A particularly insightful piece of commentary on last night’s performance by Pearl Jam at the Garden, posted on the village voice blog got me thinking, or rather rethinking what it means to be part of my generation, “Generation X“. In particular, this line tickled that part of me that is, in some ways, still a grungy, flannel wearing, quasi-goth kid:
The idea of being alive in a generation whose connectivity and potential are equaled only by its overpowering impotence and confusion.
This is a profound statement that really captures the essence of the people who grew up when I was growing up. And admittedly, I’ve definitely noticed this trait in myself: A deep sensitivity about what is “wrong” and a clear image of what “right” would feel like, yet very little practical empowerment in terms of how to “get there” from “here” and a certain, cynical apathy about whether “there” would even be worth getting to, since all the other “there”’s that were imagined before us seemed to have given us nothing but more trouble, more damage, more isolation.
See, it’s apparent even in the language that we use. The way I see it, the baby boomers who came before us really overshadowed the world just in their pure numbers. They went through their idealisms in the ’60’s, became increasingly self-absorbed in the ’70’s and pretty much sold their souls in the name of free trade in the ’80’s. Now, “Gen X”ers who were mostly children and preteens in the ’80’s saw the decadence and hubris, and the resulting consequences, in the forms of the arms race, AIDS, Exxon oil spills, exploding space ships, Metallica and other such phenomena.
By the time, my generation came of age enough to begin to really understand the world that was going to be our inheritance, we were already jaded. Case in point: Kurt Cobain - one of the quintessential icons of this generation, he was grimy and whiny and ridiculously talented. Like all other innovators, he may not have been the first or only one to do what he did, but he did what he did in a way that made everyone sit up and pay attention, and that is a feat in itself.
I remember clearly, I was in my midteens when he committed suicide. I remember someone older, perhaps my dad, telling me that I shouldn’t waste my time mourning that “loser”. I remember having debates about Kurt vs. Lennon in University, the year after his death. I jostled with the conflicting feelings of admiring the works of both John Lennon and Kurt Cobain in equally intense but fundamentally different ways. It’s only now, as I approach my 30’s, that I can look back and pluck an essential truth out of the seemingly contrasting lives of these two musical legends.
John Lennon championed peace, love, acceptance, joy, flowers, hope, and all those things idealized much more than realized by his generation. While Kurt Cobain was the product of a world where John Lennon had been shot dead in broad daylight. Lennon imagined that the world could be made into a better place, Kurt grew up in a world that had swallowed up and spit out many John Lennons and Dr. Martin Luther Kings.
Of course people of my generation have been cynical, nihilistic and apathetic. We were given a warship built on a rose garden. We inherited poverty, environmental deterioration, STDs packaged as hyper-consumerism. We saw how our elders left their ideals behind when it came to slaving away at thankless jobs for their corporate masters. We realized this was all that was real, and so what was the point anyway? As Kurt sang, “Oh well, whatever. Nevermind.”
But now, we are gaining control as we get older and we are seeing each other in positions of power and influence. We are seeing the new icons of Gen X, the ones who didn’t self destruct. The Richard Bransons, Stephen Colberts, Jon Stewarts and Eddie Vedders. Those are among the older ones from this generation, but they have paved a path for the rest of us. They are demonstrating to us that the world belongs to us now. That we do make a difference whether we do something, or stay impassive.
The question now is: Do we have the right tools, the right apparatus to be able to exercise our newly discovered powers? Can we find our voices and learn to say out loud the things which we have inherently understood, in many cases, from a very early age? Are we going to go out there, and take charge of our world? Will we remember who we are?