Greatest / Worst 20th Century Generation

A complaint from one of my grandparents that my parents' generation had achieved nothing that would be remembered by history and were the most irresponsible in history inspired this thread.

The definitions for the generations that I have chosen to go by is that of William Strauss and Neil Howe's books Generations.

They define the following generations of the Great Power and Millenial Saecula:

Missionary: Prophet 1860-1882
Lost: Nomad 1883-1900
G.I.: Hero 1901-1924
Silent: Artist 1925-1942

Baby Boomer: Prophet 1943-1963
13th Generation: Nomad 1964-1976
Millennial Generation: Hero 1977-1993
New Generation: Artist 1994-2006

The years given are the rough years that someone of this generation would be born into.

So, what do you think? For the millenial and new generations we will obviously have to speculate, since we have yet to have our time in the spotlight.

I suppose this will depend on nationality as well, since the Silent and Baby Boomber generations in England oversaw the dismantling of the British Empire where as in America these generations witnessed their countries rise to greatness.

I personally would have chosen generations by experience of significant events. For example, I would define someone as being in the new generation if they were unable to appreciate the true significance of September 11th attacks and their aftermath, while the millennial generation will have little memory of the fall of communism.

is he a hero or a GI a lost or a nomad.

atleast i'm a HERO hehehe

Oh the Prophet, Nomad, Hero, Artirst stuff is supposedly based on the cyclic nature of human development.

To take the Wikipedia entry for it:
A Prophet (or Idealist) generation is born during a High, spends its rising adult years during an Awakening, spends midlife during an Unraveling, and spends old age in a Crisis. Prophetic leaders have been cerebral and principled, summoners of human sacrifice, wagers of righteous wars. Early in life, few saw combat in uniform; late in life, most come to be revered as much for their words as for their deeds.
A Nomad (or Reactive) generation is born during an Awakening, spends its rising adult years during an Unraveling, spends midlife during a Crisis, and spends old age in a new High. Nomadic leaders have been cunning, hard-to-fool realists, taciturn warriors who prefer to meet problems and adversaries one-on-one.
A Hero (or Civic) generation is born during an Unraveling, spends its rising adult years during a Crisis, spends midlife during a High, and spends old age in an Awakening. Heroic leaders have been vigorous and rational institution-builders, busy and competent in old age. All of them entering midlife were aggressive advocates of technological progress, economic prosperity, social harmony, and public optimism.
An Artist (or Adaptive) generation is born during a Crisis, spends its rising adult years in a new High, spends midlife in an Awakening, and spends old age in an Unraveling. Artistic leaders have been advocates of fairness and the politics of inclusion, irrepressible in the wake of failure.

cool. and i'm a Hero. its quite true. so i have to live my adults years in a crisis. Terrorists here i come ~D

The best was the GI and the worst was the Baby Boomer. I cant stand hippies/socialists and what they did to the world during the 60s/70s. They royally screwed America, and Europe didnt fair much better from their influence.

The hippies were by far the worst.

I think that the social changes from the 1960's onwards (and maybe a bit earlier) achieved many good things, racial tolerance and womens legal equality for instance, however in other areas I seriously question that they did much good and probably did a lot of harm, for instance social values and the family took a hell of a beating, the western world today is covered in broken families and marriages as a result. We also have legacies of where they went TOO far, such as with banes such as political correctness and multiculturalism.

As for the greatest generation of the last 100 years, I'm going to say the generation who fought WWI, who raised their kids through the Great Depression and led the armies in WWII.


The entire late 20th century it sometimes seems is just one big series of aftershocks from 1914-1945.

I'd say the Lost Generation were the true heroes of Britain, the sacrifice of that generation is unparalleled, althougth the G.I Generation also rised to the same challenge again.

The under-achievers have to be the silent generation. They watched as the greatest empire the world has ever known was reduced to little more than a backwards island while former collonies and the countries we had defeated moved ahead of us. It has been the 13th Generation - or Generation X - that has begun to put this country back on the map.

What ever happened to the days of Brunel ? The Great Exhibition ? The Spitfire ?
Our greatest achievement in engineering or architecture since might well be the gurkin.

13th generation = Nomad for me (1964)

The worst was the baby boomers in my opinion, as Khalifa posted, the social
drop in values has been tough on the family unit.

The greatest in my opinion was the G.I. period, heroes for sure :army:

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Originally Posted by PanzerJager

The best was the GI and the worst was the Baby Boomer. I cant stand hippies/socialists and what they did to the world during the 60s/70s. They royally screwed America, and Europe didnt fair much better from their influence.

