Condemnation
on 05/02/2007 at 01:16 AM
Ever see the movie ”THEY LIVE!”? You should...it’s actually quite funny, yet slams the ‘Greed is good’ attitude from that decade.
This requires a couple days of contemplation.
My initial thoughts are that each generation goes up against a unique set of challenges. Sometimes those carrying the torch get it gloriously right, sometimes they get it horribly wrong. In most cases, its somewhere in between.
The previous generations were not immune to stupid decisions. Don’t forget, we could have crushed Communism at the end of WWII, and because that generation didn’t, look who was left holding the bag. The sequence of events that unfolded because of it, shaped who and what the baby boomer generation became.
I’ve never really pondered this before and need to give it more thought but I can leave you with this. As a parent, did you or did you not lift your kid to the next level? If you did, you have nothing to be ashamed about.
But, will the America we know survive or will it be turned over to Islamic Radicals and Illegal Immigrants? If the Greatest Generation, the young men and women who make up our ALL Volunteer military, ever get convinced by the Democrats into thinking this nation isn’t worth saving, they we are doomed.
KusoJiji (and all the rest of the “boomers” out there), this editorial was a long time in the works. I’ve been hashing the concept around in my head for over a year now. By comparison, where does out generation stand as far as accomplishments and lasting changes for the better.
I’ve raised two boys and both are fine young men nowadays. I am not ashamed of them or what I leave behind me when I leave this world, regarding them.
I just feel that the boomer generation had so much potential and all the tools at our disposal to do so much more than we actually did. Perhaps it is a sense of impending mortality on my part. Perhaps not.
A little introspection is good for the soul now and then. Besides, I’m long overdue for another long-winded piece. Think it over. Let me know what you think.
Macker, if I had to choose a movie to embody each decade it would be “Ben Hur” for the 1950’s, “Easy Rider” for the 60’s, “Saturday Night Fever” for the 70’s, “Wall Street” for the 80’s, “Beavis & Butthead” for the 90’s and “Clear And Present Danger” for the present decade.
Skipper, you hit one out of the field with this post. Call the boomers the generation of good music, PCs, sex (the pill), drugs, and not much else. We’ve (I’m a boomer as well - 54)been a pampered, selfish, idealistic, narcissistic, greedy generation whose passing will allow others to clean up after us. I would hope that future generations learn both from our parent’s generation (what to do and what not to do) and from our generation so as to not repeat the mistakes we’ve made.
Our generation forced an environmental cleanup (remember smog alerts, polluted water, trash along the roadways, toxic waste dumps, etc) but we never did achieve peace. The ‘Age of Aquarius’ was a lie since the last thing we’ve ever witnessed was true world peace. Pretty damned disappointed in the lack of leaders we’ve produced, but with it be ‘do your own thing’ being one of the guiding principles of our misspent youth what do you expect would be the outcome? We’ve managed to trash our history, theology, morals, education system, while wondering where we went wrong.
Whoa folks. OK, lots went wrong, but we covered a lot of new and uncharted ground as well. We were the generation that experimented. Limits were something that our parents generation lived with. We didn’t accept them.
We never comfortably accepted limits of any sort. Think about your own lives, you still don’t deal well with limits. You may accept them because you have no choice, but how comfortable are you with them? How much do you want to go and change things that don’t suit you? How willing are you to pursue it? How much do you work to accomplish those changes? Skipper - this means you - is this blog just for your amusement or do you hope it will accomplish some good? That is our real heritage as Boomers. We are socially and politically active. We experiment. The blessing that we got from our parents generation was the sense of safety that allowed us to do this.
When we got our economic legs under us, we weren’t all thieves. Consider who and what is pushing the stock market. Bill Gates is a Boomer. The founders of Apple Computer are Boomers. George W is a Boomer. Bill Gates may be the most visibly successful, but he’s not the only one to have an attitude of unlimited possibilities. I hate to say it, the son of an Arkansas drunk became President because he believed he could. Our attitude has always been that limits are for someone else.
How many of us adopted “Born to be Wild” as our personal theme song? Remember the line “...fire all of your guns at once and explode into space..”? We go for it.
