I am as guilty as the next at both being defined by my generation as trying to define others by theirs. For me this comes in a few distinct areas; Music, Cars, Business and Social.

I think every generation is defined in large part by the music of that period. Mine was most defined by the music of the ‘70’s. Yes, and some of the ’80, but I am trying to forget as much of that as possible. That was kind of an embarrassing music decade.

The ’70 produced some great cars too. There are few ‘70’s muscle cars that are not at the top of the list on most car guy’s scale.

The music and the cars of the ’70 were all about power. Then we went all “Flock of Sea Gulls” in the ‘80’s and the cars all just fell off the planet. Seriously, what happened!

So my generation was officially the “Baby Boomers” although I think I hit near the end of that generation. That and my parents were older than most of my friends parents and both grew up in the depression.

I was taught the value of hard work and a simple, frugal lifestyle.

Now the millennials are coming of age and I see this in the music, cars and social dealings of the generation.

Music is much more electric, with Rap being a heavy influence. Cars are smaller and faster and where I grew up drag racing, now those into the car scene are all drifters now.

In business, as I have written before, the corporations run by Boomers no longer remain faithful to the employee. Bottom line drives business and employee loyalty is at an all-time low (both given and received). Thus, millennials are much more apt to move job to job far quicker than my generation.

My generation was more material and the current generation is more experiential.

While these definitions and stereotypical archetypes are common and easily found, are they really fair?

I was watching “Guardians of the Galaxy” again recently. I own the soundtrack to the movie as well. Mainly because it is almost all ’70’s music and reminds me of a time when life was easy and pretty carefree. Of course I was young and when you are young life can be carefree. Well, for the most part, at least back then.

I begin to look at the current generation and what they are having to go through and understand why their music seems to have more of an edge than mine did.

Life is harder.

Edgier.

Carefree I don’t see as much.

Where my wife and could live more cheaply back then together after we got married, I don’t see that same scenario playing out for my son who recently married.  So many of their costs for living are so much higher than ours were and the job market much more competitive.

In truth we are as defined by our financial times as anything else.

That is survival. Our music, cars and other social trappings are just fruit of our times which are shaped by the many cultural topics of each generation.

There is much to learn here, both from past generations and from current. How true is the old adage that “if we do not learn from our past we are doomed to repeat it.”

This has become a sad epitaph for many cultures that have come before us. And yet, we spend the majority of our time looking forward and leave looking back to our historians.

The encouraging part is that we are seeing the minimalist movement in this generation who have figured out that the mass consumerism and materialistic lifestyle holds little lasting value (other than fostering the growing storage warehouse industry).

Furthermore, recycling and the movement toward the many green initiatives has made us all much more aware of the impact we have and are having on our planet.

Can this generation turn the tide and make lasting change social change on these and many more fronts.

Yes, they can.

In fact each of us can, regardless of generation.

We do not have to be defined by our generation.

Although, I would still like to be defined by the muscle cars of the ’70…