Can You Understand a Whole Generation?

• Features : Radar Online : A Call to Arms Against Millennials

  tags: toblog, generations, pop sociology, GenX, Generation X, Generation Y, popular culture, ethnocentrism, pushing buttons, curmudgeons, millennials

  Some efficient ways to gain insight into a group of human beings (say, a "generation"):

  • Engage in dialogue with some of its members.
  • Undertake participant-observation in the group.
  • Study what has already been written or said about the group.
  • Attempt to "walk a mile in their shoes."
  • Do open-ended interviews with members of other groups who may interact with members of that group.
  • Do surveys with a representative sample from that group and from other groups about the target group’s behaviour and perception by both insiders and outsiders.

  Some inefficient ways to gain insight into a group of human beings (say, a "generation"):

  • Use some arbitrary set of criteria (say, birth year, skin colour, or haircut), lump together people who may not share a common identity and make generalizing statements about them.
  • Openly target individual members of the group for ridicule.
  • Position yourself as a member of a better group (the judgemental side of ethnocentrism).
  • Use as many negative epithets as possible while describing members of that group.
  • Use references from your group’s "popular culture" to provide supporting evidence about your group’s superiority.
  • Call for a war against that group.

- post by enkerli