We rarely see warning signs in the air we breathe

While it may be true that 1/3 of the year in northern Illinois can be categorized as winter or near-winter, I'll still never be fully comfortable with the sight of a golden mid- to late-afternoon sun casting lengthening shadows at 1:56 p.m. It's just not right.

So, it's not terribly often that I find myself in a situation where it's obvious to me that I'm a product of my generation. At least, not in the same way that you can spy a Depression-era child if she's old and compulsively thrifty, or a flower child by his notoriously cloudy memory of his youth. (Though I admit that it is sort of difficult to even pinpoint what the defining coming-of-age characteristics of a generation are when your generation is still in the latter stages of age-coming.)

But I'm willing to say with, oh, Michael Cera-caliber confidence that people around my age will, in the future, be noted as the babies of postmodernism. By which I mean, we're the first generation that has been explicitly told to avoid categorical judgments. Conventionally, American youths have been taught from birth that there is such a thing as right and wrong (good and evil, just and unjust, Luke and Darth Vader) and that it is possible to make discriminating judgments based on those categories ("Communists are evil and therefore deserving of interventionist violence"). But by the latter half of the 20th century, trust in such dichotomies became eroded in a cloud of Aquanet hairspray, and by the time my generation was teething, we were instead presented with an internet-sized database of information from which to learn and a culture regulated by judgment-avoiding globalization trends ("Well, I mean, Communist countries are seeking what's best for their people just like we are, right?"). In short, I wouldn't be surprised if my generation will be boiled down into The "It Depends" Generation, for whom value judgments are to be avoided and nothing is ever completely right or wrong.

Recently, I was narcissistically browsing my blog, and found this:

From Nov. 1, 2006:
If you specifically and explicitly informed me that you were a horrible person and listed two or three examples of various appalling behaviors you used to partake in, but you currently strike me as pleasant and reasonable, you're still Wally Cleaver in my eyes. And, as long as indiscretions are met with what I judge to be sincere remorse and/or logical explanation, forgiveness and some degree of forgetting will be instantly granted. I really do believe that everyone, deep down or in totality, is a good person... at least in their own minds.

I recognize this mentality in a lot of people my age. Basically, it has come to my attention that I (and most people I know who came of age with Hanson) lack a personal standard of behavior for our friends. Few of us can pinpoint a hypothetical action or situation that would instantly call for a serious reconsideration of friendship. Believing that we are all rational people with predictable motivations, we take offense at practically nothing as long as we can understand each others' actions. We believe not only that expecting our friends to be unfailingly perfect is unfair, but that our friends need not even be particularly good people as long as we can comprehend their motives. If we can explain behavior or exhume an excuse, we forgive quickly and forget easily.

You could call this attitude an astonishing display of Christian love and loyalty, but I personally think it has more to do with generational postmodern ambivalence. What, after all, is a good person? All you can really hope to do is to find people who add something to your life and make you happy. And staying happy is easier when you aren't worrying about steadfast personal moral lines or taking action when they're breached.

Is this reasonable? Sure. Is it logical? Of course. Does it avoid potentially unjust and inflexible standards of right and wrong? Above all, yes. And being a birth certificate-wielding member of the PostModGen means that not only does this mentality make sense to me, but I also use it with as much frequency and ease as Wikipedia. At the same time, I still sometimes find that my own attitudes unnerve me. Understanding isn't condoning, and I think it's going to be a loss if we entirely forget what condoning is.

...

Incidentally, here's an excerpt from Feb. 3, 2006:
Do you remember that day in biology or psychology when you put these little strips of paper on your tongue, and depending on whether or not you had a certain gene, you either could or couldn't taste what was on it? I think that concept sometimes happens to me on a daily basis, except replace "licking paper" with "Linda talking" and "tasting something" with "hearing silence."
My how things change.