The Second Lost Generation

I almost titled this blog "to be young, gifted, and queer." but upon reflecting on what I want to write about in this space I realized it was more about what it's like to be a 20 something right now, living in the second lost generation.

What do I mean by "Second Lost Generation?"

The term "lost generation" is generally attributed to Earnest Hemingway in one of the epigraphs for The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway attributes it to Gertrude Stein, who later stated it came from a mechanic who said "That is what you are. That's what you all are...All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation."

Referring to those young people who came of age during the first world war, their lives were pocked in struggle. Their early lives tinged by the war, in which many served, followed quickly by the dichotomy of excess and prohibition of the 1920's, depression of the 1930's, then World War 2, in which many of their children fought and died. Their children eclipsed them in what is now known as the greatest generation, forever giving the "losts" their lot in history.

You see images of these people from time to time, road worn faces living hand to mouth searching for jobs in any place they can find them. This is the era of the New Deal, big name bank robbers, and extreme poverty. I don't want to romanticize these people but I truly feel they have been given a bad historical place, as much of what we consider to be the bastions of modern life are built on their back.


What about the second lost generation?

I was born in the mid 1980's, which makes me in my mid 20's. I am not generation x, that generation slightly older than me that brought teenage angst to an art, with flannel and grunge music, for a time in the 90's it seemed that everyone lived in Seattle, at least culturally. I also don't feel that I'm what some are calling "generation Y" or the "millennial generation" which is a generation which will be known for being completely unaware of a time before mass media, social networking, and constant availability.

I am neither, and the people near me are not either. I remember a time before the internet, I used to know all the pay phones in the areas in which my friends and I were allowed to hang out, and I very much recall a time that if you agreed to be somewhere at some time you were there, or it was considered highly rude as you couldn't quickly call ahead with a "oh, I'm running five minutes late."

We are a generation raised in a "just say no" world, seemingly constantly in war, and always lied to by our politicians. Elementary school was a time in which I was in one of the last classes to ever learn how to use a card catalog in the library and research was only done via books. Even if you had internet access the speeds and reliability of the sources were so sketchy you would use the internet to find books that you hoped were carried at the local library. It wasn't until middle school when the internet became a must have for all students, things started speeding up the MLA style solidified for internet citations, and internet became respectable.

Although people of my generation were some of the first to pick up the new technologies we still hold on to some of those ideals of a time before. In the parallel between the lost generation and this second lost generation the war is our war on drugs, the 1920's boom times are our 1990's boom times, and we're sitting in the middle of our version of the great depression.

Of course without the 80 years of hindsight to understand what's going on right now It's more difficult to understand what's going on with the 20 somethings of today. I hope to explore the life of being a twenty something in the early twenty first century, I'll probably use the framework of the lost generation to help out at first, but I'm more interested in seeing where this goes. Yes, this is going to have some queer bias as I'm gay, and will definitely romanticize both the lost generation and the second lost generation.

I don't know if anyone will read this but I'm excited to get this out of my head and written for the world to see.