It's more likely that every generation is all of the above - or more precisely, every generation goes through phases where one or more of those might apply. Every generation will believe that the older generations are stupid and short-sighted, then as that generation gets older it will believe that the younger generations are stupid and short-sighted. Every generation will think the older generations are backwards and the newer generations naïve.

If there's any sort of cycle between generations, it seems like cynicism v. optimism is more likely. I like to think of it as a sort of "day" v. "night":

    1920's: evening / night
    1930's: night / early morning hangover
    1940's: (cycle temporarily pauses while the world blows itself up)
    1950's: morning
    1960's: afternoon
    1970's: evening
    1980's: night
    1990's: morning hangover
    2000's: afternoon
    2010's: evening / night
    2020's: night / morning (predicted)

It's something I can hear in the music from those time periods, though I can't quite quantify it.

Re: "hippies", they seem to be a feature of the Boomer, Gen-X, and Millennial/Gen-Y generations alike; all three have had very similar movements (which makes it all the more poignant that now the Millennial hippies are scolding the very generation from which hippies originated in the first place).

Also, I don't know if I'd characterize Gen-X as "conservative".