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Comment by klodolph | Hacker News Reader

> It's hard for me to even grasp the idea of it.

It's just an arbitrary label for people born in a certain period of history. These people generally have shared experiences that are different from the experiences of other generations.

> Who draws a line between generations and why?

Same people that draw a line between lemons and limes. It's sometimes a useful distinction so people remember it and use it.

> People do not stop being born, nor do they magically change because they supposedly belong to an imaginary generation.

There is no sharp dividing line between lemons and limes, either. Fruits in the citrus family can be crossbred with each other and you will end up with hybrids that cannot easily be classified as lemons or limes. There's no sharp line between "tall" and "short", or "white" and "gray". That's just the way names generally work, outside of fields like mathematics where you can use more precise definitions.

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The world runs in cycles. You start to see various shifts when you zoom out historically. Conservative / liberal oscillations for instance:

The Age of Enlightenment prized composure and disparaged human emotion. The Romantics countered, to hell with composure! As William Blake wrote, "those who restrain desire do so because there's is weak enough to restrain." A life of love needed no guiding hand. Lord Byron wrote, "love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey."

Three generations later the pendulum swung back. The Dark Romantics underscored human fallibility. The Realists derided Romantic values and urged a return to everyday concerns and simplicity. Victorian culture prized moral strictness and Charles Darwin wrote, “the highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.”

Then the pendulum swung again, culminating with the Roaring 20s, the rise of Flappers, drinking, spending, and (relative to the time prior) lots of sex. Americans valued optimism and prosperity.

That was until the Depression hit and war pulled us back to stricter social norms. Those too were repealed and replaced by 1970s "counter-culture," "if it feels good do it." That lasted till now, and many are suspecting that Gen Z is a reaction to Millenials. They've accepted the progress we've made but also reject the mistakes we've made. I won't mention surveys right now else this will become political, but basically every generation is a reaction to the one prior. And sometimes reactions take 2-3 generations, but it's always a cycle.

I'm curious about those surveys, if you feel you could present them in a way that won't upset people with you. As a Millennial who teaches Gen Zers, observing the micro-generational differences and comparing them to reported trends (and trying to figure out what is simply a difference of age) is always interesting to me.

The Wikipedia article on Gen Z has some interesting info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Z#Characteristics

One big trend is a massive shift towards saving and financial responsibility, more risk-averse, less willing to take on debt. Far less substance abuse (2013, 66% of teenagers (older members of Generation Z) had tried alcohol, down from 82% in 1991). 40% drop in teen pregnancy, a 38% drop in drug and alcohol abuse, and a 28% drop in dropout rates.

Re: church attendance, 41% among Generation Z, compared to 18 percent for Millennials at the same ages, 21 percent of Generation X, and 26 percent of Baby Boomers

Whereas Millennials were largely just magnifications of earlier trends in Gen X and Baby Boomers, Gen Z seems to be a rebuttal. It's too complex to make bets, but if I had to make a bet, I imagine 2-3 generations of risk aversion / conservative values before those become overbearing and we have another counter-conservative shift.

Although I don't quite agree with the content of your analysis, the fact of this kind of analysis itself is wonderfully Hegelian.

I wish I knew more Hegel, but I feel like the synthesis model feels more calculated, whereas cycles seem reactionary (like economic cycles), albeit maybe with a positive trend.

Also feel free to share your disagreements. I love history but I'm certainly not an expert in cultural movements.

> There is no sharp dividing line between lemons and limes, either

There is, if you care about scurvy: http://nowiknow.com/dont-forget-the-lime/

limes have slightly less vitamin c?

That article says the vitamin C problem was due to how they were storing the juice at the time. For fresh lemons and limes does the small difference in vitamin C actually matter?

> > Who draws a line between generations and why?

> Same people that draw a line between lemons and limes

I mean, I doubt it is really the exact same people who do this. At the very least it is a separate department that does the lemon-lime distincting.

You might be surprised. Ernest Hemingway, an avid drinker, coined the term "lime" so he could distinguish it from other types of citrus in the Daiquiri, one of his favorite drinks. He also popularized the term Lost Generation, generally regarded as the first generational cohort with a name, although the term was originally coined by Gertrude Stein.

(Ohyyfuvg.)

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edit: never mind, it's not actually true - gullible me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_(fruit)

It's rare that I see an argument won so perfectly.

I hope this tidbit is true.

ROT13 the last line ;)

Hemingway also took a phrase from the Spanish bull fighting rings, "la hora de la verdad" and rendered it into English "The moment of truth." This immediately became a cliche in all kinds of journalism, especially sports reporting "They've only got 5 minutes left and they are down by 3, so this is the moment of truth."

Hi HN, are key limes lemons or limes?

Neither, it’s actually a form of tropical potato

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