Each generation, of which there are four, is best understood as an archetype. Those born between 2006 and (predicted and likely) 2028, and also, somewhat recently, those born from 1925 to 1942, are the Artist archetype.
As a big overarching statement, the archetypes and their lifelong legacies go like this —
* Boomers are the Prophets – vision, values, mission
* Xers are the Nomads – liberty, honor and survival
* Millennials are the Heroes – community, technology, affluence
* The Not-Named-Yets are the Artists – pluralism, expertise, and due process
polite young rule-followers
Artists are (and will become more so as they become adults) the most rule-following, polite, sensitive, WORK WITHIN THE SYSTEM generation of the four archetypes. They are also the most empathetic, sensitive and others-focused. Each generation has strengths (and its weaknesses), and for the Artists, their inward exploration, angst, sensitivity and a lifelong feeling of generational unworthiness is part of their path.
They have a “color within the lines” nature that is shaped in part by the proscriptive parenting style midlife Xers have on their childhood years, and by Xers’ insistence on their children’s (and all children’s) good behavior. They tend to be extremely sheltered as children in sort of a Winnie the Pooh-like childhood.
unseen, un-celebrated
Throughout the Artist’s life path, their position in history is always being the wrong age to get any generational limelight. The generational cycle includes a pattern where one generation is dominant and the next is recessive, which is then followed by a dominant generation, and then a recessive generation. It would not be hard for anyone to take a reasonable guess as to which two generations are always dominant and which too are recessive: 1) Boomers, 2) Xers, 3) Millennials and 4) Not-Named-Yets.
Artists, who in this iteration are 19 years and younger in 2025, are born too late to be the nation’s heroes (that’s Millennials’ spot in history), and they’re born too early to be wild and free, as the young Boomer-like generation born after them, starting around 2029, will be. They have this incredible, deep-in-their-archetype knowing that they’re always just missing out by a hare. And they do, particularly when it comes to breaking the rules and eschewing norms (Boomers), a life of extreme adventure and fun (Xers), and achieving glory and reward (Millennials).
get in line, tow the line
As Artists become young adults, the nation will likely have moved out of “winter season,” which is predicted to be from 2008 and the Global Financial Crisis until about 2033–with a big whopper mega crisis yet to come before the end of “winter.” Their young adulthood years occur mostly during a nation’s “spring” and a time of coming together after the long, dark nights of winter to now build something new, out of the ashes … together. The nation won’t need edgy, market-drive young adults like Xers were when it was there slot to be the nation’s young adults. Nor will it need them to be friendly, collegiate, team-oriented Millennials, that role and function already being filled… by Millennials. And it won’t need fiery, sanctimonious youth to rebel against the grand edifices and structures their parents built; that’s young Boomers’ role.
No, the nation, in its “spring time” will need young technocrats and administrators, experts and people willing to support the older generations (midlife Millennials and elder Xers) in building A New Golden Age. And they will do this happily, willingly, extremely well and ever so politely … all the while, screaming inside (and feeling guilty and conflicted about their feelings), wanting to not always have to be “in the box,” but also knowing that it’s neither the time nor their role to go against the mainstream, but to be in it and a part of it.
They are a “color within the lines” generation. Success for young adults when they are them comes from being mainstream and working within the system.. And just as you’d expect, Artists are the least entrepreneurial of all the archetypes with their opposite archetype, Xers, being the most entrepreneurial and “outside the box” generation.
youthful rebels
Each generational archetype plays out its unique role when in young adulthood, for the culture and era of the times is as different for them as it was for the generation before them as it will be for the one after them. The other three generational archetypes are each in a fixed and specific position, vis-a-vis theirs, and one of the most natural and renewing aspects of a nation’s ever-changing culture lies in each generations’ utter need to rebel, first as they first come of age (around 16-21 years of age) and then move into young adulthood (around 22-43 years of age).
But young adults do not rebel against adults, parents or authority, per se. No, they rebel against how the generation before them defined what it was to be a young adult.
