If human beings had a mating season once a decade, then this "generation X/Y/$foo" shit would make sense.
If we can't make sense of the past, how can we reasonably believe we have a chance of making sense of our own lives?
Of course in actuality, we can do neither of these things. The problem is if everyone sincerely believed this, we wouldn't get anything done. This is a big part of why religion continues to be so popular.
History has always been a constant stream, but you're ability to sample it with a certain frequency diminishes as you "look" back into the past. The historical, archaeological/material, and memorial, if you will, records all become less preserved, and your relatively flawless memory of the time you've lived will of course lead you to see the the time you've lived in as happening more quickly.
Disclosure: my background is in archaeology/anthropology.
Sorry for the rant, but this is a meme that I see all the time and really bothers me.
As far as the OP goes, this article is asinine and meaningless. As a "millenial," I honestly don't give a shit about whether I have it worse or better than some X'er; what I do care about is a sane and just world.
We'll continue to fight for that, thank you very much, while the OP continues to feel self-righteous.
You're complaining that the concept isn't "Generation 5993"--the point is that we all have all generations in us, but those of us who were in school when 9/11 happened have, as a group, a different perspective. Just because someone's a baby boomer doesn't mean they won't feel like Generation X every once in a while.
The major effect it has is as a self-fulfilling prophecy: if "Generation $CHAR"ers do have stuff in common, its because they've been told that they have, over and over again for their entire lives.
As I said in my other comment, the need to group ourselves in this way is a necessary social instinct. However much we have internalised neoliberal doctrine since the cold war, we are profoundly not just a country full of separate individuals, as this debate shows. You cannot have a country full of individuals, just as you cannot have a tribe full of individuals. We have to identify with each other or we will not survive. At the same time, we have to distinguish between each other or we will not prosper.
I am going to stop this rant here, because I am not an anthropologist, and I realise that I am in danger of looking like I am pretending to be one.
Because of the many different factors in someone's life (like socio-economic class, race, place of upbringing, parenting, genetics) these "generations" encompass many diverse experiences than can't accurately generalized.