Let’s be clear about this: the origin of the “Generation X” tagline is not from the book by Canadian author and artist, Douglas Coupland. It comes from a little-known English reporter, Jane Deverson, writing about youth of the 1960s England whom she had meticulously interviewed. She published her findings in her 1964 book, Generation X. This comes from the BBC, so you know it’s true. Besides, Billy Idol says he named his band, Generation X, because his mom had Deverson’s book on her bookshelf. If you can’t believe Billy Idol, well . . .
I think First Things author and Villanova professor, James Mathew Wilson, misses this point (alas), but it doesn’t matter. By way of personal testimony, he is very aware of how the Gen Xer works. He certainly knows how his (and my) generation process their relationships with others both inside and outside their own generation. Let’s not forget that these kind of people (my kind of people) come from a world in which dropping out and radical self-isolation was an actual possibility. He says,
… unlike the generations that have followed, we really could drop out. Phones still hung on the kitchen wall, cities had not installed cameras for mass surveillance, and the closest things to social media were zines: photocopied, stapled magazines put together mostly by college students.
You can read his comments in, Not Talkin’ About My Generation, where he interacts with a book I have not read: Helen Andrews’, Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster.
This point of dropping out strikes me as very familiar. During my four years of high school and x years of college, I knew several peers who were, essentially, invisible. This was deliberate. They purposefully had no friends. No sports. No church. No clubs. No meaningful family connection. Their primary desire was to disappear, and this was something during my generation that was actually possible. In fact, it was easy. The default setting was more or less, alone. Why do you think we needed to carry a house key?
So, when a Gen-Xer actually doesn’t disappear, that means something.
Writing for The Walrus, Sejla Rizvic, notices that Gen Z tend to so love their self-identification that they loathe the underperforming generation before them. In the average Gen Z estimation, Millennials are a “spoiled generation more interested in five-dollar lattes than in home ownership.” One Gen Z commentator, using language not appropriate here, asks what exactly Millennials have contributed to the world: “Mumford and Sons? A craft brewery on every corner?” You can read Rizvic’s story in, Everybody Hates Millennials: Gen Z and the TikTok Generation Wars (or you can listen to it here).
She notices not just the inter-generational battle between Gen Z and Millennials, she also notices that the Gen Xer … is not noticed. They float beneath the radar. Nobody seems to hate them. How could they? They are “Forever the forgotten middle child.” They disappear. Into thin air. Thinking again of James Matthew Wilson’s article in First Things, Gen Xers don’t get a lot of hate because, well, they don’t really register. Rizvic suggests that Gen Z and Millennials kick up tons of dust as they argue. But Luke Skywalker, who has always been our metaphor, stalls Kylo Ren on Crait without kicking up even a grain of salt.
Wilson says this,
“… if Generation X has something to share, it is in part that the search for a good life need not entail generation-spanning currents of revolution, a merchandizing campaign, or an authorized sacred book [I read this as not targeting the Bible per se, but a kind of authorizing norm]. One needs only the capacity to stand back from all grand gestures and to seek refuge in a corner of the bar or coffee shop. This kind of retreat may have a way of freeing us from self-regard and vanity and allows us, in a condition that is two parts liberty and one part boredom, to feel reality bite.”
Gen Xers know how to step back, how to avoid getting riled-up in unhelpful debate, how to work between the Boomers and the Millennials with shoulders shrugged and hearts unfazed by generational duels. They know how to be invisible.
Three years ago Gwen Moran wrote for Fast Company Magazine that Gen Xers have something very unique to offer as leaders. She quotes consultant Cam Marston, who says that the “gen X manager thinks he or she is doing his or her team a favor by leaving them alone to do their job.” This is a good thing. Moran adds, “they’re managing others like they would like to be managed—get the work done, avoid the distractions, and go home.”
You can read the rest of Moran in, Why You Need to Pay Attention to Gen X Leaders, which, from my experience, doesn’t always strike the right note. But let’s not forget Wilson’s insight that the Gen Xer isn’t really into “generation-spanning currents of cultural revolution” or the well-aimed “merchandizing campaign” or “grand gestures.”
In avoiding these things, the Gen Xer is freed-up to befriend the straddling generations without fuss. There may be a proclivity, even a strong proclivity, to drop off the radar into the corner of a café. However, when the Gen Xer resists disappearing and is present at your side, very likely they aren’t there to recruit you to their side or to sell you a product, and certainly not to judge your generation. In my experience, at the self-confessed risk of generational snobbery, more often than not they are there because they remember very well the temptation to drop out, and they’re tired of it. They just want to be with you.