Prophet-Boomers’ “slot” is to tear things down and not participate in The New Golden Age their parents dearly want them to inherit, appreciate and grow; Nomad-Xers’ slot is to inherit the Boomer (and Artist-Silent) rubble and try to survive amongst it–finding niches, markets, friends and culture in the smallest slivers of spaces, in the ruins and aftermath of Boomers’ wild youth and in an adult world most unwelcoming and often hostile to them. Hero-Millennials’ slot is to remind society there is a future worth fighting for, and it is theirs. And the young adult Not-Named-Yet Artists’ slot is to line up, step into the system, expertly helping and supporting the construction of A New Golden Age.
The Artist archetype is denied the catharsis that accompanies coming of age, when the first among the new generation begins to look toward their futures through a different set of eyes than the generation before them; with a different set of values about work and love and life; and to express themselves in music, culture and style. They want so desperately to be the heroes the Millennials, by dint of their hero archetype and location in history, naturally are; instead they lean toward chivalrous acts, romanticized feats and somehow, some way, some day, being acknowledged as unique, worthy of recognition and their own generation.
a nation of tired midlife adults
But by the time they do come of age, the nation is a bit tired of over-celebrating every small achievement the entirety of the Millennial generation made. The nation is so deep in its “winter season,” and the adult leaders of the world (mostly the midlife Xers and the generation that has primary influence on Artists’ childhood) are so focused on making sure there is still a nation for them to grow up in (the Big Crisis has yet to come), making sure the family finances don’t crash and bring ruin, and making sure local communities are safe and good places in which kids can grow up, that when the Artists start to go to prom, graduate from high school–and then college, and as they begin to enter the workforce, no one is in much of a mood to make a big deal about it or them. It’s not that they’re not loved. They’re very loved, very cherished as a generation. But that adult bandwidth to hyper-focus on a generation of children got used up as Millennials passed through childhood, and it got used up again as Millennials passed through young-adulthood.
There are other things now–much more important things requiring older adults’ attention and focus. They get it. They play the role their parents, community, workplaces and country needs of them: Please, don’t make waves. Please, do as I ask. Please, be considerate, helpful, aware. Please, don’t cause problems. (Read: because we have more than enough serous problems on our plates right now.)
No one wants to talk much about the needs of teens now. And no one is going to want to talk much about accommodating a new generation of employees when they rise up into that slot. There will be concerns–some, about these new hires, but mostly it’ll be Millennials feeling disappointed that this generation doesn’t seek achievement, leadership and accomplishment the way they sought it. Midlife Millennials may grumble a bit, but they won’t be disappointed, for Artists are the credentialed experts, the exquisitely detailed technocrats, and the eternal helpers, following along and behind Millennials, doing their darnedest to do not just a good job, but a noteworthy, stellar job–one worth noticing, celebrating, but which won’t be, much to their disappointment.
going within
They comply. Well, most of them do. Their generation’s radicals are more likely to smoke cigarettes next to a “No Smoking” sign or splay some graffiti art, nicely done, on a wall. Or maybe cut in line. They are the rebels without a cause. They are sometimes referred to, when coming of age and as young adults, as “the lonely crowd.” Their depth in knowing they are missing out on the good stuff, the juicy stuff of life, haunts them the entirety of their lives. It tears at them.
They don’t fight this feeling by trying to be wilder, edgier or more extreme, the way their shadow generation, the Nomad-Xers did/do. Artists go within. They find the edges, the wildness, the extremes not in the outer, scary world fraught with dangers, but within their feelings; and they express this turmoil outward through art. Well, some of them do. But all of them feel this deep sense of “missing out,” of not being important, of not being seen.
xers, the artists’ shadow
Xers (the shadow generation to Artists, with Boomers and Millennials being shadows to each other) live the life of the raconteur, the spinner of yarns, the ones who tell great stories of adventures, grand and often barely believable, but possibly true. The Nomad-Xer archetype’s life path is one of always being at each phase of life (childhood, coming of age, young adulthood, midlife and elderhood) at the worst possible time to be that age, which creates for them a life of hardship and challenges at every single phase of life like no other generation experiences. Such hardships are–as is true for all generations–what makes one stronger.
