I Know This Steak Doesn’t Exist

Generation X and the Problem of Individualism

By guest contributor Ryan Howard.

Generational wars are largely a waste of time and a net negative, especially for those of us on the Right. One of the great tragedies of our age is the loss of intergenerational conversation and the exchange of knowledge. It is my sincere hope that we can someday restore that concept. However, I must admit that I have an axe to grind with many in the older generations. In particular, I have developed a strong antipathy towards Generation X. When I express this antipathy, I’m met with confused expressions from my fellow Millennials, relieved ones from Boomers, and, of course, anger from Xers.

“This is all wrong!” they cry.

“Boomers are the great enemy. What has Gen X done to deserve this misguided anger?”

The answer lies within that very question: What has Gen X done? As the Xers approach 60, there are very few of them with true power or influence, with the exception of one group. Their cultural contributions are nihilistic slop, they have the social values of Millennials but the disposition of Boomers, and they aren’t willing to do what needs to be done to fix the world. Generation X is the most selfish generation, and their failure to act is a major contributing factor to the oncoming bloodbath that Millennials and Zoomers will bring as they ascend to power. Generation X is thoroughly poisoned by individualism, and it’s time to address just where exactly that came from and what we can learn from those treasured Gen X brothers who have joined this thing of ours.

When you examine a list of influential Gen Xers, you find vanishingly few politicians, heads of state, military leaders, or philosophers. Instead, you find a glut of professional athletes, musicians, actors, and filmmakers. There are a number of authors and visual artists, too, but a vast majority of them made their bones in genre fiction, like Brandon Sanderson and J.K. Rowling. This is the first issue with Generation X. Their conception of reality was forged by pop culture alone, and, as a result, it’s all they seem to care about. When you look at their heroes, idols, and influencers, you get nothing but a list of not just pop culture figures, but highly subversive ones. Who is it that is so often touted as the “voice of his generation”? None other than the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of Seattle grunge band Nirvana, Kurt Cobain.

Nobody sums up Gen X’s cultural ethos quite like Kurt Cobain, a heroin-addicted rockstar who either committed suicide or was murdered by his equally unstable girlfriend Courtney Love before seeing his 28th birthday. Cobain is an interesting case study as a representative of his generation. He was a child of divorce who was largely abandoned by his parents when his emotional outbursts and antisocial behavior, all of which stemmed from his sorrow at the destruction of his family by divorce, became too much for them to handle. He dropped out of high school, left the abusive environment created by his mother’s poor choices, and started loafing around Washington, attaching himself to a string of girlfriends looking for them basically to mother him. His emotional trauma from a lack of nurturing and love and his subsequent abuse of hard drugs turned him into an emotionally stunted and maladjusted adult, and his music found a wide audience because, as it turns out, he was far from the only one who came up that way.

Cobain’s story is the norm for a vast swath of Generation X. The fact of the matter is that Gen X was doomed from the beginning because of the politics of their parents, the Silent Generation and the very earliest Boomers. The earliest boundaries of Gen X birth years coincide directly with the passage of the Hart–Celler Act, the Civil Rights Act, and other legislative moves of LBJ’s Great Society. Their mothers were some of the first to work regularly outside the home, leaving most of them to become latchkey kids. The Sexual Revolution, culminating with Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade, had radically liberalized the sexual ethics of their world, and divorce rates skyrocketed as a result. Then, of course, we must account for the 3.4 million men who were deployed to Southeast Asia and Vietnam. Some, of course, never came back. Others came back physically or psychologically scarred. These men were the fathers of Gen X, and their impact on their children is readily demonstrable. Look no further than Alice In Chains’s “Rooster,” a song which tells the story of lead guitarist Jerry Cantrell’s father whom he did not meet until the age of 3 due to the war.

