Talk about a freaking workload.Yes, it's nearly that time to pull out the blueprints.
And boy, are there a lot of blueprints.
By this time next year, a new generation will become the new ruling establishment.
Talk about having a life? That life ahead is so full of work that having any kind of a life will require a lifetime of even more work.
Over the next 20 years, Generation X will be the establishment that will have to lead the charge into the new decades of the 2010s and 2020s.
And, the generation must lead this charge with a smile - not a grumpy growl - on its collective face.
Or else, all is lost.
We're not there yet, but if Generation X does not get off to a great start, and maintain a proactive attitude throughout - then surely, the end really is near.
Let us count some of the problems Generation X has to tackle:
- Double-digit unemployment with millions out of work
- A near-depression era Economy
- Residential & Commercial Collapse
- Incompetent Boomer executives destroying companies while reaping millions in bonuses
- A crumbling national infrastructure
- Raging national deficits
- States Going Broke
- Schools falling apart
- Rising Divorces & war against the Middle Class
- Communities deteriorating
- Health care costs out of control
- University tuition out of reach with millions of students in debt before they graduate
- Both major political parties stuck in outworn Boomer ideology
- Washington D.C. dysfunctional, cynical, stagnated & bought off
- Corrupted Wall Street & greedy financial system
- Cynicism, ideology destroying arts, culture & science
- An aging population in denial & unprepared for being elderly
The hands of Generation X is so chock full of this complete mess left over from the Baby Boomer generation that it boggles the mind. Here has been a "youth obsessed" generation that has made no preparation for retirement because they did not believe they would ever retire.
All generations must retire. It is a natural law. No nation can survive by hiring workers above the age of 62; yet, this generation of Baby Boomers says it can work forever.
I say that is total bunk.
This generation has been in total denial and wholly self-interested in only themselves to the point of driving the entire globe into an economic black hole and geopolitical madness simply because they feared getting older? Something that is natural and happens to all people?
What has made Baby Boomers any different?
One of the biggest lies that is still pandered about by media and government sources is that the Baby Boomer generation extends into the year 1964. This is simply not true - and never was.
I remember back in the early 1990s when the term "Baby Boomer" gained traction among editors so that the years used to define a Baby Boomer was from 1940 to 1953.
Then, curiously, I began to notice something really funny going on. Each year the reported numbers showed that the Boomers were getting magically younger as the birth years for that generation went further - 1954, 55, 56, 57, 58, to 1959.
Those middle years from 1954-59 were years that the post-Boomers were born, called Generation Jones. This was the generation Boomers' cynically told "were not there" - meaning they were literally not physically at the counter-culture revolution and could not get drafted into the Vietnam War. There is a reason for this.
Generation Jones "wasn't there" because they were in elementary school at the time.
Generation Jones (1954-1960) was too young to quit college, don hippie hair, smoke pot, ingest LSD, and "drop out" on their way to San Fransisco during the Summer of Love.
So, they were "not there" literally because Generation Jones were in fact still underage children. This group did not come of age until the mid-1970s. Think Madonna and Michael Jackson, who were born in 1958.
As the millennium approached, the Baby Boomer generation years extended into another decade - 1960, 61, 62, 63, 64, and yes, even to 1965 and 1966. Boy, the tail end of this generation just seemed to be going, and going, and going - getting younger all the time.
Wow. A first in the history of humanity. A generation that never ages.
The Baby Boomer generation now extended a full 24 years from the time that the first Baby Boomer was born so that a child born in 1939 and one born in 1964 shared the same common life experiences?
Come on.
Then, it began to back off a bit, and settled at 1962, then, about 2002, it went back to 1963, then, finally to 1964, when it stands at today.
Now, what this has shown is that the Baby Boomers who made all this up - the lie that their generation continued to be born into the 1960s - were scared of one thing, and one thing only.
Getting older.
I remembered that the Baby Boomer generation was the one that pitched the saying, "Don't trust anyone over 30."
I always thought that was strange. What do you do when you yourself turn 30 years old? Stop trusting yourself?