Consider a few other things. We were born under the shadow of nuclear destruction and Joe Stalin. We “fought” both sides of the Viet Nam war. We ran from the faith of our parents but most of us found that it was a good faith, and we came home to it. We’re a pretty good pile of contradictions, and we’re proud of it.
I’m not sure that I’d down play our actual accomplishments too much either. The personal computer has all by itself remade the face of the world in a way that the telegraph, radio and television couldn’t. If we discovered that our cars had polluted the air (actually our parents generation did that - I grew up in Los Angeles in the 50’s and 60’s when the air was a lot worse than it is today), we also developed the technology to make engines work much more efficiently and pollute less.
I’m not ready to quit just yet. There are lot of things that we need to do yet, the Space program is just one piece and there’s a lot more yet to do.
man I’m really struggling with getting my arms around the concept of comparing one generation over the other, its too huge and complex for my little brain.
the baby boomer generation is clearly not a total success, but is it a complete failure or is it just a partial failure?
does the BBgen get passing grades for establishing a freer and open society or a failing grade for creating a society of diminished ethical and moral fortitude?
does the BBgen get any credit for preventing the re-occurrence of war on a grander scale like the generations before us were unable to avoid or is the jury still out on this until the evil intentions of the Muslim world either manifests itself or we destroy them before they destroy us.
does the BBgen get credit for defeating communism or should it be blamed for not keeping socialism contained.
does the BBgen get credit for cleaner air and water, safer drugs and advances in medicine or blame for not finding better ways to protect the environment or cures for cancer?
I’m grateful to the generation before us from saving me from having to speak German while wearing brown shorts and suspenders. I’m grateful to them for building a strong middle class and an improved standard of living. With that said, they didn’t hand off to us a planet free of disease, economic and social strife or a government moving in the right direction.
We got dealt a decent hand, but not one I’d go all in on. The early baby boomers are just reaching retirement age, perhaps the next twenty years the cure to many horrible diseases will be discovered, an alternative to fossil fuels implemented (so we can tell them arab motherfuckers to kiss our asses)and maybe right some of the societal wrongs that damages our nation’s potential.
I am like Kuso Jiji. I needed a little time to wrap my head around this. I read this article yesterday myself, and pondered…
I think that such generational self loathing and flagellation is uncalled for and counterproductive. I have never spent any time at all doing it.
I really think that the world is a much better place now than it was after WW II. I think that the baby boomers had a lot to do with making it that way.
Things aren’t perfect what with wars, terrorists, porous borders, genocide, rap music, old age and all, but life is still a wonderful adventure, and I would rather be alive now than at any time in the past. Life is pretty good right here, right now, as far as I can tell.
I am an optimist. Things can always get better. If they don’t get better they will probably get more interesting.
Good luck with pulling yourself out of your generational self loathing and flagellation mode. Try to do something fun today that would not have been possible in 1945.
Don’t worry, be happy.
Yeller Dawg, why all this negativity from you lately? Your vibes are worrying me. It was never intended as “self loathing and flagellation”. While writing it I had more in mind of it being a “performance review”. Since most of us (you and I included) are approaching retirement age isn’t it about time to look back and assess how well we did.
I did that and this is the result. I tossed it out here for your feedback and appraisal. We’re not ready to submit this to the boss yet to find out if we get a raise or not. This is just the preliminary “once-over”.
The question you need to ask is: is the world indeed a better place and how much of that, if any, is a direct result of us “boomers”? I suggest that we probably rate a 5 or 6 (at most) on a scale of 1 to 10 and if that holds up under review then maybe we need to spend our remaining years trying a little harder.
You talk “optimist” but repeatedly refer to loathing and flagellation as if that was the only thing you took away from this post. Lighten up, buddy. It’s only a stupid blog and I’m just tossing out ideas. Don’t try to pigeonhole me with pejoratives. If you must criticize, then criticize the idea not your impression of the tone.
Come back from the Dark Side. Things will indeed get more interesting. Whether they get better or not depends on whether we sit here gazing at our collective navels or actually start caring about what we leave behind. Nothing ever happens in a vacuum. Newton’s Second Law forbids it.
05/02/2007 at 06:41 AM
