The Generational Warfare: Who’s Fault Is It Anyway?

It’s happening again – the debate over generational output and success. A few weeks ago, everyone was attacking Gen Z, wondering why they were so lazy or whether they can be trusted to take over the new reins. And just before that, it was the Baby Boomers, and what a mess they have left for the generations after them. Let’s not forget those millennials, you know, the spoiled group who had everything handed to them.

The only generation that hasn’t been mentioned is mine – Gen X, because frankly, nothing sour has been reported about us, except maybe whether we’ve learned anything from the mistakes of the Boomers. And the short answer is: maybe, maybe not.

While there’s much to say about each generation, the worst attacks were made against the older generations in general. With all the hard work we, and those before us, put into patching up some of the worse fiascos in anyone’s lifetime, people are still wondering whether we’re good enough.

We should know better by now in this post anti-racist environment to cause any type of societal divisions, but here we are again.

Is this new battleground resulting from the younger generation’s need to show their independence, or a sign of their frustration over the older generation’s deliberate, methodical ways? Let’s not forget that the older generations have had to live through some of the worst financial woes of the past 100 years. As willful and misguided as these events were, they nearly crushed the US to the ground, but we were nonetheless able to survive.

What the older generations have accomplished is to help create a more conscientious, inclusive world. The mistakes made in the past led to the wokeness of the present and the technological supremacy of the future. Aside from economic failures, they also lived through one of the longest wars since Vietnam, and sat by in complete shock as the nation’s leadership created turmoil against the people’s will.

If the older generations should be faulted for anything, it’s for not standing up for themselves as the younger generations attack their worth. Nothing was built in a day, but harvested and nurtured among several years. To sneer at the older guys, or try to blame them for everything that’s going wrong now is child’s play – a symptom of immature toddlers unable to find their binky’s after they spit them out and taking it out on their devoted caretakers. Let’s leave the past where it belongs and look further into the future, so that the generations of that time don’t fall back into blaming the current generations for all their failures.