I started getting advanced warnings of the Boomer fear of "growing up" when a television show called Thirtysomething was on the air in America in the 1980s. It seemed to play on the theme that being over the age of 30 was terrible. They were depressed all the time it appeared.
Even the music played during episodes would give me a headache. I stopped watching the show after it became obvious to me that these people were all in a huff about nothing at all. I changed channel and went back to listening to Simple Minds on my Sony Walkman.
The angst exhibited in the Boomer writing through the characters of Thirtysomething treated being over 30 as if it were the end of the world. See - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkDIlAdrBT0&feature=related
Now, mind you, I was in my early 20s in the 1980s, so I could not relate to what was so terrible about being over the age of 30. When I got there, I found that there was absolutely nothing wrong with it at all. So what gives?
Anyhow, the Boomer extension into the 1960s was included in official government data, but, was only the musings of Boomer newspaper editors afraid of the word "retirement." You see, by clasping one's hands over one's eyes, and saying "no" - that way, I can feel younger by pretending my generation is so large that it continued to be born in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
But, if I cannot have anything in common with children born in the 1960s, what do I do?
Well, all you have to do is to "fudge" the numbers, see?
That way, you can continue to feel as if you really are younger (as you age that is) and claim that you were born in 1963 or 1964, and still experienced the Beatles, the Summer of Love and Woodstock (at the ages of 4, 5, and 6 years old) while retaining your eternal youth.
That way, you can make it appear as if your youth-drug-and sex-obsessed generation is larger than another, so then you can suck up all their resources, include those birth numbers into your own generation, but pretending that that generation does not exist at all in some kind of grand design of desire to remain eternally young?
That is, while also having outright disdain and hostility for anyone who is actually younger than you are.
Fudging the true numbers seems to be a very popular thing with Baby Boomers. All you have to do is look at Climategate, and the other occupations where playing funny funny with the real data to match your own fears, predispositions and ideologies seems to have been the way to go for this generation.
The generation born from 1961 to 1975 is Generation X.
There were no Baby Boomers born in the 1960s. None. Generation X is a larger generation that Baby Boomers, but, let's not say anything about that because then, of course, the truth would actually be known and all would fail.
The true length of every generation is 14 years. That means that the Baby Boomers (yes there were children born during the Second World War) were born between 1939-1953. A 14-year span of time.
The first wave of Generation X - the incoming new establishment - born in the early to mid-1960s is about to enter power. We've seen this in the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, who is clearly born a member of Generation X.
There is so much that is about to be demanded from Generation X that if you are one of these people - it is time to build up your muscles, and take your vitamins daily - because the world is going to need every ounce of creative juice, energy, and stamina you are able to muster.
And it better be a lot of juice.
Wacky Acts & Baby Boomer Angst
In the years from 2011 to 2030, Generation X will be the establishment that must not only lead the world out of its economic crisis, but also must forge a new vision for this new century.
There is this odd gap in time going back in memories of the mid-to-late 1970s, when Generation X seemed invisible as the Baby Boomers gave up on rock-and-roll and embraced Disco.
I remember it well. It was a time where nearly all Boomers disappeared into their new jobs during the days only to don funny looking outfits to dance several nights during the week to this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0fB0GZVxhI
Generation X was too young to participate in that scene, and frankly, hated Disco and everything it stood for. We sensed that something was wrong in society, and Gen X was right because around the corner was a deep recession which started in 1980-81, which was the year Disco died.
In the darkening days of November 1980, Ronald Reagan and the conservatives were elected with less than 43% of the vote as the Baby Boomer generation continued in their cocaine-fueled disco haze but forgot to vote for the next president.
So, as teens in 1979-80, Generation X battened down the hatches and took part in New Wave music. We knew the 1980s was not going to be easy and hoped that we would be able to survive it all.
We did, but this also represents what the scene was with new wave Gen X at that time in 1979-80. We were under no illusions about what was happening and took the Boomers' love of disco as a smoke-screen sign of the coming times.
