Five Things That Millennials and Baby Boomers Have in Common

One doesn't have to be a pundit to observe that there's a lot of hatred in this country, much of it directed against ourselves. As if the world didn't have enough problems, many Americans have declared other Americans the enemy, creating a host of civil wars centered around a particular issue or perceived difference.

Politics is the big one, of course, but it's quite clear that age is one of our key battlegrounds. Years ago, many experts predicted that a generational war between baby boomers and their children and grandchildren was looming, with the fight over how taxpayer money would be allocated. Aging boomers would crash our healthcare and Social Security systems, this line of thought went, the nightmare scenario being those younger generations would have to foot the bill for the older ones.

That scenario hasn't come to be, at least not yet, but another nightmare of sorts is dividing Americans by age. Baby boomers and millennials are engaged in a kind of cultural war, with each side accusing the other of just not getting it. Boomers don't get millennials' live-in-the-moment, technology-driven lifestyles, while millennials don't get boomers' linear, moralistic thinking grounded in an analog universe that is rapidly disappearing.

For the past couple of years, some millennials (and Gen Zers) have taken to wearing "OK boomer" t-shirts and hoodies, a means of mocking allegedly out-of-touch, close-minded baby boomers. According to New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz, when used as an Internet meme," "Ok boomer" is "the digital equivalent of an eye roll."

Such divergent points of view are perhaps understandable given the very different cultural climates and historical eras in which each generation grew up. Still, sadly the animosity runs much more profound. Often millennials may blame baby boomers exclusively for the sorry state of the world, feeling that, well, everything is their fault. (You should see the emails and tweets I get after one of my boomer-themed posts.) Economic disparity and environmental disaster directly result from boomers' grab-and-go ways, we hear the basis for what is essentially perceived as a perpetrator-victim relationship.

Bruce Gibney is the undisputed champion of boomer bashing, as his 2017 book A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America makes clear. "For the past several decades, the nation has been run by people who present, personally and politically, the full sociopathic pathology: deceit, selfishness, imprudence, remorseless, hostility," Gibney writes in the very first paragraph, labeling boomers a "vast and strange generation."

Recently, criticism directed towards baby boomers has become especially nasty, a byproduct of the negative feelings many younger people have about older people in general. Some historically challenged Gen Xers and millennials not just dismiss older Americans' unsurpassed contributions to society that continue to this day but fully believe boomers were the worst generation in history.

This is not good. One large group of people (now the largest generation in history) hating the other (previously the largest generation in history) is bad for our society on many levels. Just as with race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability, we need to see generational differences not as a social barrier but as a celebration of diversity. Age should be accommodated within this country's unique commitment to multiculturalism if we are to fulfill our noble ideal of "out of many, one."

To that end, building bridges between baby boomers and millennials would go a long way toward ending this silly but quite harmful battle. For me, seeing the commonalities between the generations is the best way to build these bridges, as such an approach has proven to be an excellent way to neutralize negative feelings toward "the other."

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Here are five key things that millennials and baby boomers have in common:

1. Economic resiliency. Common thinking is that baby boomers always had an easy economic ride with no shortage of jobs throughout their careers. The truth is that the nation's economy began to tank in the mid-1960s after the postwar boom and didn't begin to percolate until the mid-1980s. Millennials' own roller-coaster economic journey characterized by multiple recessions is not all that different.
2. Political chaos. The current global geopolitical climate is truly scary, and the country's Red State v. Blue State's political landscape is rocky at best. But boomers too experienced great international and national chaos as young adults, with assassinations, Watergate, and Vietnam just a few of the 1960s and 1970s greatest hits.
3. Social causes. Baby boomers spent much of their youth striving to create a fairer and more peaceful world, which is equally true for millennials. While my generation tried to end an unjust war and took part in two equal rights movements, millennials are deeply committed to social justice, environmentalism, and other good causes. Why not focus on this shared passion for positive social change?
4. Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. Think millennials invented casual hook-ups, a love for all things cannabis, and designating music as the soundtrack to life? Boomers turned hedonistic pleasures into an art and science, liberating sensuality from the confines of postwar conservatism. Millennials have picked up where we left off, proving that every generation of girls and boys just want to have fun.
5. The American Dream. Baby boomers forged their own version of James Truslow Adams's concept of "a better, deeper, richer life," and millennials are interpreting the nation's core mythology in their own way. While the paths may vary, the desire to achieve one's American Dream unites us as a people.

Rather than look for things that divide us, let's look for such common threads that bind us together.