Those were the days, my friends

[Architype]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Well, the GenXer stereotype was that we were cynical, sarcastic and non-aspirational. Per movies like Slacker, Reality Bites, Singles, Trainspotting. Yeah, I was conditioned by my upbringing to question striving for wealth and power, an ideal of the 60s that was filtered through the cautionary tale of the 80s. We weren't going to change the world through peace and love (or by buying the world a Coke, more like!), as we'd seen how the Woodstock generation had turned into pastel-coloured corporate whores. Rather, we were stymied by what the point was of working for all of that if you just ended up coked out and divorced.

We wanted meaning. And we were left wanting.

I bought into that mentality hook, line and sinker. I really am a walking, talking GenX stereotype, I admit it. Naturally, it goes without saying that the Westerners pontificating about our meaningless existences were pampered middle class types who'd never had to worry about having food on the table. In 1994 I spent a month in Thailand contemplating the meaning of life and the boundless emptiness of the universe while being served mouth-watering curries by the children of cooks running beachside restaurant huts under towering palm trees.

Hindsight makes everything so easily caricatured!

Anti-heroes have been around for decades. The 90s weren't anything special in that regard. The other day I rewatched Taxi Driver. That was made in 1976. GenXers weren't rebelling against their parents. In fact, the Boomers were generally sympathetic to the GenX reticence to embrace corporate trappings.

^ Every ascending generation tries to find new and better meaning through clarification, it's an explicating quest but it isn't effectual or absolute in resolution or people like Timothy Leary & Alan Watts would have huge religious followings rivalling Jesus. There is only so much you can do to figure out existence in a lifetime, short of hanging pictures of ones navel on the wall to facilitate such contemplation with ease of viewing. Relax & enjoy the ride.