Okay you’ve been warned.
I just finished reading one of those stereotypical emails contrasting the idyllic 1950’s with the terrible Two-thousands. It was titled: “Schools 1957 vs. 2007” and it gave 8 different scenarios and how they were allegedly handled in 1957 versus how they'd be handled today. Here's one example from the email:
Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.
1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.
I usually get a small burst of sentimental juice out of this kind of thing. But not today.
I’m just getting so tired of the arrogance of my generation: people born between 1945 and 1965, commonly referred to as Baby Boomers.
I was born in 1957 and turned 50 in 2007 so I’ve experienced some of these ‘changes’ that are alluded to in the example above. Notwithstanding, this type of email strkes me as another one of our Baby-Boomerized, Brady Bunched self-serving fantasy island emails contrasting the absolute best case scenario of 1957 vs. the absolute worst case scenario of 2007.
What gets me is how we pass around these emails like some kind of religious relic or cultural fossil from a past era, when boomers roamed the school hallways. We pick up the relic or fossil, turn it over in our hands, calmly adjusting our reading glasses, then sigh and knowingly shake our heads ever so sentimentally and pass it on.
This kind of pig swill is just so predictable and trivial. Is there really ANYBODY left in America that does not know that it was different 50 years ago? I mean everybody 45 and older knows it. And probably any of our kids who grew up with us have had to endure hearing it like a zillion times…so I’m just wondering out loud: Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?
You know it's kind of like when our parents would get out the round trays of faded slides from the top of the hall closet and subject guests to a few hours of our family's history.
"There's Joey at the top of the slide. There he is at the bottom of the slide. Isn't that a cute snowsuit?"
At least our parents served Tom Collins or Old Fashioneds with the pig swill. Now we're just dry and dull.
There’s no doubt that things were simpler and less complicated in 1957 and there’s no doubt that we have become, in our quest to be understanding and tender-hearted, a bunch of whiners sometimes but here’s what I would ask myself if I was a young person today:
“Okay so it was better back then well then how come your generation (Baby Boomers) went and screwed it all up? After all you are, or were, our generation’s principals, teachers, parents, police officers, guidance counselors, doctors, psychologists, etc.”
I think that would be a very fair question. And I wonder how we’d answer it?
Maybe we should start by asking ourselves the question: “How did it get so bad so fast when we intended to do so much good?”
Then we should quickly follow it by: “What can we do before we die to make it better?”
After all we’re supposedly a generation of cause-oriented, individuals seeking the good of the social collective.
Right now I think the most good we can do is de-bunk, de-mystify and de-louse the country from all the pseudo-intellectual, feel-good crap we’ve shoved down the palates of too many unsuspecting ‘you-tes”. It’s time for the “Don’t Mess Around with My Generation” clan to do a little housekeeping and clean up a few of our own messes before we go noisily into that dark night (don’t worry, we never do anything quietly…that’s what the “boomer” really stands for in baby boomer…).
After reading this glorification of the 1957 schoolyards, I was reminded of another type of email in this genre that I receive at times. This other type of email typically contrasts kids from the 1960’s (allegedly us Wonder Bread children) playing outside and riding bikes while today’s overweight kids are at home on the couch playing video games and watching movies (like their parents).
When I read these I think to myself: “Okay, who invented these gadgets? Who buys these things and puts them in the home?”
You know what I mean? Isn’t this more of a condemnation of us, you and me, from either our parents (the over 70 crowd) and/or from our children (the under 40 crowd) about what we’ve screwed up over the past 40 years? We’ve somehow presided over a period in America's history that seemingly turned simple idyllicism into complicated consumerism and then we pass around these unmetered paeons of trivia to each other electronically, lamenting the loss. Sounds a lot like hypocrisy to me.
I say it’s time we baby boomers grow up and face the music: we wanted social justice, diverse inclusivity, freedom from moral restraints and the negation of individual and societal feelings of guilt that use to accompany traditionally bad behaviors and lifestyles and now we’ve accomplished that. And alongside of it another crop has grown up as well: the worst case scenarios of 2007 with which we are all familiar.
Maybe all those “repressed feelings” and “unliberated bondage” of the home, family and work environment weren’t as bad as we obviously thought they were back in the late '60's and early '70s when we were blowing up buildings and burning bras in the same cauldron with common sense and decency. Maybe that’s where the “baby” part of baby boomer comes in: we throw babies out with the bathwater, even if we don’t bathe ourselves.
I sure hope the under 40 crowd finds a better way to deal with their ‘cultural angst’ than we did. As Baby Boomers, we’re allegedly very much ‘in touch’ with the impact that our dealings have had upon the physical environment: trees, waterways, animals, etc. However despite our eagle eye awareness of "mother nature", our generation appears almost blind to the havoc that our social manipulations and ‘creative psychological engineering’ have caused in the day to day lives of ordinary Americans.
Where did the worst case scenarios of 2007 come from?
But of course, it’s greedy capitalists in big corporations (except ones in Boulder and certain parts of California) who caused this or, let’s see, maybe it’s the uptight, judgmental right-wing religious nuts or those uncaring Republicans or it could be global warming, well probably not…but it’s somebody’s fault darn it…it can’t be ours because we’re the young (in heart), groovy, hip, socially conscious, love the world, imagine there’s no heaven, blow up all your guns and bombs, BABY BOOMER generation.
We’re the greatest generation that never lived up to it’s potential but we’re still willing to hug you, your trees and your atheist neighbor because if we could all just get one more summer of love, share our dreams and our wallets together in a kind of daisy chain of humanity than we could maybe love bomb our enemies into community by throwing out our aura into the global mentality while acting locally to encourage free expressions that run counter to the intuition of thousands of years of culture, religion and experience. Our way of thinking about the world just HAS to be right because we believe we can change the universe if we’ll just concentrate hard enough, rub our Birkenstocks together and repeat the mantra “There’s no right or wrong…if it feels good, just do your own thing”.
Come on people now, smile with me, hold my hand and sing “Nothing’s going to change my world”…Pay no attention to that terrorist cell in the small town or that radical mosque that’s asking for Sharia law outside of the constitution…Just concentrate people, if you can’t see your navel anymore use any part of your body, feel your skin, be here with me now…ready, sing it out: “Nothing’s going to change my world”…
That's it, really concentrate on it, feel it and the universe will bring it to your door without you having to lift a finger or, God forbid, sacrifice a career or defer a desire…get out the spf 50, there’ll be no raisins in the sun as long as our generation rains...I suggest in the meantime that you buy an umbrella unless you're an Ostrich, in which case you've already got your head covered...in sand...
People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Why don't you all f-fade away (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Why don't you all f-fade away (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
And don't try to dig what we all s-s-say (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
The Who - My Generation (1965)
@ 2008 Joseph Ricciardi Jr
