Sunday, June 25

If I had a tribe, this would be it

It's often been noted [by me] that our generation isn't as cohesive as those going before us---we don't have quite as many shared experiences, or compulsory rites of passage, or even homogenous pop-culture to bind us. I'm not complaining, of course; diversity is a good thing, and I don't endorse people having the same experiences and memories for the sake of feeling more of a sense of comraderie (or patriotism, for that matter). I just wish we had some common dance besides the electric slide to do at office holiday parties decades from now.

Michael Adams (who wrote Better Happy Than Rich?, Sex in the Snow) has designed a survey (for Canadians, but who cares?) to divine how views on money, family, status, emphasis on stability, etc. is related to experimentalism, liberalism, freedom, and emphasis on laisse-faire behaviour in every aspect of life. It's interesting how the adherents of traditionalism always lose in the end, since the paradigm shift is like an avalanche.

So I may belong to the New Aquarians, or share some common ground with the Autonomous Post-Materialists. Glad to hear I have the company of such heroes as:

Jello Biafra

Sarah Michelle Gellar

Naomi Klein

Sarah McLachlan

Rage Against the Machine

Anti-globalization activist John Zerzan

I also enjoyed the subtlety of the survey questions (I am trying to design a survey for some orientation materials at work, and thought this one was really well-designed.) I hate those surveys which invite you to say: "Well, that really depends..." after each one.

[From Brock]

4 comments:

David Holt said...

Welcome to the tribe. I was New Aquarian and shared characteristics with Autonomous Post-materialists and Security Seeking Ascetics.

David Holt said...

At a stupid bonding thing at a school I worked at, they made all the teachers get with people who graduated in their decade we had to come up with represantives movies, shows, singers, and do a dance from the decade we were teens in. The only dance I could come up with was the macarena... Sigh... Twas a crappy decade.

Memphis Chix said...

Well, I think I was in college before the Macarena came out, so it wasn't really as close to the core of my experiences growing up as for yours.
I hope you didn't have to perform it in front of people. Ewww....

David Holt said...

I had to lead about ten teachers in it as we danced in front of about 50 teachers. I should have sued. That was cruel and unusual punishment.