Tag: Baby Boomers

Deboomering the Slow Way

The day will come when the Boomer will cry out and beg for The Day of the Pillow:

Like the protagonist in his taboo novel, former doctor-turned-author Yo Kusakabe believes chopping off elderly patients’ useless limbs could help prevent a potential collapse of super-aging Japan’s overstressed care industry. Now his extraordinary ideas are on display on the big screen, with the book’s film adaptation attracting huge controversy since its release last month in Japan.

But “Haiyoshin (Useless Body)” — which sees a young doctor advocate for “A-care (Amputation Care)” — has also focused attention on the struggling care sector in a country with the world’s second-oldest population.

Kusakabe, a former geriatric specialist from Osaka, explained to AFP the thinking behind his shocking proposition, saying removing paralyzed limbs would make patients lighter and “reduce the burden on caregivers” in case the care industry reaches crisis point. He sees it as a potential game changer, provided patients in the real world give consent. He argues that patients’ immobile arms and legs are nothing but an impediment to caregiving: they dangle like dumbbells, get stuck in pajamas and require more bathing.

“If you cut them off, a female carer would have less difficulty lifting a hefty male patient or suffer less back pain,” the 70-year-old said.

And people wonder why I adore Japanese culture. It’s the perfect, logical solution to deal with Boomers who refuse to move on with the natural order of things. Whatever infinitesimal fragment of concern Ie ever had for them vanished the moment that the first child was vaccinated against Covid in order to “protect their grandparents”.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Opposite of Boomer

A younger SGer confuses two very, very different attitudes:

I’m trying to think of the Gen-X equivalent of the boomer greed. The “I’ve got mine” mentality but with a different target object. I’ve come up with “selfish insularity.” This is in response to an X post I saw where a Gen-Xer was almost mocking the kids from his youth who didn’t make it. Similar to boomer mentality except instead of money it was life, success, a general pride of having “made it” whatever made it means. It feels very similar to the “I pulled myself up my bootstraps” line from boomers except it “I ran the gauntlet myself”.

I strongly suspect he was failing to grasp the gallows humor of my generation. And I don’t think a generation that genuinely worries about things like climate change and gender identification can understand the GenX perspective or how none of us ever expected to get old. Why do you think we didn’t protest the elimination of pensions just when we were getting jobs, or worry about Social Security going bankrupt? We never expected to see them. After all, we were told we were liable to die in nuclear fire at any given moment from a very young age, alone in a house without our parents.

And then, just as we reached adulthood, we were informed that AIDS was going to infect and kill us all.

Yes, these were lies. Yes, we eventually saw through them. But they left a formative collective mark.

None of us believe in global warming because we all remember the coming global ice age, which didn’t scare anyone because we didn’t expect to survive that long. We’re as concerned about global warming as we are about acid rain, another one of our childhood psyops. Frankly, we’re still a lot more frightened of quicksand than just about anything else.

None of this is to say that our apathy, indifference, and collective inability to worry about long-term changes are good. They are not. They are weaknesses and vulnerabilities that have been exploited, especially on the immigration front. But I think that if you speak seriously with a GenXer about the challenges facing young people today, you’ll realize that we are not unsympathetic to the real challenges they face, we’re just not at all impressed by the retarded ones.

As one female comedian said, once you watch a teacher blow up and die on the television wheeled into your classroom as a kid, and the reaction of your own teacher is to shrug and give you a math quiz because the whole thing didn’t take as long as scheduled, your personal tolerance for trauma tends to be on the high side.

It’s not that we lack sympathy, we just don’t have a penchant for complaining about things we can’t do anything about, and we aren’t interested in listening to anyone else’s whining either. Things are what they are, so focus on what you can affect and don’t dwell on what you can’t. The idea of wallowing in things, or trying to solve them by talking about them, or expecting sympathy from anyone is essentially foreign to us.

I suspect that we don’t like to talk about how we feel about things because in our childhood experience, trying to talk to an adult about our feelings reliably ended by listening to a Boomer pontificating at length about their feelings. Believe it or not, it’s still that way for a lot of us to this day.

