The End of The World As We Know It: I Feel Fine

Surely, you are saying this at some point. We are. I know my husband and I are old farts, but this song is right on. And, indeed, I spent more than a few nights dancing to this song with the special R.E.M. dance moves (mostly straight arms, snapping hands, shuffling feet) on top of the coffee table in the apartment over ours.

But that's another story.

This post is about generations. I wrote a rambling post two years ago about my doubt that there are actually generational cohorts in our society. My premise is, basically, that something dramatic has to happen to have a generation. Something dramatic like a world war, the first booming economy, the start of communism, the end of communism. I don't buy that a new decade starts a new generation. So I'm skeptical that Gen-X, Gen-Z, Millenials, etc are really generations instead of just old people looking at young people, shaking their wrinkled fists, and saying "GET OFF MY LAWN."

That said, I think we can all reasonably say that for kids coming of age and young adults right now, this has the potential to create a new generation. The world is sharing social isolation. We are relying on technology to connect us in ways we never have before. I honestly don't think one to two weeks will do it. But if the rest of the world continues down that paths that China, South Korea, and Italy are going down, well, yeah. We may look back and call these the Coronakids.

HOWEVER, what just about breaks my heart is my parents' experience. They were born right after a worldwide depression. They are hitting their twilight years during a worldwide pandemic. That is a sucky-ass set of bookends to their lives. Fortunately, they don't read this blog and I'm not going to point this fact out to them.

So, yeah. Also, I also kind of hate this blogging platform. The letters (at "normal") have been too small for me to read. I'm hoping this looks a bit better at "medium" and if so, I'm going to go change the rest of my posts so I can actually read them (cf., old farts). I'm not sure the university web platform is really set up for blogging