Generation X was anti-disco. Everything about the Boomers' disco was fake to Generation X and to the actual times. We smelled a wolf in sheep's clothing, and so turned disco into a Gen X view of what we felt going on around all of us. Watch on a full computer screen, and note the torn clothing, holes in clothes, and the message about the Disco times of 1979-80. See - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwqYsoDqbCQ&feature=related
Mark Bauerlein of Emory University, and author of The Dumbest Generation - How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, says that as children Generation X got the short end of the stick -
By the time they entered middle and high school, classrooms were opened, standards were lowered, and supervision had disappeared.
Early Xers have certain strengths that many more learned people lack: They're practical and resilient, they handle risk well, and they know how to improvise when even the experts don't know the answer.
As the global economy craters, they won't keep leafing through a textbook. They may be a little rough around the edges, but their style usually gets the job done."
One member of Generation X responded to Bauerlein's thoughts -
"So let me get this straight, the dope-smoking hippies did everything they could to destroy education with student's rights, open campuses and imaginary grades and when the next generation bore the brunt of all this stupidity it's that generation's fault?
Graduating in the early 80's sucked ass. They whine that my generation didn't go to grad school but the hippies only when to stay out of the war and by the late 70's and early 80's no one's parents had the money to afford it.
Don't worry about my "dumb" generation. The coming recession will separate the wheat from the chaff and quiet a few Boomers are about to find that their careers are now over whether they like it or not.
My generation has always lived with risk. We have always been distrustful of corporations and government. There are no easy answers and hopefully the boomers get the F out of the way finally and let some people that weren't raised on 'Leave it to Beaver' and 'Father Knows Best' deal with the real world and not some 1950's echo that may have never existed in the first place."
Clearly, the Baby Boomers, who heralded the "new millennium" back in the year 2000 with wacky Jetson-world like cartoon mutterings about what the world would look like by 2010, were obviously out of their minds.
This year, 2010 looks more like 1930 rather than like, well, 2010.
After 18 years of this generation running the show as the establishment, the United States and the world has experienced the market Boomer bubbles of unparalleled heights, and now, the unparalleled lows of Boomer bubbles bursting.
And, in a big Baby Boomer way - which is an understatement to say the least.
All this featuring a widespread cynical political correctness that infected everything: from the kind of coffee you consume (and how you drink it) to trying to ban smoking outside; to the kind of car you drive, to how you feel about Bill Clinton's and Tiger Wood's marital indiscretions.
This, from a generation that worshiped marijuana, cocaine, and multiple hits of LSD and who preached free love and free drugs to the tune of "light it up" and "right on man?"
We've had enough of the cultural and gender wars. The Vagina Chronicles, Cash for Clunkers, Viagra, Botox, Plastic Surgery, and Tea Party rantings.
We've had enough of ideology posing as "climate change" with revelations that global weather data was trashed and substituted with "carbon credits" and ideological careerism posing as objective science?
This is the generation that freaked out at the sight of Janet Jackson's exposed bare breast and came to replace her with the senior-citizen band The Who performing at a Super Bowl's halftime show?
And we've heard plenty about Woodstock and how Baby Boomers invented Civil Rights, the Internet, and Women's Rights when history says otherwise.
Can anyone say, Enough already?
All this in the middle of an historic global and national crisis not seen since the Great Depression?
From drugging schoolchildren with psychotropic drugs, to banning students from "high-fiving" one another, prohibiting "touching" and/or any physical contact between students; closing down gym classes, art classes, music classes, and going so far as to ban "kick ball" during school recess - baby boomers have clearly lost any semblance of common sense, reality and feeling good about life in general.
Professional astrologers know all about something we call projection. This is when an individual, or a group, or, a generation casts its own problems, negativity and fears onto the other.
In this way, the individual, the group, or the generation does then not have to face whatever it is that they fear within themselves.
In this case, it is easier to project onto anyone younger than you, and to treat them badly enough so that you can feel good about yourself and remain in denial?
Projections are always bad news. Depending on the natal and progressed transits, the strength or weakness of any kind of projection depend on those doing it.
