Either Or

In Defining Deviancy Down, New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan made the following observation while referencing Wayward Puritans, a 1965 book by one Kai T. Erikson:

Despite occasional crime waves, as when itinerant Quakers refused to take off their hats in the presence of magistrates, the amount of deviance in this corner of seventeenth-century New England fitted nicely with the supply of stocks and whipping posts.

While the point of Defining Deviancy Down was to decry a greater acceptance of behavior that Senator Moynihan considered deviant, there is something to be said for this idea that he touches on in the beginning of his essay. Consider this excerpt from a recent article in The Week:

Part of the reason estrangement has become more common is the "changing notions of what constitutes harmful, abusive, traumatizing or neglectful behavior," said Joshua Coleman, a clinical psychologist and the author of "Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict," in his book. Coleman cited research that showed how the definition of trauma has expanded in the past three decades to include experiences once considered harmless. "The bar for qualifying as a trauma today is much lower," he said.
'No contact': Family estrangement on the rise for young people choosing peace

While there has been a significant amount of inter-generational warfare over whether Generation X was more resilient than Generation Z, or simply more likely to sweep genuine trauma under the rug, to go back to Mr. Erikson's thesis, there's a non-zero chance that a greater number of therapists, counselors and other mental-health professionals (and amateurs) has something to do with it. When I was in my mid-twenties, it simply wasn't as workable to be traumatized in the way that many younger people think of it. Accordingly, social structures were set up to support and encourage, working through things in a way that's considered to be self-harmful today. Likewise, the more modern push towards therapy, and the use of "therapy-speak" in everyday language would have struck my peers and myself as overly medicalized, and possibly even fraudulent. And there's a degree to which both of these attitudes are linked to the perception of the amount of competent assistance available. Back in the day, a low bar for trauma would have resulted in large numbers of people in seek of assistance from too few resources, while today, a high bar means that people would refrain from seeking out resources that are ready and waiting to assist them.

And both of these viewpoints clash with the idea that "what constitutes harmful, abusive, traumatizing or neglectful behavior" is objective, such that two notions that don't meet in the middle, such as Generation X's and Generation Z's, can't both be correct, even when viewed in relation to their own time periods. And this is what leads to the inter generational warfare, as my age cohort and my niece's each seek to claim the virtuous high ground for themselves.

Personally, I like to think of them as simply different. Yes, I think of myself as more resilient, and less likely to seek out resources than younger people. That adapted me to the world I was in, but I'm fortunate in the sense that it's not actively maladaptive for the world that I currently am in. I don't envy people who may have the misfortune to live in a time when the pendulum swings back in the other direction. After all, it's better to have resource and not need them, than to need resources and not have them. But for right now, perhaps everyone is okay. And that's good enough.