Gen X also had the displeasure of growing up in a decaying, rotting society. They wouldn’t be aware of it at the time — even their parents were likely in the dark — but they were witnessing the last stand of Pre-War American culture as the Post-War Consensus strangled the life out of it in the ’60s and ’70s. I have already mentioned the Johnson administration and the Great Society programs, but that was only one piece of the problem. Leftist radicalism was ever-present, with domestic terrorism rising throughout the late ’60s and early ’70s. Crime was on the rise, and the nature of crime was ugly and brutal. A large percentage of America’s most infamous serial killers were active, apprehended, and publicly tried during the formative years of Gen X. Education would be fully co-opted by radicals by the end of the 1970s, just in time for the oldest Xers to enter high school.

Generation X was left largely to raise themselves, fueled by highly-processed TV dinners as they consumed a truly degenerate pop culture beamed directly to them over satellite, cable, VHS, and stereo with no supervision. This was the world Gen X was brought up in. Family units were obliterated, institutions were subverted, fathers were killed, and young people were left alone with ever-degenerating media to raise them.

To Gen X’s credit, they seem to realize that the world of their parents is fake. A hallmark of their media is a rebellion focused against the establishment. Every old Gen Xer views himself as the kid with the guitar at the beginning of Twisted Sister’s music video for “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Every young Gen Xer views himself as Neo taking on Agent Smith in The Matrix. The problem is that this rebellion is focused entirely on individualistic freedom, not a return to something valuable. Let’s stick with the example of The Matrix, since it’s so often touted as one of the greatest works of Gen X art. The Matrix is a false life; everything is artificial, and people like Neo recognize the meaningless existence of staying inside. What’s outside the Matrix, though? A wasteland and a city that seems to be just a constant rave. What are Morpheus and his crew fighting for? There doesn’t seem to be an animating ideology, religion, or belief system other than total personal liberty. Is that so surprising when you consider the personal lives of the two brothers who made the movies?

The world we live in is fake and it sucks and you need to be free to do whatever you want. This ethos seemed to work for Gen X throughout the ’90s and into 2000. The economy was good, things were cheap, and it was easy to work a menial job during the day and then drink beer, eat pizza, watch WWF, and play PlayStation every night. You don’t need to be a part of the system, man! Just live your life. Unfortunately, this libertine slacker lifestyle could not withstand 9/11, the Global War on Terror, and the Financial Crisis of 2008. Many of the Gen Xers who were content to live in hedonism now found that lifestyle unworkable, quickly falling back in line with the Boomer world of the Post-War Consensus. They were able to find jobs, buy houses, and have the lifestyle their parents had, but they were the last generation to be able to do that. I think most Gen Xers feel the contradictions there, especially the ones who really went wild as young people but turned things around once they realized that the world they knew was over. They try to compensate for this by adopting the most cringe forever-young attitude. They look like normal people but behave like children and cling desperately to the latest progressive positions merely to avoid the worst fate imaginable: turning into the grumpy old man. This particular archetype of the out-of-touch curmudgeon is present in every beloved Gen X media staple. It is either some kind of joke like Abe Simpson or Dana Carvey’s “Grumpy Old Man,” or a strong antagonistic force like John Lithgow’s Reverend Moore in Footloose. The curmudgeon is the ultimate evil to the MTV Generation, and the collapse of the world of their youth is evidence of his evil. The Grumpy Old Man tried to make them go to church, turn off that disgraceful devil music, cut their hair, and get a job. It was the Grumpy Old Man who made it impossible to live like an overgrown child and made them hop back into the Matrix.

Now we arrive at the core problem with Gen X. They believe themselves to be Neo, but the Matrix character they most resemble is Cypher. They ended up right back in the system they fought against because it was simply more convenient. Deliver pizzas and play Metal Gear Solid until that’s no longer feasible, and then snatch up whatever assets they can at the last minute regardless of the damage it may do to their children. You shouldn’t even have children, man! They’ll harsh your buzz, and do you even want to bring a kid into this world? The difference, though, is that Cypher acknowledges his betrayal. The Gen Xers try to hold on to this idea that they actually didn’t change at all; they’re still young and cool and against The Man. When the younger generations talk about the pain of trying to make it in this world, though? Suddenly, the Gen Xers enter Boomer mode and unleash the usual “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and cut back on the avocado toast.” They’re far more sensitive and defensive than the Boomers because Boomers created this world. Gen X fought them for a time, but surrendered when things got hard. Boomers also have power and social capital. Gen Xers have the material wealth but none of the social capital, and to acknowledge their age would be to face the existential threat of becoming the Grumpy Old Man.

