The Age of Aquarius

Okay, this is kind of a waste of time, but it's at least a marginally interesting waste of time. Via Kevin Drum, I came across this survey that purports to determine social values through questions about consumer preferences. People are then lumped into various "tribes" that vary according to generation (there are three tribes for pre-boomers, four for boomers, and six for us lucky Gen Xers.)

I end up falling into the New Aquarians. It's a pretty goofy name, I'll admit. In fact, pretty much all the names for Gen Xers are goofy, though I think that New Aquarians is probably the goofiest of the entire list. Icons for me turn out to be Naomi Klein and Rage Against the Machine. I'm not really quite sure what to make of that. Rage is one of my favorite bands, but I'm not really always such a big fan of their politics, which strike me as somewhat naive. Good music, though, so I guess I can live with Rage as one of my icons. I guess.

Actually, the descriptions don't actually seem all that far off. I'm not very traditional (surprise) and somewhat social, but not too far off in that direction (I'm not sure whether the y-axis is really supposed to be that far to the right of the chart or what; they all look like that, so perhaps it's accurate. Why such a small set of groupings on the Individual side?) Anyway, according to the folks at Environics Research Group (the people responsible for the survey), my key values are

• Adaptability
• Concern for the less fortunate
• Concern for the environment
• Respect for education
• Contempt for traditional authority
• Hedonism

Not, bad I suppose, especially considering that the survey takes all of 5 minutes to do. Try it out. Let me know how you turned out.