It shows that whomever is projecting seriously is avoiding their own internal issues, but, by default, as if a reflex, the blame that is cast onto the other is externalized into the physical world and hurts the other for no other reason but to not deal with the projector's problem.
This not only causes pain for the innocent other, but it never solves what is clearly the problem of the projector - not facing truth.
Obviously, this is not only very wrong, but it is also sick, is it not?
Here are two examples to prove my point -
In early February 2010, a 12-year old girl named Alexa Gonzalez, from Queens, N.Y., was arrested for "doodling" on her school desk by her Baby Boomer teachers.
Yes, this actually happened.
These Boomer attacks on those younger then them has been going on for years -
Here's another Boomer-related story similar to the first:
A class action lawsuit was filed by a Pennsylvania family against the Lower Merion School District for installing hidden cameras inside school-issued Macintosh laptops that were then given to schoolchildren:
"The suit says that in November [2009]assistant principal Lynn Matsko called in sophomore Blake Robbins and told him that he had 'engaged in improper behavior in his home,' and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam in his school-issued laptop."
"Matsko later told Robbins' father, Michael, that the district 'could remotely activate the webcam contained in a student's personal laptop... at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam' without the knowledge or approval of the laptop's users, the suit says. It does not say what improper activity Robbins was accused of or what, if any, discipline resulted."
See the Class Action Lawsuit - http://media.philly.com/documents/robbins17.pdf
"It’s as if the roller coaster ride of the late 1960s and early 1970s left the Boomers emotionally depleted, says Kai Wright, a senior writer for The Root, "And they spent the next 30 years refusing to create anything, stuck competing with one another over who could be the most orthodox.
Instead, Wright points out, "the feel-good generation morphed into one defined by greed, selfishness and bursts of anger. By the 1980s, Jerry Garcia was out and Gordon Gekko was in. The Cold War ended and a hot one soon replaced it.
"The sexual revolution gave way to a sexually transmitted plague that everyone chose to ignore rather than confront. They stopped worrying about Mother Earth and started fetishizing ex-urban McMansions and SUVs.
"Even the Left hunched down into a permanently reactionary posture, constantly defending the gains of the civil rights era rather than working to adapt and build upon them.
"Perhaps nothing revealed this so much as the spectacle of old-line black politicians, who had cut their teeth on revolution, failing to understand the uprising that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign represented.
"The disastrous first decade of the 21st century is the predictable outcome of this Boomer stagnation and self-destruction," Wright says.
"A country can export only so much strife and war-making before it blows back. A survival-of-the-fittest economy will eventually destroy itself."
Just What Is The Problem With the Baby Boomer Generation?
The ending of the "Boomer angst" means that a significant cultural tidal wave is surely on the horizon, and cannot arrive fast enough in present times.
Many people have expressed their outright disgust with the rampant cynicism, negativity, and emotional turmoil of an entire generation that sees growing older as the worse thing that could ever occur, when it is simply a natural part of human life.
Here is what sociologist Professor Mike Males thinks has been going on:
"I found the biggest clue in Margaret Mead’s cogent little 1970 book, (Culture and Commitment.) The sum of her argument was that we adults adapted for millennia to traditional, unchanging "post-figurative" cultures comfortably controlled by elder knowledge.
From the advantaged vantage of 2007, I’d say Mead’s worst fears turned out to be spectacularly right, which no doubt would have dismayed her. I suspect James Baldwin would also be deeply disappointed in how 1960s black youth aged. Baby Boomers, black and white, are a terrible generation, a betrayal of America worse than anyone could have predicted."
Suddenly, in the space of a couple of generations, once-stable cultures have been rocked by global migration and technological advances, yielding constantly shifting "co--figurative" (peer dominated) and "pre--figurative" (youth dominated) subcultures to which youth were better adapted than their elders.
"Mead predicted adults weren’t going to take their demotion to obsolescence very well. She feared that in the near future, adults would come to fear the unfamiliar new attitudes and behaviors of modern, diverse youth "like an invading army," institute often "bizarre" repressions aimed at forcibly restoring the imagined stability of the past, and, at worst, abandon the young altogether.