For all of their hatred of the system of their parents, the Gen Xers remain firmly ensconced in it to this day. All of their rebellious instincts are funneled into the nostalgia–industrial complex and screeching online. They’re prisoners of the Matrix even if they think they’re free of it, because their only care is for their own hedonistic and materialistic pleasure, and we live in an era where those urges can be mollified easily. Gen X has become addicted to that easy access. Remember that pop culture is sacred to them. They know how fragile the system is, though, and they will fight tooth and nail to keep it. At best, they want to return to Fresh Prince, an entirely worthless position built on blind nostalgia that just takes us back to an earlier stage of decline. At worst, they want the progressive agenda of destruction to proceed because God forbid you stand in the way of progress and become the dreaded Grumpy Old Man.

The problem of Generation X is a problem of isolation and individualism. They are the victims of societal breakdown at the end of the 20th century. They were taught to hate structure and authority and did not bat an eye at the destruction of society and social spaces. They have no sense of their nation or their people and are willing to sell out their progeny for the comfort of the now. They’re nihilists and materialists who believe themselves to be rebels. That being said, there are a number of Gen Xers who have realized that the source of their problem is the destruction of society and that the solution is to restore a strong community, not just to drop out. I hear this realization most from Pete Quiñones and his semi-regular Thought Crime Syndicate episodes where he and his co-hosts regularly return to this idea of Gen X nihilism. Pete’s status as a former libertarian, a background that I share, is illustrative of the problems that animate Gen X and how their politics have been misdirected. The infamous PayPal Mafia, an entirely Gen X outfit, seems to be going through a similar change as they realize the world they occupy now is not conducive to their goals of technological progress. I remain highly skeptical of the PayPal Mafia since their motives seem to be selfish, but they are at least making moves in the right direction, and hopefully their moves will make others of their generation see the truth and start to move towards building stronger communities. The resources are there. Many Gen Xers are wealthy and could be valuable contributors to a project of social reconstruction, so long as that project is rooted in traditional Christian values.

When I submitted my first draft of this article, I was given the feedback that it was pretty bleak. I must admit, I harbor a lot of animus towards Generation X, mostly stemming from my activities in the tabletop RPG industry where the largely Gen X, and largely progressive, industry leaders have let the hobby come to ruin and will react violently when you insinuate that the hobby needs to be fixed and that the progressivism needs to be purged. My experience with this generation has been largely negative, with the exception of my mother and a handful of others. It would be unfair of me to leave this article off with nothing but sharp criticism. In the spirit of fairness and to acknowledge the good work that our Gen X brethren have done, I will leave you with this:

The best Boomers realize that their generation was borrowing against the future of their children. They are active members of their communities, they constantly have time to spend with young people in need of guidance, they are genuinely faithful Christians, and they use their blessings to bless others. I have met several Boomers who are like this. They are genuinely good people, and, even if they aren’t fully aware of the reality of the Post-War Consensus world, they exhibit values that contradict it and harken back to an older and better way. Generation X can and should adopt this outlook, and the ones we find in our movement absolutely do this. The default for Gen X seems to be either despair or the smarmy “I got to live in something approximating civilization, but you don’t get to, kid, and you’re selfish for wanting that.” To the former, I sincerely hope that you find your way to communities like the OGC where you can set about undoing that damage done by your generation (and those before), side by side with Millennials and Zoomers who just want the societal cohesion they were denied. To the latter, enjoy your relative comfort while you can, because you cannot take it with you, and you will certainly face Judgment for the crimes you committed against your progeny. As this thing continues, I hope we see more and more of the former come into the fold, roll up their sleeves, and help us put this country back together. Put an end to the generation wars, and help us reforge something strong so that we can go back to the times of intergenerational cooperation and camaraderie.