, then Millennials, Gen Y and finally Gen Z. Is this correct and is that all of them? I’m not sure.

It doesn’t matter really, as just the fact that we have over four generations alive at the same time is both amazing and historic… isn’t it?

So what’s the point?

I discovered that Gen Y gets lots of neglect and sometimes it doesn’t even get mentioned along with the others, when I found an article that recognizes Gen Y-ers as a group that will soon be getting 46% of U.S. income by 2025.

And the Gen-Yers are neglected? If they are then isn’t the neglect shown them literal insanity? And wouldn’t such neglect at least seem to be intentional?

I guess what I’m attempting to do here, is to reconcile a couple of things that bother me about this setup. So I guess the first question I would have is, why are there now more generations living than there were before?

I mean, we had two generations when I was young - three tops, and that was only if you wanted to divide “them” into two groups. Not many, if any, did. Remembering my attitude as a young man whose army enlistment had just recently been completed, most of us of around my age just saw “us and them.”

To be honest, I think it’s very strange that someone or some group has officially added at least two recognized, living generations to what has been the standard two or three living generations at the most, until now. Or are they actually counting the three or four possibly still living WWI veterans as a “living generation?”

The first and most popular response to my question would probably be that, “We are living longer, and that’s why we have to add to the number of defined, living generations,” but that doesn’t make sense.

With the “greatest generation,” the one before the boomers, it seems many of them have lived very long lives, and let’s not forget, many from that generation were slaughtered in two world wars. It seems that the life-spans of many of those from the greatest generation exceed the life-spans normally observed and expected in living folks today.

Okay, if it’s not due to folks living longer, then it must be because there are just more folks alive now.

This is true; there are more people alive, but how does this figure into the addition of more living generations? I mean, I don’t really see how this factor could add two whole generations within a span of time that has generally consisted of approximately twenty years for each generation.

A site called “marketingteacher.com” actually claims there are SIX (count ‘em) generations alive in America today.

Wait… there are now six generations, but they only exist in America? What kind of Tomfoolery is this?

I think this actually kind of gives it away.

You see, in the past we categorized each “generation” as a specific group of people, born during a set, averaged window of time. The number of group members is not significant. We then further or alternatively defined it as the specific number of years a generation covers. We then gave it a named, generational title; e.g. “Baby Boomers.”

Referring to the marketingteacher site above, what I’ve just described is apparently now not the only criteria used for identifying a “generation,” believe it or not. Now, from the same article we find that we are also doing generational-identification based on “likes, dislikes and attributes.”

They say that “A person’s birth date may not always be indicative of their generational characteristics…”

Does this mean that now we can declare that we’re part of a generation we’re really not part of, and that there are people out there who will stand by us and our false claims of generational inclusiveness based on the fact that a fifty year-old happens to like playing the same online game that mostly just twelve to fourteen year-olds play?

Well, isn’t that nice?

Know what else they do while also implying that it’s okay to do? They openly generalize.

_{Generalized © free-reign 2019}

Sources for images used in this post:

_{Eyes: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Minion: Image by vivek jatav from Pixabay
Boys Playing: Image by sterna from Pixabay
WWII Memorial: Image by Malachi Witt from Pixabay
Sense/Nonsense: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Phone Collection: Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay}