Meaning:
The generation of people born between the 1950s and early 1970s, who were
anarchic and directionless.
Background:
The term is first recorded in the December 1952 edition of Holiday:
"What, you may well ask, is Generation X? These are the youngsters who have
seen and felt the agonies of the past two decades, who are trying to keep
their balance in the swirling pressures of today, and who will have the
biggest say in the course of history for the next 50 years."
Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson's 1964 novel Generation X portrays the
children who would come of age in the closing years of the 20th century:
"The ultimate responsibility of Generation X is to guide the human race
through the final and crucial decades of this explosive century into the
enlightenment of the next one."
The term became widespread in the late 80s and early 90s following Douglas
Copeland's 1991 book - Generation X: tales for an accelerated culture.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Across the Pacific, the term seemed to apply, if only partially. By the Cultural
Revolution, Chinese born in the early 1950s would be in high schools, in the
right time and place to practice anarchy. Backed by their god Mao himself, the
kids styled themselves Red Guards, mobilized into Rebel gangs, turned first on
their teachers, those capitalist roaders, vied among themselves for power, and
soon upended their world. Looking back, some of them would regret that they
wasted their best years in chaos.
I doubt those born in the 60s and 70s were any the wiser, but as they say every
ebb must have its flow. The tide came in and lifted them up in time to attend
schools and profit from a booming economy. Many did well and thought it was
their birth right.
