Generations aren't seamless: altruism among the twenty-somethings

Commonweal, June 3, 1994 by Abigail McCarthy

Some themes seem to be struck in the national consciousness all at once and variations on them appear everywhere. Of late the theme I notice is the discovery of generational differences and generalizations about generations.

Chalmers Roberts, former reporter and columnist, had something of a shock when he told a young newswoman that he began reporting on Washington when Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, "probably before you were born," and she replied that 1933 was before her father was born (Washington Post, May 1)!

Talk of generations swirled around the death of President Richard Nixon. A New York Times reporter, scratching for unusual reactions, interviewed high school students and found that to them the Nixon presidency seemed as remote as George Washington's. In fact, they made comparisons between Nixon and Washington!

Features columnist Tony Kornheiser, returning to his alma mater after twenty-five years, found, in talking to the university news staff, that they didn't know who Paul McCartney was, let alone who the Beatles were as a group. When he tried to find out what was important to them they talked of cultural diversity and date rape.

He tried to tell them how it was in his college generation: "|The Vietnam War was everything.' I explained. |Everything. It overwhelmed everything. It defined everything. It made everyone mistrust everyone old because everyone old just wanted to kill them'" (Washington Post, May 1). And he coupled the war with the Nixon presidency.

Are generations so sharply divided and so clearly identified?

I thought of that as I looked at the former presidents and first ladies sitting in line at the Nixon funeral, most of whom I had known from the time we were the generation just taking over. Ours, the generation they epitomized, was a generation touched by and just emerging from the Great Depression. We were people rooted in small towns or defined city neighborhoods--or, as in the case of George Bush, in the clan security of the dominant Waspdom. Our regional differences were marked. Our society was stable. And, in the aftermath of World War II, to most of us pride in country and belief in its mission to lead the world were givens. Public service was for us a worthy primary goal until Watergate and the cynicism it engendered.

The generation that succeeded ours (the so-called baby boomers) was mobile and homogenized. The baby boomers were united by television and the fads that swept rapidly across the country. They were the "rock 'n' roll" generation, overwhelming popular culture by their sheer numbers. They were also the children of affluence, and affluence was available to them as they entered their own adulthood. Many were the first of their families to enter the professions. Those who joined the labor force could own their own homes, cars, and boats as a matter of course.

There were bridges initially between the baby boomers and many of their parents, generation in the movements--the civil rights movement, the nascent peace movement, the beginnings of environmentalism. But, as Vietnam became an overriding issue, cracks between the generations became deep fissures. As a result, the boomers sought to create their own communities, experimenting with drugs and with great communal gatherings like Woodstock

After Vietnam, with the arrival of Reagan and the "me" generation, the tail end of the baby boomers and their children entered a different world--a world of no vision. Government was bad. Self-interest was good.

The disaster of Vietnam had affected the making of all foreign policy. According to the Economist (April 30), this handicap was accompanied by a collapse of trust in the institutions and conduct of politics at home: "...The deceptions and crimes that brought Nixon down have...marked American politics to this day. Nixon caused enduring press bolshiness, congressional uppityness, and public cynicism. He was responsible for the general coarsening of public life."

During the Reagan years selfishness became a public virtue. Getting rich was a good no matter how it affected others. The national debt burgeoned. The so-called underclass grew larger in every city. There was indifference to, and general neglect of, those who needed help. (A doctor gave me an interesting instance of this: Only 11 percent of the children are immunized in prosperous Houston, and only 44 percent nationally, while the Indian Health Service demonstrates that 9O percent immunization can easily be reached with only a little public attention and expense. But the general will to do so is not there.)

And now we have the twenty-somethings, the generation called "X"--the generation whose members feel they have missed the boat. Global competition has diminished the national economy. Job prospects are bleak. AIDS shadows their lives. This is the generation that, according to David Brinkley (Washington Post, April 3), is the generation of low SAT and LSAT scores, the generation that doesn't read (even the newspapers), doesn't vote, and doesn't believe in the work ethic--the generation to whom we must entrust the future.