Boomer or Bust?

A friend of mine asked me to say a few words in defense of the demographic known as the Baby Boomers.  Apparently, there are those who think that Boomers in general are moribund, greedy, selfish and inconsiderate, and are burning up the last of our non-renewable resources before anybody else gets a chance.  Well, here goes.

With the passing of the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers are left holding the bag.  And I suppose it's natural for younger people to blame them for all that's wrong with the world, because there's nobody else left to blame, at least not so's you could yell at them without getting locked up for hallucinating or something.  (Boomers might remember how everyone looked askance at Nixon for wandering through the halls of the White House with a cocktail in his hand, arguing with the portraits of past Presidents.  But if you're younger, you'll just say, "Huh?")  Anyway, the buck has got to stop somewhere, and now it's stopping in Boomerville. 

Gen X, Gen Y, Millennials... everybody born since the very early 1960's has struggled to carve out an identity for themselves distinct from that of their Boomer parents (and more and more and more their Boomer grandparents now.)  And, as with the Boomers themselves, and all past generations of which I have any knowledge, the succeeding generations are sure that their parents/grandparents are idiots.  These days, a lot is being written about how the poor young people have a legitimate point.  After all, the world is a mess, and it's projected that the children of the Boomers will be the first generation in modern American history to have a shorter life expectancy and a bleaker economic outlook than their parents did.  And if you're 30 years old and still living at home because you can't find a job and have a six-figure student loan debt that will never go away, you've got to think that there's something wrong with the system, it's not just you.

On the other hand, the answers to life's mysteries are not likely to be found by staring into an ipad, even though frantically poking and swiping at the screen does make you look busy. (By the way, cutting and pasting from the Internet is only "research" if you actually read the stuff and know something about the source (and it's not "creative writing" at all.)  And "staying connected" in 40 different ways with everybody you know or ever heard of is only worthwhile if there's a legitimate reason for it, like trying to line up what used to be called a "date," or planning a revolution, or (ahem) looking for a  non-existent job or something.  It is possible to be very "busy" all the time, without actually doing anything, you know.  And how many cat videos and recipes and "likes" can you fling into cyberspace without starting to waste your time?

See, a lot of this is the fault of the Boomers.  They developed the technology that has obsessed and enthralled everybody... and, coincidentally, has eliminated many of the jobs that the later generations may have been counting on to be working at when they grew up.  They also failed to kick their kids off the couch and out of the house.

The later generations, of course, are great at creating "apps" to give them new ways and reasons to stare at computer (or ipad or phone or "phablet") screens so that everybody will have something to do while sitting on the couch waiting for that job.  Because people are so much more "efficient" now, and machines are so much more versatile, there really isn't a lot for non-creative people to do, other than fool with their apps and stay connected  to everybody else who's doing the same thing.  What is Facebook except one giant streetcorner where everybody you know hangs out when there's nothing better to do?  Which is a lot of the time, apparently.

Some people have been noticing lately that it doesn't necessarily make economic sense for everybody to go into debt to obtain a college degree.  Of course, there are more (and better) reasons than economic ones for a person to get an education.  However, to hear the politicians talk about it, every kid in America should go to a four-year university and study exclusively math and science, because that way we'll be able to compete with the Chinese.  This is all B.S., of course.  The Chinese have their own problems, foremost among which being the fact that there are so many Chinese.  And whatever our own politicians tell us, all you have to do to figure out who's winning the "competition" is to compare the numbers of Chinese who are coming here to have "anchor babies" with the numbers of Americans going there to do likewise.  Besides, if you're going to college to acquire "job skills," you're really going to trade school, and that's getting "trained," not being "educated."

The post-Boomer generations have high self-esteem, which is good in some situations but not in the abstract.  Serial killers have high self-esteem.  Napoleon and Hitler had high self-esteem.  But, you say, Mommy and Daddy Boomer told these younger people that they're wonderful, and why should Mommy and Daddy lie?  Well, the harsh truth is that not everybody is a creative genius.  Of all those tens and tens of millions of bright young people out there, there may or may not be even one new Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg.  Another harsh truth is that not only has technology has taken us to a place where there is little for non-creative, poorly educated people to "do,"  there is less and less incentive to pay them a living wage to do it.  And the third harsh truth is that it's up to the younger folk to find their own way off the couch and out into the world, because Mom and Dad don't have an answer for their dilemma, and will probably soon be in dire economic straits themselves if they aren't already.

Their expectations frustrated, the kids on the couch have to lash out at somebody, so it's naturally the Boomers they blame for their sorry estate.  They are frustrated, understandably enough, by their failure to get anywhere, and assume that it's because the Boomers won't get out of the way.  What they fail to understand is that Boomers are in the same boat, job-wise, as they are.  When Boomers are "downsized" or retired, it is unlikely that many of them will ever be going back to work, and the vacancies created by their departure won't necessarily be filled from the ranks of the underemployed youth of America, either. 

As for the sorry state of the world, it might be wise to remember that the environment has been rapidly deteriorating, and the population dramatically increasing, ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age.  By the time the Boomers came on the scene, the environment was already polluted, and there were already too many people.  Although merely by being alive the Boomers have since made their own contribution to the mess, they also either originated or gave impetus to the environmental movement, the expansion of civil rights, the Cultural Revolution, the Sexual Revolution (whoo hoo! no-- think "contraception" and women's rights in this context), the ethical treatment of animals, the peace movement, the natural/organic/local food movement, the homeopathic/alternative medicine markets, renewable energy, nuclear disarmament and let's not forget Casual Fridays (or even jeans at the office all the time) in case you do happen to have a job.  All this stuff is with us today because of things that happened in the 60's and 70's, which you whippersnappers would know if you'd studied history in school.  The Boomers have at least tried to change things, and in the "real" world, too, not just Second Life.

Oh, and by the way, Led Zeppelin is a Boomer band.  Come on, youth of  America, cut the Boomers some slack, and don't spill anything while you're hanging out on the couch!  Oh, and you might think about starting on working out some solutions to all these problems, next time you take a break from whatever it is you're "doing." The baton will be passed again soon enough, even if Mom and Dad do wind up having to delay-- or even forego-- their retirement.