"Baldwin, writing from his deeply pessimistic angle (see No Name in the Street, 1972), also got it: social and racial change are heralding dynamic new challenges speeding up time itself in ways even the kindliest old can’t fathom
"Mead and Baldwin figured out 35 years ago why American adults would come to hate young people so poisonously," Males says. "Mead was optimistic; give us a generation or two, we’ll adapt to change just as we once did to tradition; Baldwin feared we’d just come apart and put his money on young African Americans as the best hope for the future.
"By her 1978 update, Mead was becoming gloomier: the young Baby Boomers she’d hoped for were souring, their parents were not adapting, and only a conscious effort would prevent "runaway feedback" that would jeopardize the whole planet.
"Thirty years ago, Mead wrote that adults in societies experiencing rapid social change automatically fear youths as symbols of an alien, menacing future older age groups don't comprehend. While must cultures have taken steps to keep generations connected, Americans -- experiencing not just social, but racial evolution -- have let fear and hostility toward youth rage out of control.
"Today's American adults are irrationally afraid of youths and imagine that young people -- particularly in cities and states in which aging adults are white and youths are increasingly non-white -- harbor unheard of dangers and threats. Private industries have arisen to profit from grownup fright toward the young and advance their interests by inflaming them further.
As a result, virtually every American social problem today -- drugs, drinking, smoking, violence, crime, guns, imprisonment, AIDS, obesity, poverty, anti-social behavior, bad moral values -- are quickly converted into epidemics caused by youths. Private and political interests across the spectrum push their own solutions to punish, manage and redirect the supposedly out-of-control young.
"In reality, however, every standard measure shows that it is not teenagers but aging baby boomers who are causing today's most serious, fastest-growing problems with drug addiction, crime, imprisonment, AIDS, and family and community disarray. Because the older generation refuses to face its problems, it inflicts especially vicious stigmas and dis-investments on younger generations.
As a result of rising adult paranoia that has no basis in reality, America is in a punishing, terrified rage against youths -- one, unfortunately, fed by interests from left to right across the spectrum. I spent a lot of time in "Scapegoat Generation" (1996) and "Framing Youth" (1999) showing that nearly all the imagined youth crises of today -- from guns to heroin to suicide -- are hallucinations. They simply do not exist, and the big problems are among the middle-agers.
It is a disgraceful situation, and both the war on drugs and its reformist opponents advance their goals by deploying the worst disinformation about youth while ignoring the crisis of addiction, crime, and rigidly punishing moralism among older Americans that threaten young people far more than drugs ever did.
America's most catastrophic social crisis over the last 25 years has been the explosion in hard-drug abuse among aging baby boomers. More than 100,000 Americans over age 30 have died from overdoses of illegal drugs since 1980, and untold thousands more have died from illicit-drug effects, such as accidents and chronic abuse, and millions have been hospitalized in drug emergencies.
Today the fastest growing population in terms of drug abuse, criminal arrest for violent, property, and drug offenses, and imprisonment are [baby boomers] mostly white. This middle-aged crisis underlies a parallel explosion in felony crime and imprisonment, family violence and community disruption, and drug-supply gangs whose conflicts have contributed to the murders of thousands of inner-city young men at the street level of drug distribution. The most recent federal Drug Abuse Warning Network figures, for 2001 and 2002, show drug abuse deaths and hospital emergencies are at record levels, worse than at any time in known history.
Generation X To The Rescue?
One of the first things that will have to happen as Generation X completes the generational transition now underway is to remove the dark clouds of Boomer angst hanging over the world and replace it with a much more positive outlook on the future.
This is something sorely lacking in the attitudes of the Boomer generation today. Many boomers have said their own generation "blew it," big time, in the words of Stephen King, who, like others of his generation, have said about what Boomers have done to the world during their time as the establishment. Others have apologized, while still other Boomers remain silent, choosing not to notice the obvious.
