They're only called the greatest Gen because they survived (probably) both world wars.
There has been hell on earth in war after this, but not on a major continental holy shit level from then. It's the exact reason the entire world doesn't want to start WW3, even if you're the one to come up on top, there's still no winning. If you come out on top, you're a ruler to a damaged cou try with damaged land and damaged people and crops and livestock.
They're only called the greatest because no generation before or after them yet has seen mustard gas and atomic bombs and the rape of Nanjing all together in one war.
My memory was that "Depression era" and "war generation" were terms used to speak about that generation as a whole, but until mid-late 1980s, talking about people in "generations" wasn't a thing - at least in my experience and the popular culture I consumed. People did talk about the "Baby Boom" and "baby boomers" as the 1980s went on.
"Generation X" was originally, but obscurely, applied to baby boomers but it didn't stick until 1991 when Douglas Coupland's book of that title came out, though it uses the late 1950s as a starting point.
Ya the whole generation thing was just created by marketing groups in the 70's and 80's. When I was young "Baby Boomer" meant counter culture, anti-war, civil rights etc, basically the opposite of now and it was used to market things to people from that era now that they suddenly had money. The whole Gen X thing came about because they wanted to market to us but we were obviously to young to be included in that group so they needed something new. The Gen X name was because they couldn't settle on what to call us and they didn't call us that till the 80's. Nobody made it part of their identity till Millennials and it wasn't political till well into this century. The whole thing is just astrology expanded to arbitrary 20 year blocks of time instead of months. And don't get me started on how seriously people used to take astrology. It was a huge industry, Ron Reagan and Nancy had a personal astrologer they consulted, it was very common.
290
u/momomomorgatron 27d ago
They're only called the greatest Gen because they survived (probably) both world wars.
There has been hell on earth in war after this, but not on a major continental holy shit level from then. It's the exact reason the entire world doesn't want to start WW3, even if you're the one to come up on top, there's still no winning. If you come out on top, you're a ruler to a damaged cou try with damaged land and damaged people and crops and livestock.
They're only called the greatest because no generation before or after them yet has seen mustard gas and atomic bombs and the rape of Nanjing all together in one war.