This is an interesting article on the nihilism, the denial of objective value and meaning beyond hedonistic individual satisfaction, of Generation X. It is all a product of affluence, something which I believe has weakened modern man terribly over the 20th and 21st centuries, destroying Darwinian survival capacity:
https://arcdigital.media/the-nihilism-of-generation-x-is-an-artifact-of-privilege-be897abd1db0
“Gen X culture is often caricatured by the “slacker” meme: young people, over-educated but under-valued by society, spending their days in coffee shops and nights in underground clubs, flipping social norms on their head. Gen X birthed a certain kind of “cool nerd,” the awkward guy celebrated for his hip lack of hipness, arcane knowledge of art and music, embracing “alt” for alt’s sake. In 1994’s Reality Bites, a tedious catalogue of Gen X stereotypes, Ethan Hawke, a rebellious slacker with a heart of gold, wars for Winona Ryder against an equally lovable yuppie played by Ben Stiller. They are supposed to represent the dialectic of the generation: a clash between dreaded success and the unbearable loveliness of knowing the proper definition of “irony” but still letting your girlfriend pay your rent. Scholars may balk at my reductionism, but the cultural shift around Generation X is undeniable. The term “postmodern” was regularly deployed to describe how artistic structure, narrative, and character were tossed in the blender during this period, but there was also a postmodern shift in social values. While hiding from the coronavirus, I’ve decided to re-read every one of Clowes’s books, which I quite loved when I was younger. Amid the clever character pieces, there is a sense, particularly in his books from the 1990s, that these characters are rebelling against the very idea of meaning. In Ghost World, Enid gawks at her father’s residual radicalism and asks, “Why would anyone even want a revolution?” Clowes’s earlier character Rodger Young, based largely on himself, only invests in cultural expression as a way to meet women and overcome his awkwardness, and social pathologies like racism and homophobia hardly leave a dent on him. His early characters are overwhelmed by their sexual desires, and readers are treated to the perversity of young men obsessing over women to whom they are invisible. Clowes’s work betrays a solipsistic rejection of grand narratives and social consciousness for the sake of revelling in dissipation.
