Common Perceived Membership
Common perceived membership refers to how a generation defines itself—and to a popular consensus about which birth cohorts belong together. Perceived membership gives a generation a sense of destiny. The philosopher Julián Marías once remarked that "to ask ourselves to which generation we belong is, in large measure, to ask who we are." Whenever a generational boundary seems murky, the best way to clarify it is often simply to ask people which side of the line they would put themselves.
Perceived membership confirms what many pollsters have long suspected about Boomers—that their true boundaries (born between 1943 and 1960) should start and stop a few years earlier than the fertility bulge demographers often use to define this generation (between 1946 and 1964). Ask some people born between 1943 and 1945 whether they’ve always thought of themselves as Boomers. Chances are, they’ll say yes. Ask the same question of people born between 1961 and 1964. Chances are, they’ll say (more emphatically) no. The term "Generation X" was a self-label first popularized by young literati born between 1961 and 1964, and its central purpose was to deny Boomer membership. Even when a generation can no longer be asked directly, it often leaves plenty of evidence about its perceived peer membership. This evidence is what links the famous circle of "Lost Generation" authors born in the late 1890s with writers just a bit older (Randolph Bourne, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound), but not with writers just a bit younger (John Steinbeck, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden).
To say that you identify with your generation does not, of course, mean that you care for your generation. Ortega wrote that the generational experience is a "dynamic compromise between the mass and the individual." To refuse this compromise is not easy; indeed, total refusal forces a person to become painfully aware of outsider status. The German sociologist Julius Peterson observed that any generation includes what he called "directive," "directed," and "suppressed" members. The "directive" members set the overall tone, the "directed" follow cues (and thereby legitimize the tone), and the "suppressed" either withdraw from that tone or, more rarely, battle against it.
Perhaps the most important aspect of a generation’s self-perception is its sense of direction. Ortega once wrote that each generation is "a species of biological missile hurled into space at a given instant, with a certain velocity and direction" which gives it a "preestablished vital trajectory." Mannheim likewise referred to each generation’s sense of "essential destiny." For some generations, this sense of destiny can be overwhelming. The cohesion of postwar G.I.s reflected a massive generational consensus about the world they wanted and were expected to build. Thomas Jefferson’s peers once felt the same way after the Revolution. Yet for other generations, this sense of destiny is something quite different. The Silent see their work as smoothing out the harsh edges of life—a task reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt’s "Progressive" peers. Boomers see in themselves a mission of vision and values—a quest others accede to them, if begrudgingly. Lincoln’s generation was much the same. And Xers have come to expect little of themselves as a generation—a fact which itself has become part of their collective persona. A similar trait arose in the generations of George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower.
A generation can collectively choose its destiny. But you cannot personally choose your generation any more than you can choose your parents or your native land. That much is fate, conditioning everything about your life whether or not you like it or care to notice it. As Martin Heidegger observed, it is "the fateful act of living in and with one’s generation completes the drama of human existence."