This generational transition officially begins March 2011, when global transits reveal the emergence of the first wave of the children born in the 1960s entering power.
These first wave children of the 1960s are now in their mid-to-late 40s, and represent the first significant generational change from a Boomer-led establishment to a Generation X-led establishment.
One of the major goals will be ignite a positive resurgence and belief in the American spirit in the United States and bring an end to the cynical political correctness and polarization that have for too long dominated popular consent in the country.
The new establishment of Generation X will extend through the 2010s, which is a challenging decade enough as it already stands, and into the 2020s, which, if we are lucky, will see the effects of a positive revival of a proactive "can-do" spirit that ushers the world into the 21st century, rather than backwards into the last century.
The Baby Boomers, as the establishment, have clearly wasted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity over the last 18 years to make good on their own cherished ideals.
By engaging in never-ending cultural/gender/ideological wars they have not only alienated two generations behind them, but have sealed their own fate as the senior citizens they have been in denial about.
"So here we are, at the end of a decade in which our national rot has finally shown through, with Generation X rising to political and cultural leadership," Wright says.
"As we Gen Xers made our first entrance into the culture, we were widely maligned as disengaged, unambitious couch potatoes.
"We dropped out of school, played video games and blasted anti-establishment hip-hop and grunge music -- or so went the caricature.
"The question is, however, what kind of generation we have become? Will we be the generation that makes the promise of the Obama revolution real?"
Time will soon tell, and that time is right around the corner.
Posts
9 comments:
Greetings Theo, I love your work. One thing I have to say is that you undermine your credibility whenever you push Obama as some sort of revolutionary figure. The people who voted him in might very well represent that kind of change.
Obama however has clearly sold out his constituents and this should be obvious to all by now. He is owned lock stock and barrel by the banking interests. I did not vote for either Bush or Obama, in fact I voted for Cynthia McKinney and I couldn't be prouder of that fact. Obama revealed himself to me not only by being boosted ny Jay Rockefeller but more importantly with his voting record.
Giving retroactive immunity to the telecoms for their unconstitutional crimes was beyond the pale. Now we hear him apologizing for power once more saying Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blanfein deserve their multi million dollar bonuses. He egregiously compares these arch criminals with professional athletes in a twisted attempt to justify their obscene bonuses.
Do us all a favor, tear the boomers down all you want but if Obama is representative of Gen X we can expect more of the same corrupt and failed practices and ideologies.
Hi Ian, thanks for your comment. To answer them, I don't see me pushing Obama as some sort of "revolutionary figure," as you say.
Time will tell if Obama is representative of the past, or, of the future. However, seeing that he is only a year into his first-term, time will certainly tell, that's for sure.
Seeing the world transits ahead, I certainly know that those who want truth to be the standard, will, in time, see much of what they already knew was happening.
As for the Boomers; I don't think anyone is "tearing" them down. That generation has done this on its own very well. Moreover, it was forecasted by people such as Margaret Mead and James Baldwin, and both their insights proved very accurate. The rest of us just work here, and we do have our eyes open.
I cannot say that Obama is representative of Gen X as he was born on the cusp of this generation, so much remains to be seen.
Yet, the first, and second wave of Generation X is certainly about to come into power, and whether Obama will be part of this movement depends on him, but he cannot stop the new generational wave that is surely coming. He will have to join it fully or, he will be voted out of office by the same voters who put him there.
Right on Theo, I agree with all you said but am deeply suspicious of Obama at this point. I would love to be proven wrong about him as that would mean he was actively doing good for the country.
I didn't mean to suggest you were being overly harsh about the boomers, quite the contrary I'm enjoying seeing them reap what they have sewn. Boomers in middle and top management have cynically fired newer workers in order to keep their nests well feathered. They also seem to have no problem with grasping onto their jobs regardless of how outmoded and ineffective they have become.
I'm on the cusp of gen X myself and pray that our generation is somehow more immune to corruption then the boomers. To be honest, I feel the system itself is what corrupts all who enter in to it seeking power. The real powers that be like David Rockefeller are not even boomers but of older generations. As long as power is concentrated at the top it may not matter what generation is at the helm.
