Names That Define our Place in Society

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For some unknown reason, we coin phrases in each generation, to put people in their place. Or,is it to define subcultures of certain patterns of behaviour?

Mobileers were a community of early two way radio users. According to Wikipedia the Mobileers popularized the technology that birthed the mobilephone.

Permanent installations in vehicles soon gave way to the portable Bag Phones, equipped with a cigarette lighter plug. You wouldn’t recognize the huge clunky piece of equipment these phones were, compared to the dinky pocket size we carry today. But I am getting ahead of myself.

In the early 1960’s there was a youth movement that evolved into the Hippies. According to Wikipedia, Hippies were originally known as Beatniks. They were black by nature, not skin colour. Black clothing was their hallmark.They had only one message, “Danger is fun”.

Hippies were a group of people who moved into the Haight-Ashbury San Francisco area. Psychedelic rock, the sexual revolution, cultural diversity and drugs like cannabis and LSD, in order to explore alternative states of consciousness, became one of their hall marks. Flower Power symbolized their cry of ‘Make love not war’, as they gave out flowers to passers-by.

They were the frontier group of the ‘Wild West’ of our culture. We have inherited affects from them as far reaching as health food, musical festivals, through contemporary sexual concepts (free love) and the use of drugs. Many were eco-friendly and even the forerunners of the cyberspace revolution. Terms like ‘Big Brother’, or ‘The Man’, representing authority, were coined in this generation.

Today every school kid has a mobile phone, though I often wonder just who pays the bills. In the early days when mobile phones were relatively unheard of, there rose a group of Male Yuppies. These Young Urban Mobile Professionals represented the affluent young professionals of the day.

They had a particular stance that went with the title, as did most subgroups:

• One hand raised to the ear,

• Other hand protectively placed on their briefcase

• Head cocked to the side

• Eyes glazed over as they stared into the distance

• A noncommittal grimace on the face.

They were seen to eat at all the Yuppy restaurants and naturally drove a Yuppy car.

Most of us thought they just evolved. But me thinks they were the result of a very clever marketing guru.

Either way, the Yuppy generation took over from the Baby Boomers – suburban, couple of kids, mortgage and the backbone of the community. That is after the Baby Boomers had dried out and come off the Grass, introduced through the Hippy stage.

Lets not knock the Baby Boomers though. Many a prominent politician and Lord Mayor came from the later end of the Baby Boomers.

Strictly speaking the Baby Boomers may have been too long a period to be classically described as a ‘generation’, as the baby boom lasted over a post-war, 18 year period.

Why we have to try to put a name to every generation is totally beyond me. I could never work out just where I belonged, even though I contributed to the Baby Boomer period.

In Russia the Baby Boomers were called the Sputnick Generation, from their race in space. How the two became connected is totally beyond me.

It was the rise of the contraceptive pill that heralded in the end of the Baby Boomer period.

Next came the DEWKS – Double Employed With Kids. Welcome the era of Child Care. Have a child, six weeks later dump the kid in the Creche/Child Care and back to competing with your partner as to who brings home the most income.

The Yuppies had become Yappies – Frustrated Yuppies having to deal with a couple of screaming kids, now that spanking children (corporal punishment) was being put out of fashion, by the government.

Sadly this was followed by the predictable KOOPF – Kids Of One Parent Families.

Next came the DINKS – Double Income No Kids. It was fashionable now not to have kids. Why not if you could no longer discipline them?

No longer could you assume the person was with their husband/wife. It had become ‘partner’.

Dinks became more widely used than the usual generation terms. A midget wrestler, Claude Giroux took the stage name Dink. Then there were Gay and Lesbian Dinks. The water was becoming decidedly muddied.

The concern is, according to some experts, that if the trend of Dinks continues, intelligent professionals will become another dinosaur and extinct, due to the lack of not having kids and reproducing themselves.

However, gays and lesbians have also contributed to the downturn in population growth, right up to same sex marriages.

Supposedly the DEWKS and DINKS are the privileged ones who have Disposable Incomes. That which the economists say gauges the state of the economy.

Let me ask you this though, does anyone have income that can be ‘disposed of’, like polystyrene containers, paper tissues, disposable plastic bags etc. That of course is before bio-degradable became the ‘in’ thing.

Somewhere in the middle of all this we have the term Nerd. The original stereotpyical Nerd was ‘white males with glasses and braces’, according to Wikipedia. Imagine trying to get away with such gendre orientated terms today, in our new found non-gender consciousness.

Some believe Nerd, or Nurd, was originally known as ‘knurd’, which is drunk spelt backwards. In other words a nerd was a person who studied rather than partied.

With the maturing advent of Cyber Space the term Nerd has gained respectability. It is the Nerds of our world that drive Cyber Space.

Charles J. Sykes said. “Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.”

Then of course we always have the Trendys who set the pace for the next generation. The feeding grounds of the latest fashion gurus and their high paid advertising junkies.

So we keep creating new terms, putting each generation into a neat little box. But society also likes to do the ‘crab trick’ – don’t let anyone else get out of the box. Pull them back if it looks like they are escaping out of the box we are in.

If you live long enough, chances are you will be around for quite a few of the names. Or should ‘names’ be simply classed as cultural evolution?

Is it more accurately plain rebellion to the established mores – status quo?

I want to add a couple more names to the list.

The world is full of Luzas. Yet, in every generation there is a minority of Wynas, about 2%. If you have difficulty picking up what I am saying (writing) try speaking those two names out loud.

Most of us only dream of being a Wyna. What did the song say, ‘Climb every mountain, ford every stream…’?

Being a Wyna is better than being a Luza, because Wynas live ‘out of the box’. That is if the box really exists.

Wyna wants to know if you want to own a South Pacific island resort, because Wynas live ‘out of the box’. You coul help some kids who can’t help themselves, living in a cashless society.

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Wendy Stenberg-Tendys –
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