I’m not defending the GenX perspective, I’m just attempting to explain it.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Demolition of Disclosure Day

TL;DR: The Boomer’s last boom.

It has been a long time since I walked into a theater and been the youngest guy in it.

Seriously my dude, this bleeding edge Gen-Xer with the bionic eyes and knees was the youngest person in a genuinely full (if not packed) theater. Baby Boomers who hadn’t been in theaters for years showed up in droves for this one. You could tell they hadn’t been near a theater in decades. They were appalled by the ticket prices, a few talked about waiting for it to be in the Dollar Theaters, clearly unaware that those died out with Blockbuster Video. One asked for the smallest popcorn available, which was about the size of a medium soft drink, the irritated retiree said for that price he may as well get the large, which was the entire point since a large popcorn costs as much for them to make as a small.

Once they got over the sticker shock the theater geezers sat down for a movie that they truly enjoyed. They absolutely loved every bit of it. They thought that their favorite director had finally made another movie just for them.

He. Did. Not.

The only person this film was made for is Steven Spielberg… This script that was worked on for years by Steven Spielberg and his long time writing partner David Koepp, isn’t telling a story at all. It’s just setting up an unending series of money-shots. Because at the end of the day that is all the Disclosure Day is script that sets up scenes without a story to tell. It is an unending stream of empty if passionate emotionality. The cinematic equivalent of a drunk at a bar who is convinced that his alcohol soaked peroration is the most profound thing the human race has ever experienced.

I wish I was exaggerating.

I’m not.

The movie is presenting emotionally laden images with some dialog that thinks it’s far more profound than it’s remotely capable of being.

“Empathy is the highest state of existence”. It’s a major theme of this movie and probably the most Boomer sentiment to ever Boomer. A belief that is a tribute to its own semantic emptiness.

I have to admit, I would find it very, very funny if Clown World was actually counting on this as the foundation of their fake alien invasion plan.

We’ve prepped them to believe anything now!

DISCUSS AT ARKHAVEN

Frozen in Time

A tale of one Boomer’s struggle to grasp the concept of the passage of time:

My father mentioned ordering a pair of blue jeans from Jet Jeans or some such. Some inescapable booming ensued.

He knowingly ordered cheap jeans from a website. How he learned of it, I don’t know. Anyway…

He gets the jeans in the size he ordered. Measurements are wrong in each dimension.

He calls the company, to see about returning. He’s given three options, none of which are what he is expecting, because his expectations were set 50 years ago.

An honorable company would…

Dad, you’re applying a thought process that has not been in play for some time. Don’t buy cheap crap from randos on the internet.

He cannot adjust to the present Nothing Works Anymore reality. Even when he knows better, high-trust is the default setting.

And this is why you will never convince them that being invaded by foreigners is a bad thing. They literally cannot conceive of anything outside of their 1950s reality.

But it’s also a lesson for we Gen Xers to not allow ourselves to get locked into our 80s assumptions. Although, to be honest, I’m not even sure what those would be. I mean, the world appears to be even more screwed than we thought it was when we were busy surviving nuclear destruction at the hands of the Soviets, followed by acid rain, an ice age, running out of fossil fuels, only to face the cruel onset of rap.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Lost America

From a discussion at SG about Boomers and their destruction of the American way of life.

It’s hard for the younger generation to even conceive of what the generations that preceded the Boomers were like. I am speaking of the USA. Let me try to give you a taste. They loved their families, they were a cohesive civilized team, willing to put significant skin in the game to make things better. They wanted their kids to do better than they did. It was a common motto. They did try to actively curb the worst tendencies of the Boomers until they died off. You can see this in the cultural decline acceleration around 2005.

