Generation Names Put You In Your Box

For some reason you keep coming up with social names, in order to identify particular subcultural patterns of behavior. These range from Mobileers, to Baby Boomers, through Dewks and Dinks. What's next? Kids who need your help? End Quote

High-achieving students without hope

(1888PressRelease) March 06, 2008 - For some unknown reason, you coin phrases to put people, kids, groups, in their place. Or, is it to define subcultures of certain patterns of behaviour? Or prove we have matured as parents. Maybe we need to add a couple of new names to the list?

Mobileers were a community of early two way radio users. According to Wikipedia the Mobileers popularized the technology that birthed the mobilephone.

Permanent installations in vehicles soon gave way to the portable Bag Phones, equipped with a cigarette lighter plug. You wouldn’t recognize the huge clunky piece of equipment these phones were, compared to the dinky pocket size you carry today.

In the early 1960’s there was a youth movement that evolved into the Hippies. According to Wikipedia, Hippies originally were Beatniks They were black by nature, not skin colour. Black clothing was their hallmark. Their message was, “Danger is fun”.

Hippies were a group of people who moved into the Haight-Ashbury San Francisco area. Psychedelic rock, the sexual revolution, cultural diversity and drugs like cannabis and LSD, in order to explore alternative states of consciousness, became the hall mark of the Hippies. Flower Power symbolized their cry of ‘Make love not war’, as they handed out flowers to passers-by.

They were the frontier group of the ‘Wild West' of our culture. We have inherited affects from them as far reaching as health food, musical festivals, through contemporary sexual concepts (free love) and the use of drugs.

Many were eco-friendly and even the forerunners of the cyberspace revolution, as well as the Greenie movement and sustainable eco-toruism.

Every time you turn around today, you see a school kid with a mobile phone, though you have to wonder who pays the bills. In the early days when mobile phones were relatively unheard of, there rose a group of Male Yuppies. Young Urban Mobile Professionals.

They had a particular stance that went with the title, as did most subgroups:
• One hand raised to the ear,
• Other hand protectively placed on their briefcase
• Head cocked to the side
• Eyes glazed over as they stared into the distance
• A noncommittal grimace on the face

And of course they had favourite restaurants and naturally drove a Yuppy car. They symbolized the young monied professionals of the day.

Most of you thought they just evolved. But me thinks they were the result of a very clever marketing guru.

Either way, the Yuppy generation took over from the Baby Boomers – suburban, couple of kids, mortgage and the backbone of the community. That is after the Baby Boomers had dried out and come off the Grass, introduced through the Hippy stage.

Don’t knock the Baby Boomers though. Many a prominent politician and Lord Mayor came from the later end of the Baby Boomers. Take a look at the confession of your local politician?

Strictly speaking the Baby Boomers may have been too long a period to be classically described as a 'generation', as the baby boom lasted over a post-war, 18 year period. It was the rise of the contraceptive pill that heralded in the end of the Baby Boomer period.

Next came the DEWKS – Double Employed With Kids. Welcome the era of Child Care. Have a child, six weeks later dump the kid in the Creche/Child Care. Then they rushed back to competing with their partner as to who brought home the most income.

The Yuppies had become Yappies – Frustrated Yuppies having to deal with a couple of screaming kids, now that spanking children (corporal punishment) was out outlawed by the government. Overnight parents became criminals, with kids suing them in the courts.

This period was quickly followed by the predictable KOOPF – Kids Of One Parent Families. Then it became kids of varied parent families and circled back to KOOPF.

Next came the DINKS – Double Income No Kids. It was fashionable now not to have kids. Why not if you could no longer discipline them?

No longer can you assume a person is with their husband/wife. It has become 'partner' along with Ms instead of Mrs.

Dinks became more widely used than the usual generation terms. A midget wrestler, Claude Giroux took the stage name Dink. Then there were Gay and Lesbian Dinks. The water had become decidedly muddied.

Now the concern is if the trend of Dinks continues, intelligent professionals will become another dinosaur – extinct due to the lack of not having kids and reproducing themselves. However, gays and lesbians have also contributed to the downturn in population growth, right up to same sex marriages.

Supposedly the DEWKS and DINKS are the privileged ones who have Disposable Incomes. That which the economists say gauges the state of the economy. How much disposable income do you have?

Somewhere in the middle of all this we have the term Nerd. The original stereotpyical Nerd was ‘white males with glasses and braces’, according to Wikipedia. You wouldn't get away with such terms today, in our new found non-gender consciousness.

Some believe Nerd, or Nurd, was originally known as ‘knurd’, which is drunk spelt backwards. In other words a nerd was a person who studied rather than partied.

With the maturing advent of Cyber Space the term Nerd has gained respectability. It is the Nerds of our world that drive Cyber Space. “Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one,” Charles J. Sykes said.

Then of course we have the Trendys, who set the pace for the next generation. The feeding grounds of the latest fashion gurus and their high paid advertising junkies.

So you keep putting each generation into a neat little box, by creating new terms for the subcutures. You also like to do the 'crab trick' - don't let anyone else get out of the box. Pull them back if it looks like they are leaving you behind.

Chances are, as a parent you belonged to one of these groups. Or did you start your own cultural evolution? Or was it rebellion to the established mores – status quo?

Here’s a couple of more names to add to your list though.

The world is full of Luzas. Yet, in every generation there is a minority of Wynas, about 2%. If you have difficulty picking up what I am saying, just speak those two names out loud.

Most of us only dream of being a Wyna. What did the song say, ‘Climb every mountain, ford every stream…’?

Being a Wyna is better than being a Luza, because Wynas live 'out of the box'. That is if the box really exists.

Wyna wants to know if you want to own an island resort in the South Pacific through winaresort.com? You don't even have to go there, just sell it and spend the cash any way you want to.

You also get to help some kids who can't help themselves, living in a cashless society. What would you do if your children could not go to High School. Sure, the kids probably wouldn't object, but how would they cope with the 21st century? Where would there place be?

These high achieving students need a non-repayable education grant, or they will never go to high school. They need your help, or they will become the Lost Generation.

http://youmesupport.org

###

Visit Youme Support Foundation' Author Dr. Wendy Stenberg-tendys Website

space