Generational Comparison is Competition by Other Means
You can compete with your peers and even yourself, but you cannot compete with people from a different time.
Photo: Sergiu Vălenaș, Unsplash
Ezra Klein recently moderated a “debate” on his eponymous New York Times podcast about whether boomers had ruined America (April 6, 2021). I say “debate” because, traditionally, a debate requires representation from more than one side. Klein and his guests, Jill Filipovic and Helen Andrews, are all millennials. Both Filipovic and Andrews have just published polemics indicting boomers for their many alleged crimes and misdemeanors. The thrust of the Klein podcast, therefore, was less an effort to explore the issue of generational injustice than to codify it—from right-leaning (Andrews) and left-leaning (Filipovic) perspectives.
Following the feud between millennials and boomers over the past decade—or even just listening to three millennials skewer their elders for an hour—has persuaded me that generational comparison is an intellectual cul-de-sac. I see it now for what it has become or perhaps was all along: competition by other means.
You can compete with your peers and even yourself but you cannot compete with people from a different time, even people from a recent time. Boomers watched the moon landing on fuzzy television screens when they were kids. Infants today are handed mobile screens with more casual computing power than NASA used to land on the moon. Generational experience is relatable but it is not comparable. You really do have to be there.
We compare generations but we do not have a firm grasp of what we are comparing. What defines a generation? By some accounts, I am a millennial. By others, not at all. I think often about Patrick Hipp’s article from 2016, “Fuck You, I’m not a Millennial,” in which he created his own generational ranges working up from 1890. Such an exercise immediately undermines itself, which is the point: generational identity is pliable.
How long is a generation? Fifty years? Twenty-five? Ten? Is it always the same or does it bend to fit historical context? Can it speed up? Do generations today have a parallel track with Moore’s law? Are there more generations today that we perceive because there’s simply more happening?
Generational comparison is truly apples to oranges. I suspect we revel in it because, like the other categories we used to divide ourselves, it is easy. It makes us feel better. We say to ourselves: they had it better, the game is rigged, this is so unfair. Boosting your chances of success by disqualifying the competition is the oldest trick in the book. We compare not to learn from one another but to make sure we got ours. We act like the world is a retail experience. Not satisfied with your experience? Go get your refund.
It has always been more interesting to me to appreciate how each player plays out the hand that they’ve been dealt than to try to compare those hands. There’s dignity in playing even a bad hand well. It speaks to character, which is all any of us truly have.
We ought to use historical context as a framework: Instead of pitting generations against each another, we should ask which challenges are relative to each generation. We should act because it is the right thing to do and not because it evens the score.
When we talk about the cost of higher education today, for example, do we need to cite the fact boomers paid less than millennials or can we simply focus on asking whether the price increase is relative to value? Generational comparison adds an unnecessary step in solving this problem unless, of course, the problem we’re trying to solve is to get even.
Since when do we need a reason to do the right thing?
The millennial burden is not trivial but I choose to see this as a test of character rather than an invitation to settle scores. I have about as much interest in telling boomers how to feel about their tenure now as I will have listening to the unborn try to tell me about my own legacy in their time.
Our society is a network of obligations to one another, linking those who have passed with those yet to come through those who are here now. It is not a competition. And none of it matters, anyway, because none of us can take any of it with us.