Unique Generation

Between Worlds, Not Between Chairs – The Double Responsibility of the So-Called Unique Generation.

Those born between 1975 and 1995 are often described as an exceptional generation — and rightly so. They carry the double experience of two worlds within them: the analog world of industrial modernity and the digital present, increasingly shaped by algorithms, networking, and acceleration. They still know what a modem sounds like, what it was like to live without constant availability, and simultaneously recognize every new digital update because they helped develop or at least witnessed it. Furthermore, they know what VHS is, even if they cannot explain the abbreviation, owned red colored pencils that smelled like strawberries, and knew which phone booths you could call.

→ Be sure to read my essay on the Soundtrack of Youthful Morality over in the essays.

This generation is not only technologically ambivalently socialized — it also grew up culturally between promises of stability and the compulsion of flexibility. They still trust institutions, value experience, patience, effort, and tangible work. At the same time, they have learned that efficiency, critical thinking, and adaptability belong to the new currency. Thus, they became a bridge between worlds — it is no coincidence that many of its representatives today are mediators, developers, critics, and enablers all at once.

However, this intermediate position also comes with great responsibility. While the older generation often struggles to grasp the pace of digital transformation, and the younger one often only thinks in its logic, this “unique generation” could indeed be the link — could, mind you. For the question arises whether they live up to their role — or prefer to rest on their special status.

The so-called unique generation between worlds today holds a special responsibility, which I have derived here. As a bridge between the analog and digital worlds, they possess the unique competence to understand and mediate both moral clusters — the progressive and the conservative.

This generation must use its position between worlds to fulfill three central tasks:

First, mediation between the progressive values (care, fairness, freedom) of the Digital Natives and the conservative principles (authority, loyalty, purity) of the analog generation. Second, critical reflection on technological developments from both perspectives. And third, the active shaping of a social dialogue that lingers neither in technological euphoria nor in cultural pessimism.

This responsibility weighs even more heavily as the generation between worlds often becomes the parents of those “AI-teens” growing up in an increasingly fragmented world of truths. Their task is to provide orientation without denying their own ambivalence — and at the same time, to not hinder the progressive revolution through excessive caution.

For the world that the generation of 2025 grows into is a fragile one. Not only technically, but also culturally. At a time when the concept of a shared truth is increasingly crumbling and postmodern arbitrariness has become the norm, the new “AI-teens” face a challenge that could hardly be greater. They are to find orientation in a world of multiple realities — or at least create it anew.

This is where the parent generation of Gen X comes into play — those between worlds. They hold everything in their hands: they can enlighten or confuse, connect or divide, show attitude or retreat into irony. They can advocate for a realistic worldview — one that neither absolutizes nor makes truth arbitrary — or they can succumb to the anti-realist game of self-reassurance, which is no longer harmless.

For if we know one thing from history, it is this: Every generation inherits the consequences of the previous one. The mistakes of the “unique generation” will not be theirs to pay for — but those who are only now being born. Whether they then stand in the light or in the shadow of a missed responsibility remains to be seen.