Synchromysticism

" Synchromysticism:
The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance."

- Jake Kotze

January 8, 2020

An Influential Voice of Generation X Dies?

I just saw the sad news about the passing of Elizabeth Wurtzel and I had to ask myself who she was, because I had never heard of her until reading the BBC news tonight.
Turns out Elizabeth was "an influential voice of Generation X" and wrote the best-selling 1994 memoir 'Prozac Nation', which the movie by the same name was made from.
I've never watched the movie or read the book, which according to Wikipedia Wurtzel originally titled the book
'I Hate Myself and I Want To Die'but her editor convinced her otherwise (what, not to die, or just re-title the book?-).
When I read the BBC news article where Elizabeth was declared to be a "voice" of "Generation X" and that she was 52 when she died, I thought hang on, I'm 55, so where does that place me in all of this "Generation XYZ" bullshit I hear mainly young-uns referring to these days?
To put things into perceptive, Russell Crowe is a few months older than I am, but if we had have gone to the same Australian school we would have been in the same grade.
But it turns out, according to the Wikipedia page about "Generation X", that me and Russ are kind of in a no-man's land (is that still PC to write "no-man's land"?-) when it comes to the Generation BS, because some people want to tell you that you are a GEN X if you were born after '65 (damn, I just missed the boat) and some say
GEN X is from "around" 1960 onward.
To be honest I couldn't give a flying f#ck, because I think all of this talk about the "Generations" is complete BS.
Which individuals can truly speak for a whole so called "Generation" of people anyway?
Compared to Lizzy, I grew up in a working class family, dropped out of high school, struggled to make a living (still do) and I had no chance of going to university, let alone somewhere like Harvard.
And while in my early 20s I tried to kill myself because of the world I lived in.
I was never on Prozac and would never trust a doctor, since when a quack prescribed penicillin to me as a child when I had a minor cold and nearly killed me, because I'm allergic to the drug, and which to all he could do was laugh when my mother brought me into his surgery with a massive red rash all over my body and my eyes seeing black dots over white walls, when there weren't any dots on those walls, could only laugh and say that I was lucky that I didn't die.
From that day on I never trusted a doctor, unless I needed stitches to stop bleeding to death from a wound, or some other life threatening medical emergency treated.
I rarely visit a doctor these days, which is probably why I'm still alive;-) 
So, if I was allowed into the "Generation X" club I don't see how Lizzy, being the opposite sex to me, living to a Harvard standard of life entry, and on the other side of the planet ... while on Prozac and other drugs, could possibly be a spokesperson for "me".
Lizzy might have grown up in the same time period as I and many others did, but our lives have hardly that much in common, no matter what the media might try and sell all you "Generation" whatevers.
I'm reading the book 'Eggshell Skull' right now and it is clear to me that the generations that follow are doomed to repeat that which was left unsaid.    
And still the way forward is as unclear as it ever was.
If I was in Elizabeth Wurtzel's shoes right now, I would be hoping and praying that reincarnation is just a "new age" myth and that I could truly sleep forever and not come back to be part of the next, or future generations of planet Earth.

1 comment:

  1. "Gen X" abducted, cloned & mythologised by the very thing filed for viewing as a serialised 9 season (original run) TV show.

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