Gen-Xers are often recognized as being sarcastic, facetious, cynical, jaded, skeptical, pessimistic, etc. Why is this? Well, consider some of the major events of our time growing up as kids, in our family life and culture, in politics and the world, in society and business, or just about anywhere around us.
- Often, both parents work outside the home, divorce rates sky-rocket, and we become known as the “latch key generation”
- We see the first hand effects of desegregation, hippies, Roe v. Wade, and the feminist movement
- Politics were corrupt, including a disgraceful resignation by a sitting President Nixon, Savings and Loan mismanagement, Iran Contra affair
- Conflicts including Viet Nam, the Cold War, Lebanon, Arab-Israel conflicts, Afghanistan invasion, El Salvador, the Falklands, Libya, Shah of Iran exiled and 444 days of hostages held in U.S. Embassy
- Jim Jones and his followers in Guyana committed mass suicide in religious virtuosity, Jerry Falwell, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker
- Americans land on the moon while poverty and high infant mortality rates run rampant for an industrialized nation
- Civil and political leaders are killed (King, Jr., Kennedy, Hoffa, Kent State)
- Red dye No. 2, DDT, CFCs, burning rivers, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, Love Canal, Bhopal, Exxon Valdez
- AIDS, cocaine, crack, ebola, tobacco wars, fast food, obesity, ADD/ADHD
- Disco music, Michael Jackson, Debbie Boone, The Osmonds, Lawrence Welk, Hee-Haw, All in the Family, Star Trek
How could you not be a cynic after having experienced some of these events?