Xers are children when society is tired of caring for children, and when adults just wanna have fun. They come of age and are young adults when all the social nets promised to other generations are ripped away in age-based, two-tier systems that particularly punish young Xers starting out in life while rewarding older generations, simply for being older and “already in the system.” Xers are midlife adults and in their peak earning years when the nation goes into a full tailspin crisis and when making sure the nation will make it through the 20 years or so of “winter” becomes a priori. And Xers–no surprises here–are, in a nation’s time of “spring,” forgotten, abandoned elders right as everyone falls in love with babies, youth and renewal’ They get blamed for all the problems from the prior dark times of winter, problems they mostly inherited from the neglect and selfishness of the three prior generations’ selfishness and unwillingness to address what wasn’t working.
But what Xers do get in exchange for this life of woes and little to no social net under them is they get a fun life. They get a life of adventure like no other generation gets, and they have a blast! The “price” the Xer archetype pays for the worst life path to achieve financial success is having the best life path for a loads of wild experiences, tales to tell, excitement and fun.
a gentile life
The Artists (those 19 and under in 2025) and the Nomads, the Xers (those 44-64 years old in 2025) being shadow generations to each other have a what is akin to a parent-child relationship. The one in midlife has primarily say over how the other is formed in childhood. Then the one formed in childhood goes on to be the midlife adults forming its “parent generation’s” childhood. Their life paths tend to go in opposite directions, too.
While Xers are always at the worst age to be that age (in terms of financial success and support), their shadow archetype, the Artists, have a life path where they are always the best age to be in any age-based social role (in terms of financial success and support.). Artists are the generation of children who come behind Millennials, and they benefit from all the protections, investments and care the nation has just plied on a generation of Millennial children. They are also children during society’s “winter and dark times,” and are not in the workforce or earning money then.
They are young adults in a nation’s spring as everything booms, and their careers and lives are kicking into gear. Always being a smaller generation than the three others, the growing economy seeks them out, pays them well and rewards them with careers, compensation and opportunities no other generation experiences with such ease. They are midlife adults during a nation’s “summer” and loosening of social constrictions when the economy experiences some hiccups, but their financial positions tend to be fairly secure. And then they’re elders during a nation’s “fall” and time of harvest, when taking-taking-taking feels like the culturally correct thing to do.
If you’ve ever heard of the book, The Millionaire Next Door, which basically said, show up, save a little money, invest reasonably, live reasonably–not lavishly, and you’ll retire with millions, the author didn’t know it but he was describing the life path of and only one specific generation: the Artists.
protecting the underdog
Children of the winter, the Big Crisis, and young adults in an era where being in the mainstream meant success and being on the fringes meant otherwise, the Artist archetype, particularly in midlife, always produces the generation of the greatest civil rights leaders of their times, with the prior version, the Silent generation, having among its ranks MLK Jr, Malcolm X, Caesar Chavez, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Harvey Milk, John Lewis, John McCain, Jesse Jackson, Rachel Carson, and more.
art as their message
They are also, true to their generational archetype, the greatest artists, poets, singers, song writers etc. of an 85-90-year cycle. They are three out of four of The Beatles and Elvis Presley, Carol Burnett and Jerry Lewis, Johnny Carson and Joan Rivers, Maya Angelou and Mary Oliver, Paul Newman and Morgan Freeman, and on.
Their legacy is pluralism, expertise, and due process. They champion and protect the underdog; they’re kind and others-focused.
getting loose, maybe a bit too loose
They do let loose in midlife and are the principle cause of the disruption and dismantlement of family structures as their finally!-me-first epiphanies leave a generation of GenX-like children unprotected. For in midlife they witness the young adult Boomer-like generation behind them refuse to follow along with The Rules and insist on living by their own, individual spiritual and moral code–and desires, not only unwilling to being subservient to Society’s mandates and order, but wanting (with every cell in their individual bodies) to destroy the oppressive weight of social order their Millennial-Hero parents so confidently built and joyously crafted for their children.
And they also, in midlife, will be the destroyers of family life, the wild swingers and the ones who leave an entire generation of children — they’re GenX-like children — to fend for themselves in a world of adult interests and concerns. But that’s down the road about 30-35 years from now, so we can focus on them as children now, teens starting to come of age and, in a handful of years, the emergence of a new generation of young adults.
