Mx. Luna Corbden 🪿🐸 on Nostr: I just read a snippet on here from a book about GenX and the class war that I ...

I just read a snippet on here from a book about GenX and the class war that I disagreed with but am willing to consider.

It included what I feel is a misinterpretation of an Edie Brickell lyric.

To me, What I Am cut through all the academia (read: colonized thinking) to the simplicity of true philosophy. It echoes the message Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine.

"Philosophy is a line on a cereal box, religion is a smile on a dog."

It's not dismissive — it's deconstructionist. It's our generation questioning everything.

Brickell's lyrics hit this particular GenXer with a powerful message that undermined my Mormon upbringing:

Don't overthink it. It's the Tao which cannot be spoken. It doesn't take a bunch of book learning to unlock the secret of life because it's everywhere. Don't look to authority for answers because they're wrong!

The genx class war snippet said some other stuff, but I'm trying to reign in my energies and while I'd love to make this an essay, I don't want to argue, and I don't have energy to put in the work to read the full book to understand its context.

I do think many of my GenX fellows took some things some certain ways that I didn't, but ultimately, while GenX DID "give up" in the struggle in an organized sense, we DID the cultural deconstruction work required for the next phase of rebuilding. I firmly stand on this point, not from book learning, but from having lived a life of personal transitions and global upheaval from the 1970s through now. I can compare and contrast.

Deconstruction wasn't even a widely used term when I was coming of age, but OMG it's all we did in our pop culture. We laid it all out there in its full beauty and ugliness so that the next generation knew what we all were facing.

I maintain that it was necessary and important work, even if most of us didn't realize that. I fear that next generations will forget it. Will misinterpret it.