Any adult anywhere, as a member of the societal team, could and would correct me or any child when badly behaved. If you accidentally dented someone’s car you left a note, as examples. High trust, universally known unwritten rules. Everyone knew the shared history and traditions. It felt like One Great Extended Family rowing the boat together. As Gen z (and the younger generations) you very likely have not even know the experience of your own family as a team, from which experience you might imagine what a unified and cohesive broader society was. Gen X got to experience the discontinuity with in their own families, in most cases, and within society. It was a sudden mass plunge for many. Working Moms, latch key neglect, mass divorce, single parenthood, abortion. We had an apples and oranges comparison that was not subtile. Gen X suffers the grief of having lost something phenomenal that we were unable to stop and are unable to reverse.

What broke can not be fixed but maybe something that rhymes can be rebuilt. To try to do that, the Boomers need to be out of the way and the younger generations need to know what can be from what was.

The preceding generations did a lot of good, and you can be sure that their hearts and minds were in the right place even when they were spectacularly wrong. This you can easily forgive. They were human. They did their best. You loved them and they loved you.

If you want to get a taste of what it was like, look at the old cover art by Norman Rockwell, watch the old Captain America, Casablanca, anything by Frank Capra, anything with John Wayne. Look at the old Bugs Bunny cartoons and know that Bugs was the average American, modeled after Clark Gable, particularly in “It happened one night”. And we did NOT think of ourselves as a “nation of immigrants”. We were NOT full of rootless recents that only have this slogan as some common touch point. We were Americans, with both national and ingrained, globally dominant culture. Before USA USA was a “MAGA chant” it was just normal. Blue jeans were American and were like dollars. You could trade them anywhere in the world for almost anything. We also had regional dress, dialects and traditions because people were here in one place long enough for that stuff to be there. Assimilation in most places meant you weren’t “us” until the third generation, where the second married a townie and had kids. The kids were us. We didn’t think about anywhere else besides the the US much, if at all, but we did have some decorations modeled on the 17th century we used for Thanks Giving that included Indians as we knew them going back over 500 years, and I don’t mean the hyphenated come lately people named by the East India Company. It’s baloney to say we didn’t have a culture. We had a culture and national identity that was so globally dominant, so coveted that the dress and speech of the entire globe has been impacted to reflect

DISCUSS ON SG

Not Our Crisis

An aging Baby Boomer explains that his generation is going to end everything on their way out, not because they intend to do so, but because they still don’t understand that they destroyed everything that made Western societies function:

Giesea has a 73-year-old friend, Steve (my age), and describes how this gives him “a window into the caregiving tsunami hitting society as boomers age into their 70s and 80s. Here’s what I’m realizing: it’s going to wreck our politics. We are not prepared — emotionally, politically, financially — for what it means to care for tens of millions of aging boomers while also trying to invest in the future for our children.”

What has to be done, right now, is prepare for the inevitable, the serious ageing of the baby boom generation They are not there yet, and do not really think about the problem much, because they do not actually believe that it is going to happen to them; a recent study shows that almost everyone thinks they are 20 percent younger than they really are. Getting old doesn’t happen until it happens, and these days, for most people who are not in dire poverty, that happens in their late seventies and into the eighties. That doesn’t start for a couple of years and doesn’t really explode for another ten.

So what will really happen?

Baby boomers today are what gerontologists are now calling the “young-old”, and which others call the “new middle age”. 75 percent of baby boomers live in nice houses in nice suburbs, drive private cars to work or play, don’t much like paying taxes, and think that they can keep living this way forever.

They can’t. In about 2026, the first baby boomers will hit 80, when they become the “old-old.” They then are joined by 10,000 other boomers every day, until by 2029 the entire baby boomer cohort is over 65 and compose a whopping 20 percent of the population, with well over half being old-old.

The Canadian demographer David Foot wrote that “demographics can explain two-thirds of everything.” That may have been an underestimation. If you look a decade down the road, what you have are pretty close to still 70 million baby boomers, most of whom are going to keep going for another twenty years, going through the “great boomer die-off,” which runs pretty much to 2050. In the meantime, we have a series of related crises, any one of which would be a serious problem.