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3 cheers ~:cheers: ~:cheers: ~:cheers:

I second that.

I totally agree. Actually that analysis on generations is fairly comprehensive.

Uh-oh...not looking good for the Baby-Boomers when they reach nursing home age. Lots of hostility there.

Worst was the WW2 generation who settled into suburbans for the 50s. Such a boring and horrible culture, where everyone wanted to be the same.

Best is hippie culture. But many baby boomers screwed things up when they turned conservative.

The biggest problem with the baby boomer generation is there's just too damn many of them and not enough of them are dying young enough.

It's a demographic crisis.

Worst: Hippy
Best: WWI Era

Generations are not great or poor, individuals are. There may be shared experiences or common themes to a generation, but each contains good and bad, rich and poor, strong and weak, kind and angry.

To me, the worst of all are the intolerant, the hateful. Each generation has these. The best are those who place others before themselves, who work for the common good.

ichi :bow:

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Oh I think there's going to be more than a few who die in nursing homes from "Old Age" (read: morphine overdose, or something).

My mother had me when she was veeery young, and is not part of that generation. But the effects that they've had on American society is most clear.

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And mysteriously the life support tubes will be unplugged........

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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc

Worst was the WW2 generation who settled into suburbans for the 50s. Such a boring and horrible culture, where everyone wanted to be the same.

Best is hippie culture. But many baby boomers screwed things up when they turned conservative.

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Many of The ww2 generation died so the !@#$ hippies would still have a right to do the !@#$ they did. Show some respect to the ww2 generation. We will never see one as good.

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Originally Posted by ceasar010

Many of The ww2 generation died so the !@#$ hippies would still have a right to do the !@#$ they did. Show some respect to the ww2 generation. We will never see one as good.

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Here Here ~:cheers:

ceasar010, what the soldiers did was admirable. However, it doesn't stop the fact that their culture was boring and everyone strove to be exactly the same, as well as causing consumerism as it is today.

There was also less crime. Less divorces, Less gun control, etc There was more morality (in the north at least...to much racism in the south)

Morality? I have a very dim view on what most people call morality.
And there weren't that many divorces because it was heavily frowned upon, not because people didn't want to. Most women had to go back to the kitchens after working during WW2. Hardly a positive thing.

woohooo I'm a hero!

anyway, babyboomers, what the hell have you done???????
thanks mum and dad's generation, thanks a whole bunch.

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Originally Posted by Al Khalifah

Missionary: Prophet 1860-1882
Lost: Nomad 1883-1900
G.I.: Hero 1901-1924
Silent: Artist 1925-1942

Baby Boomer: Prophet 1943-1963
13th Generation: Nomad 1964-1976
Millennial Generation: Hero 1977-1993
New Generation: Artist 1994-2006

The years given are the rough years that someone of this generation would be born into.

So, what do you think? For the millenial and new generations we will obviously have to speculate, since we have yet to have our time in the spotlight.

I suppose this will depend on nationality as well, since the Silent and Baby Boomber generations in England oversaw the dismantling of the British Empire where as in America these generations witnessed their countries rise to greatness.

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It was Clement Attlee who did an awful lot of Empire dismantling, and he certainly was not a baby boomer - Lost or GI I would have imagined...

Missionary or Lost would be the best, having been taught the honourable principles of war of the line, expanding the Empire, and fighting the Great War.

Ok then stepee...what did the pot-smoking hippies do??? Crime raised, divorces raised. the family unit was hurt. affirmative action came. It was the worst generation.

They tried and change the world. They introduced the best music, and culture, and for the first time in a long time, young folks cared about politics.
I don't see what the hippies had to do with crime, or afformative action or any of that. Most of that was done by decidedly non hippies, including politicians.
And while I think that a family is extremely important, I really fail to see how the previous generations were better at all. So there was often a mother and a father. Yay. Who is to say that the parents did better at raising their kids? Indeed, if the baby boomers ended up as horribly as you say, they obviously didn't do a very good job of raising them, did they? ~;)

There were already a few hippie wackos back then. In the 60-70s they poisoned the minds of the masses.


And culture how are a bunch of long haired people who dont know anything about personal hygiene a good culture.(watch some of the old rallies they had, there are very few of them that are clean)

Caesar:
but I like flowers, how can other people who like flowers be bad?

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I don't see what the hippies had to do with crime

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They introduced the drugs craze, which changed the face of crime forever.