To me spiritual evolution on the individual level is the only hope we have. Each person who awakens ala Adyashanti, eckhart Tolle, ramana maharshi and so fort makes it easier for each successive person to awaken. My hope is that a critical mass of awakening will occur in the near future.
What do the stars portend for spiritual evolution in the coming years? I feel this is the only hope of humanity breaking out of the downward spiral it is in.
Thank you for your great work! I hope I didn't offend with my comments on disappointment with Obama. Best to you!
Thanks Ian. I do understand your disappointment with Obama, as some people feel the same as you do, and it may be justified considering the horrid year 2009 has been for many.
Right now, from the looks of it, it appears that the outworn system and some of those around Obama want to look back - not forward. How the president responds to this will largely determine his ability to get the country back on the road towards recovery before 2012.
It is possible, but the losers who caused this mess must be given their walking papers, or, Obama will be given his by the voters.
Generation X does have its work cut out for it, that much is certain. How the generation responds to the great challenges it faces will largely depend on its honesty, courage, and ability to maintain and positive outlook no matter what.
A spiritual evolution is possible in the next decade. For some, it will be forced, due to circumstances.
Others will be reactionary, looking backwards, resentful and angry about their lots in life. Most of those here are Boomers, who have been in denial about many things - including aging and the passage of time.
Some people will chose to go forward honestly; leaving behind the cynicism and cultural wars of the Baby Boomers while putting in place a new vision that seeks to progress - rather than regress - into the future.
Hopefully, the dark and brooding "angst" that has been quite evident over the past three years will give way to more sunshine as Generation X takes it rightful place as the new establishment.
Okay I'd like to start by saying I really liked your post.Im 16 and I live with my boomer grandparents, along with my mom and sister, my mom was the one who showed me your post. I think its fair to say im the youth you speak of being oppressed by the boomer genertion and I see it in the school systems that im apart of. I also think that my Grandma is a great example of the boomer generation being in power due to her working in the capital. Now i'd like to talk about a few of my own ideas,I understand im young and my ideas havn't fully formed yet but I figured i'd put what I have so far out there. First the issue of arts programs. Im hopping to be either an artist or a musican as a proffession. However I have alot of anxiety about these proffessions due to lack of funding for these programs in school, and the sheer difficalty of suceeding in either proffessions. The next issue i'd like to mention is the war on drugs. The solution to this problem almost seems fictional to me, I've first handly seen the effects of the black market run drug trade. People need to realize drugs are a part of our world if they like it or not, drugs will continuely be used no matter what. So it seems the only way to put an end to the pointless blood shed of the drug war is to put the goverment in charge of it. That way the money goes tourd productive matters and the addicts get clean drugs. Like I said before this idea seems completly fictional. Another issue I see is my generation completly not carrying about any of these things, it may be that im just a little ahead of them and they will start to care as they get older, but what if they don't? Will they continue to roboticly consum like the boomer generation did? Well thats my insight on the matter, and I apologize for any spelling or puncuation errors in advance. I really hope to hear what you think of my ideas.
Thanks Anonymous. At the age of 16 you have a lot to look forward to, and should continue to work towards becoming an artist/musician no matter what the funding looks like in these times.
Nothing can stop you except yourself, and even with the outright cutbacks in arts education in the schools by the last generation, with hard work and commitment to the arts you will be able to go far with your own ideas about how you want your career to progress.
Keep the faith!
Interesting article, although I am not so sure Generation X will be a great improvement over the Boomers. I am from Gen X and I remember plenty of students in high school getting involved in drugs, etc. It's pathetic! You can always tell when an empire is crumbling by how corrupt it's governing body is and how indulgent it's citizens are. I do think Boomers move aside to let younger generations come up with solutions to solve all the problems we face, somehow older generations think that it's acceptable to bankrupt the future of this country because they "paid into the system" and "it's their money". I am truly fed up with with all of America. We've become a nation of entitlement monsters and don't care about the greater good anymore. I think Obama is trying his best but how much can he actually do when it's people are fracturing themselves into extreme viewpoints? A government is only as good as it's people! This country is in desperate need of creative thinkers and problem solvers but employers and the government agencies won't hire them unless you tell them exactly what they want to hear--that everything is fine just the way it is. Any sociopath can do that..Crazy!
