DEAR GENERATION X

Much ink and anguish have already been devoted to chronicling the shortcomings and deprivations of the variously described collection of troubled souls known as Generation X. This Xer’s letter may add little to the outpouring of self-analysis other than further evidence of this generation’s obsession with the self. But perhaps a few more words on the matter may be added without being unseemly.

It is true that we are the first generation of Americans to have been reared in large numbers in broken homes and to grow up in a culture of random violence and common callousness. That we have contributed to these trends upon reaching young adulthood is as natural as it is tragic. The great challenge confronting our generation is to break this cycle of rampant selfishness and cultural decline. Yet it often seems that our generation’s only common bond, aside from an almost eerie ability to recite dialogue from The Brady Bunch, is an attraction to extreme individualism. Such a bond, of course, is by its very nature fragile and untrustworthy, and promises to erode further a civilization already flirting with collapse.

In politics, for example, we are often described as “riscally conservative but socially liberal.” Xers want, it is said, “to be left alone.” Libertarianism is supposedly replacing the Great Society naivete of the baby boomers with a realism born of government’s recent, well-intentioned failures. But we must not deceive ourselves by dressing up this theory with high-minded motives.

Our libertarianism is simply rationalized selfishness. It rejects, for instance, higher taxes and restrictions on sexual liberation not out of any lofty concern for the common good, but because such policies would take more money from our pockets and more hedonistic rights from our persons.

In a recent front-page article on Generation X in USA Today, one young person summed up this philosophy with admirable clarity: “The individual is the most basic unit of society.” Few ventures into political theory are more radically wrong than this. As can be seen in all viable societies and as many philosophers will attest, the family is the basic unit of society. It is there where the individual breathes his first breaths, learns his first thoughts, and gains his most important ideas about citizenship.

To contend that the individual may place self-interest above family responsibilities is the precursor to dissolving households and social havoc. It can be no surprise, therefore, that over the last 30 years, as each succeeding generation has accepted this terrible principle more fervently, America has been convulsed with almost every social pathology imaginable. Violent crime, child abuse and neglect, and reckless egoism among Americans of all races and classes cast an ominous shadow over the land.

Many have blamed the frenetic events of the 1960s for these trends. But in fa ct that decade’s merry, mass overturning of custom and order was only the imple mentation of theories conceived independently over centuries. First in theory, and then in practice, the self became king. And in very short order, the Americ an community has disintegrated into a fine powder of self-interested individual s lacking sympathy for one another’s concerns and fidelity to the common social web tha t we call law.

Yet the complaints about American society that are heard most often from Generation X are not about our inheritance of a society fragmenting from these vices. They are instead about reduced economic opportunities. That sort of complaint is to be expected, given the self-driven materialism of our time. But the great challenges confronting us as a generation, and by whose measure historians will judge us and our nation, are primarily cultural, not economic.

The American middle class, as measured by the standards to which we are accustomed, is in fact declining, and probably irreversibly. No tax cut, industrial policy, or protectionist trade barrier is likely to change this. The reasons are familiar but bear repeating in this context.

Following World War II and its devastation of the world’s major powers, the United States enjoyed an international economic dominance rare in history. As a result, Americans were able to manufacture automobiles, appliances, and other goods at wages that, by historical and global standards, were extraordinary for jobs requiring little or no education. Our parents were thus able to build big homes in beautiful suburbs, drive shiny, gas-guzzling cars, and provide us with a childhood that citizens of any age and any nation would consider privileged.

