My Generation “XM”


Aneta Dimovska

Several things led me to think about my generation in the past period. One is the verses by Vrtev: “Eat everything that the sky has given, fill all the reserves of fat, the way to Europe, provincial glory, with pulled-down pants and ‘opninok’ in the head ….”. UBER MAKEDONISCHE, Archangel 1998.

Recently a colleague reminded me at the end of the nineties. He reminded me of the joy that we felt as freshmen at the Faculty of Economics at UKIM in ‘95, ‘96, ‘97, when we faced Paul Semuelson’s “Foundations of Economic Analysis”. In high school we studied economics based on Marx’s political ideology. At faculty there was a new approach, neo-Keynesian economics, neoclassical economics, capitalism, revelation, the belief that better times will come, and hope for a prosperous sovereign and independent Republic of Macedonia.

And we were raised and educated in times of inflation, on failed deposits and savings banks, closing of factories, in times of redundant workers, unpaid wages, times of oil smuggling, coffee, cigarettes, in times of waiting for hours in front of gas stations… For most of the previous there was neither Marx nor Samuelson. That’s how my generation grew up, in uncertain environment and in anticipation that something would change.

According to the theory of generations, the socio-historical environment influences people, and especially affect important historical events that occur in their youth. Based on common shared experience, social groups of people of similar age are formed whose members have experienced a significant event in a given period of time.

I will call my generation “The End of Generation XM”.

Based on the demographic research done in Western cultures, after the Baby Boom Generation, follows the generation X (born from the 1960s to the early 1980s). It is characteristic for its members that they developed during a period of changing social values ​​(the fall of the Berlin Wall and the decay of socialism) and reduced adult supervision compared to previous generations, as a result of the increased participation of the mother in the workforce, and as a result of the increased rates of divorce. Members of this generation are described as lazy, cynical, dissatisfied, alienated and nostalgic, with a tendency towards individualism versus the group and a propensity for entrepreneurship.

Next comes Generation Y (born up to 2000) or as they are still called Millennials or “Peter Pan Generation” because they postpone some of the typical rituals of maturity, such as marriage and employment. The people of this generation are described as self-confident, liberal, optimistic, but also lazy and narcissistic, with even more pronounced individuality, low loyalty to employers, more focused on personal material values, and less directed towards helping the community. Millennials are tolerant of diversity and dependent on technological devices and digital technologies.

Let’s go back to my generation “The End of Generation XM” …  Generation X ends with my generation, as they have described in the world, hence the “end”, and “M” is for Macedonia, Macedonian, because it was developed in specific local conditions.

Today my generation is aged 34 to 44 years old and according to the data of the SSO, there are about 350,000 inhabitants.

The need to write about my generation is to encourage the collective memory of shared experiences, but also to emphasize that this group of people today is one of the most responsible for the processes and developments in our country, the events that tomorrow will be history.

Because we grew up with “idols on the wall” and the belief that they will bring a better future, my generation may be the last one that respects the authorities and expresses confidence to people of previous generations. We were meant to trust and work, with the feeling that we live “little lives” and we ourselves often chose “not to participate”, but we were looking for ourselves in a society that others were changing. My generation is the last one who remembers life without the Internet, we had an analogous childhood, and we digitized as adults. Perhaps the previous one is making my generation the last one who has a sense of belonging to a group and in which individualism is not strongly expressed. My generation is the last one who proudly speaks of its origins and ancestors from the east, the north and the south, from the Miyak region and Polog, from Azot, from the Povardarie and the Aegean, and does not want to be anything else.

My generation has the good part of the cynicism of the world’s X generation, and in terms of the optimism that it once had, today most can be called experienced pessimists. All in all, my generation enjoys the comfort of the mediocrity, somehow passively stuck between the unfulfilled expectations and unable to lead itself, to plunder ahead and dominate.

For my generation, the youth with the right to naivety ended, but it remained naive, and it stopped dreaming and believing. Thus, the members of my generation today are parents who do not believe they can do more for their children, and if so, they will never forget us. We must work for them, and for the YM generation that is on the threshold to take over. At least, let’s preserve the “M”. Will they be better than us?! I do not know, but we must do our best, so that they have somewhere to move forward.

Archangel described us well: “Doze and boredom stronger than drugs, baby, buying peace and silence – more horrible than war, maybe … As If I’m not from here, I do not belong to anyone, I stand aside and watch and I do not believe in anything anymore. Wall of empty words between us and what is essential … “That’s the feeling, I know … We have to wake ourselves up and deal with the essence. Generation, this is our time!