Each generation has a defining moment: an event that freezes the generation forever, and they never really recover. The Gen-Xers had 9/11 which "changed everything" (presumably the Planck length, the speed of light in a vacuum, and the entire Pantone colour chart), the boomers had JFK, the Greatest Generation had Pearl Harbor, and the Jazz Age had Black Tuesday.
A generation never really recovers from these moments: they remain haunted and controlled, their initial reaction taking two decades to wear off, by which point they (over)compensate in the other direction. The collapse of the Roaring Twenties gave birth to the New Deal and the middle class; the Greatest Generation was mobilized to change the world, and they didn't stop until they had; The boomers first exploded with idealism, but then shed it like a raincoat and spawned a culture of greed the likes of which the world hadn't seen in a hundred years; Gen-Xers panicked and handed away their government, their rights, and their money to corporate raiders.
What happens twenty years after the last "nodal point" is anyone's guess. I retain hope that democracy can be renewed, that the government can be nationalized from the private equity which now controls it, and that social responsibility can be defined as more than consumerism. I hope that time is now, and I don't think there's much danger of overcompensation. To the contrary, the current trends are far too dangerous to be allowed to continue.
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