Curious Christian

Julia Baird writes:

IN 1995, the author Douglas Coupland tried to declare generation X dead. He was 33 and thoroughly tired of watching his age group being slagged off as apathetic, selfish slackers by sloppy journalists and baby boomers keen to deflect attention from their own shortcomings. The characters in his seminal book, Generation X, written in 1990, were intended to capture a new way of thinking – both ironic and sentimental – not to neatly encapsulate an entire generation…

…Generational descriptions can seem a bit like star signs. Are you bored by politics, addicted to texting and determined not to be a slave to the machine? Roll up, you must be gen Y. If you are cynical, bored, worried you’ll never be able to buy a house or get a decent promotion, tick box gen X. In other words, if you want to belong to a category, you will be sure to see yourself in it. Aren’t a lot of people still left cold by status, money and social climbing?

Interesting. Coupland himself questions oversimplified generational theory. Emerging youth ministers, take note.