The inevitable industrialization of the rest of the world has meant competition from lower-paid foreign laborers, falling American wages, and the export of entire industries overseas. Virtually all occupations have felt to some degree the effects of this loss of national wealth. Industriously and creatively we should Ours will not be a generation of paupers. But unless we are to systematically deprive our children of both parents during their most important formative years, with harmful results, we must accept the fact that we will likely spend our younger years living more or less as our grandparents did at our age. That is, we will have to work and save longer than we might like before reaching suburbia. More of us will have to live for some time in apartments instead of homes, drive one older car instead of two newer ones, and take few if any vacations worthy of a postcard. The difficulty of adjusting to this economic reality is not to be ignored or dismissed. Still, it must be said that there are far worse troubles plaguing our planet than financial challenges of this sort. strive to forestall these economic trends, for the benefit of our families and our country. But for the sake of these same loved ones, we must banish unreasonable expectations about what the future holds.

Our generation has tried to overlook these economic and social trends, seeking vainly to keep up with the standard of middle-class prosperity set by the fortunate generation before us. Thus, as wages have fallen, our generation has tried to compensate by broadly initiating Every generation decides, through the cumulative force of its numbers and deeds, whether its society will survive or perish. This is the question confronting Generation X today, as we move into our most productive adult years at an urgent time in our country’s history. As our grandparents conquered the Depression and fascism, and as our parents subdued segregation, so Generation X must stand firm against the great selfishness and disunion of our time. If we choose a culture in which, for instance, young mothers are expected to provide a second paycheck for the household. This is due less to any special allegiance to feminism or careers per se than to the materialism all too common in our age.

Many young parents privately sense the harmfulness of institutions, such as day-care facilities, that have arisen in response to these new priorities. We reassure ourselves that children are resilient, that they can be left to raise themselves with few ill effects. But today’s children have smiled at our optimism and have pierced these unreasonable hopes one by one with a wave of unprecedented juvenile pathologies.

If we are to avoid contributing further to our country’s demise, our generation must accept, first of all, the following: We will probably be the first generation of Americans that will not do as well as our parents economically. This is not an epic injustice. Our parents enjoyed unusual economic circumstances that we cannot reasonably expect to be repeated in our lifetime. It is human nature, more than anything intrinsic to our generation, that leads us to bemoan these economic dislocations, rather than find reason for happiness in the remarkable prosperity of our childhood.

Ours will not be a generation of paupers. But unless we are to systematically deprive our children of both parents during their most important formative year s, with harmful results, we must accept the fact that we will likely spend our younger years living more or less as our grandparents did at our age. That is, we will have to work and save longer than we might like before reaching suburb ia. More of us will have to live for some time in apartments instead of homes, drive one older car instead of two newer ones, and take few if any vacations worthy of a postcard. The difficulty of adjusting to this economic reality is not to be ignored or dismissed. Still, it must be said that there are far worse troubles plaguing our planet than financial challenges of this sort.

Every generation decides, through the cumulative force of its numbers and deeds, whether its society will survive or perish. This is the question confronting Generation X today, as we move into our most productive adult years at an urgent time in our country’s history. As our grandparents conquered the Depression and fascism, and as our parents subdued segregation, so Generation X must stand firm against the great selfishness and disunion of our time. If we choose to strive only to outdo our predecessors in the self- indulgence and pleasure-seeking that have become defining features of late- 20th-century America, then we will probably seal our country’s doom.

Perhaps, however, we can do something different, something truly remarkable in the history of nations. This must be our resolution. We must turn away from these temptations. Let us reject the vices that swirl around us, enticing us to hasten our national undoing. Let us rediscover and sacrifice for our families. Generations before us saw the family not as an obstacle to self- fulfillment but as their greatest source of satisfaction and purpose; we can aspire to few things higher than the restoration of this belief.

Let us leave the base and selfish pursuits of our era to less enlightened souls. What we lack in material prosperity will be more than offset by the nobility that we will gain in the eyes of all generations and nations that will succeed us. And from this new dedication to a dying and beloved civilization, we may yet prove to all the world that this throwaway generation of slackers and delinquents can rise up at its country’s hour of greatest need with a message for the ages: one of self- denial, redemption, and honor.

Andrew Peyton Thomas is an assistant attorney general for Arizona and the author of the book, Crime and ths Sacking of American: The Roots of Chaos.

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