Nothing is going to be done. And nothing needs to be done. Generation X doesn’t care about the Baby Boomers. I won’t speak for the other generations, but they appear to hate them even more than we do. And the immigrants certainly could not care less about the Baby Boomers.

So, the answer is: no problem, no crisis. No one is going to care for all those old-old Baby Boomers. They didn’t care about anything except themselves, and now no one cares about them. The world will continue to rotate. The sun will continue to shine. The otters will continue to play. It’s all good.

What’s going to happen? They’re going to die. Just like every previous generation before them. They’re going to die a little later, and a lot more alone, than their predecessors, but they’re going to die.

Problem solved.

What a damnable example of a Boomer. From his own comments:

Besides “bitching about how hard it is for the younger generation” about what is so hard for them — ae they actually doing anything about their specific situation – that they got themselves into?

I’ll say again — the World doesn’t owe anyone anything.

The World we all live in does not work on “wishes” or “bitching about something”

You have to just shut off the cell-phone or game-boy, get off your lazy ass, make yourself presentable and acceptable to the world as it is , not the way you want it to be — and “just do it.”

Exactly. So wipe your own ass, Boomer. Feed yourself and drive yourself, Boomer. We’re not going to do it and we’re not going to pay for anyone else to do it either. This is the world you demanded. This is the world you collectively created and the situation that you got yourselves into.

DISCUSS ON SG

It is Good to Hate the Boomer

So, we’ve finally reached the first Boomer cartoon in the Hypergamouse series on Sigma Game. In less than FIVE MINUTES from the new post going live:

Boomers were generations in the making. You have the wrong target and your hatred will get you to a place you don’t want to be.

The Boomers simply never grew up. They’re entering their 80s now and they still can’t take any responsibility for their own collective actions across more than sixty years of putative adulthood. Our hatred is not at all misplaced; God himself hates the wicked. Moreover, He appears to harbor particular hate for wicked generations who don’t care for, or about, the succeeding generations.

The Boomers collectively denied the faith and are worse than infidels. So it should not be a surprise that the judgment of the younger generations is falling so hard on them. Or that, by and large, they remain wholly unrepentant.

But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. – 1 Timothy 5:8

DISCUSS ON SG

Disavow the Boomer

Bill Mitchell, the Platonic ideal of the Boomer pseudo-intellectual, endorses the jeetification of the USA:

Remember the last time MAGA lost it’s mind over H1-B’s? What did that achieve? Nothing. It weakened us. The left is more than happy to sit by and watch us shoot ourselves in the foot….

The younger generations couldn’t care less about “the left” or the false dichotomy of Left and Right as presented by the mainstream media.

We must reclaim America from the Boomers who have sold our country to the highest bidders and relish in our generation’s poverty. Their opinion is no longer relevant. They lived an easy life and have failed to position their grandchildren to do the same. Reject gerontocracy.

Indeed. There is nothing to be learned from elders who are foolish, narcissistic, and societally destructive. Disavow the Boomer mentality. Reject the Boomer mindset.

DISCUSS ON SG

Rage Against the Mortality

One of the Dread Ilk observe that there appears to be an increase in the level of Boomer Rage of late:

I have noticed that the liberal boomers have been especially shrill the past 9-10 months. It seems weekly for some, for others almost daily. They have to post on social media their 2 minute hate against Donald J. Trump, Jr to notify everyone they are still pure.

There is an inversion of their beliefs. 50-60 years ago, they did not trust the Federal government. Now, they scoff at terms like “deep state” and rush to defend the bloated behemoth reminiscent of Orwell’s Big Brother. Deep down, they are totalitarians.

Multiple times I have seen them post that if you voted for DJT or support his policies, you can walk away right now. I don’t remember it being this extreme in 2017.

Maybe it is encroaching mortality making them screech more. I have a gut feeling all the hippie/Age of Aquarius nonsense they believe in and attempt to foist on Western Civilization is crumbling under noticing that it is not a small world after all and we are not all the same. Maybe they realize after decades that humans are not a blank slate.