Here I’d like to post an example of Boomer projection and hypocrisy that really, really irks me:
News stories of high school administrations finally being fed up and ‘putting out a contract’ on students to stop “freak” dancing at their high school dances. One of the news stories that hit national headlines originated here in Michigan.
Of course, astute comments on the generation gap are made here in a college editorial,
http://wildcat.arizona.edu/opinions/chatter-a-view-from-other-college-editorials-1.1168139
and here on Yahoo Buzz,
http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93394.
As for other schools nationwide, the New York Daily News reports with apt commentary by its staff doctor:
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2010/02/16/2010-02-16_dance_like_grandmas_watching_high_schools_nationwide_crack_down_on_freak_dancing.html
And if you don’t mind, I’d like to expand on the reasons for my extreme annoyance in a subsequent post….
Before I spit nails, I will disclose at the outset that I have not personally seen this type of dance in action (except for on television) and that I myself have two daughters enrolled in a Michigan high school. So for any critics, this means that: 1) I haven’t experienced the “shock” of seeing my own daughters or others her age “freakin” up close and personal; and 2) I have as much skin in the game as school officials, other parents and larger society when it comes to raising and educating “our next generation of leaders,” as someone in one of more than 100 articles put it.
That aside, I must digress for a moment to share that my 16 year old daughter could have died last month when she was in the car with two other high school students that didn’t like it when she asked the driver not to talk on the cell phone or check her text messages while she was driving. Instead, the teenage driver treated my daughter to the most terrifying ride of her life, driving on a 4-lane highway going 85-90 miles an hour, weaving in and out of traffic, and all the while calling my daughter paranoid since it is no big deal and everybody does it.
Thankfully, the driver waited until after she dropped my daughter off at home to get on the freeway, lose control of her vehicle and total it. Incidentally, the tire iron in the trunk punctured through the back seat where my daughter had been sitting only a few moments beforehand.
Around the same time last month, I got the very disappointing news via the media that our State’s senate put off their vote on recent legislation to make texting while driving a primary versus a secondary offense pursuant to a strong initiative by the NHTSA as many other states have done or are in the process of doing. The reason for this? Too many (mainly republican) politicians did not feel comfortable telling people what they can and cannot do in their cars.
So when I hear about the crap these school officials are perseverating over, I want to poison them with Geritol. But no, just because I was born in a Detroit suburb exactly one month after the beginning of the 1967 riots doesn’t mean I have to start one. But what I will say is that if that were my school district, they wouldn’t get a step further without an account of the following:
Why isn’t Brighton High School asking these students to sign a contract that they will not drive intexticated? A couple of high schools in Michigan have—they’ve established pact or promise programs, with one school featuring each student’s painted palm print a wall at the school to seal the deal.
Why is it Brighton High School’s priority to engage Student Government in drafting anti-dirty dancing contracts with the school and not to engage it by encouraging its involvement with state lawmakers as well as to present a more educated, realistic picture of the significant dangers involved with intexticated driving to their own constituents, the student body? The articles about Brighton High School fully amplify the power of peers, evidenced by the teens’ passively cancelling the school dance themselves.
Why does morality over sleaze trump morality over basic safety issues? Because contrary to what you may think of this younger generation, many of these students do have the BASIC INSTINCT to LIVE and would welcome more education and positive peer pressure that works IN THEIR OWN INTERESTS within their school environment.
Ted, I added this example because I think you are 100% right about the Boomers in general and, in particular, because I think this high school principal should stop projecting his dirty, filthy mind and start thinking about what he and the school can do to encourage safe and responsible driving so these kids actually make it to and from their high school dances.
Post a Comment