It is both entertaining and tiresome. I just have to remind myself they are flailing knowing their worldview if going down and taking some pleasure. It is hard not to post a meme mocking them in the comments.

A lot of this is also aging Gamma rage. How long can they keep this up? This can’t be emotionally healthy as their rage eats away at their sanity. I guess we will find out in time.

I think it is mostly the unanticipated discovery of their increasing irrelevance to events and the indifference of the younger generations to their opinions that bothers them most. It was one thing to be young, the center of attention, and have everyone telling you that you were going to change the world, it is something else altogether to be old, of interest to no one, and have everyone telling you that you changed the world for the worse.

In far too many cases, they no longer even have the ability to be relevant to the younger generations due to their lack of any inheritance; the grasshopper generation has not only eaten the seed corn, a disproportionate number will leave behind nothing more than debts that no one will ever pay.

The correct way to dealing with angry Boomers is to let them blow off steam without sharing your opinion of them or whatever the subject of their venting happens to be. Because they’re not going to change now, so the only thing you can control is your own reactions to their lamentations, monologues, and chronicle of their physical infirmities.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Boomers’ Last Boom

I find it tremendously amusing and absolutely satisfying to watch how the Boomers are struggling to grasp that the world is going to continue on without them. The new Stephen King movie, The Life of Chuck, may well serve as the last will and testament of that most wicked generation.

If there’s a useful rough division of King’s stories, it’s between the ones that describe a world of horrors on one hand, and the ones that consider what to do about being in a world of horrors on the other. This isn’t a clean distinction, certainly, nor does it map cleanly to downbeat versus upbeat — sometimes the straight-up horrors are told with dark humor, as in “Survivor Type,” a gnarly little short story about a doctor who gets marooned on a desert island and starts eating himself. A King story usually has an element of warning. This could happen to you, says Stephen King, as the doctor eats his foot, or as a finger comes up out of a bathroom drain, or as a haunted car or a pandemic or a vampire or a rabid dog appears. This could happen to you.

But many of his stories have a paradox at their cores. He believes in menace and evil, and in the brutality of a world that kills kids, and helpless people, and good people. He is not a horror writer who punishes the foolish above others.

At the same time, he writes with a deeply humane central thesis, which is that in light of all those monsters, you are blessed to have in your life at least your own resilience and the company of other people. The Stand is not really about the flu, after all; it is about creating a new community and choosing to make sacrifices for it. It is only superficially about the clown. Really, it’s about fear and trauma, and especially about strength in numbers. These are what you might call the “What now?” stories: You know the world is full of pain … what now? The worst has happened … what now? You are fully aware of your own mortality … what now?

An SGer posed the question: Can you guess the “shocking” twist from boomer Stephen King’s latest movie adaptation ? Possibly the most boomer sentiment ever.

That’s a pretty obvious hint. My guess: The world ends with Chuck.

And, of course, I was correct, as I confirmed when I asked Deepseek about the theme of King’s novella.

  • Life as a Universe: Chuck’s existence literally sustains the world; when he dies, reality dies with him.
  • Death’s Inevitability: The reverse structure mirrors how life is understood only in hindsight.
  • Legacy: The billboards (“Thank You, Chuck”) suggest even ordinary lives have cosmic significance.

King blends horror, fantasy, and melancholy in this existential fable, leaving much open to interpretation. The story’s emotional core lies in Chuck’s quiet acceptance of his role—both as a man and as the “engine” of a fleeting world.

Quelle surprise. It’s not an “existential fable”, it’s a quintessential Boomer fable. I genuinely wonder who was more shocked that Jesus Christ didn’t return during their lifetime, the apostles or the average Christian Boomer? I’ve never forgotten the declaration of a female Boomer who admitted that she didn’t know when Jesus would return amidst fire and sword, but was certain it would be during her lifetime.

O say do those fading old Boomers still boom,
As their sunset descends in the fullness of doom?

Isn’t it fascinating to observe that regardless of what their religion or their beliefs happen to be, so many Boomers tend to believe exactly the same thing about reality ending with them?

DISCUSS ON SG