Tag: Baby Boomers

Mailvox: in defense of Baby Boomers

Chris has some thoughts on just how responsible the Boomers are for the present state of the USA:

Having long ago contended with the fallacy of conspiracy theories, I formulated more of a humanity based explanation for human societal and cultural phenomenon.  Therefore, I would like to put forth a few ideas to defend boomers from the blame you seem to assign them for current problems and the general direction of decline in western society. I think the generalization of blaming boomers is a mistake.

The point here is not to defend boomers per se, but to consider the causes of generational uniqueness as external to any generation or group.  After all, humanity hasn’t changed fundamentally.  Boomers weren’t different as a species from the generations a few before, nor a few after.  The conditions of the world have been changing dramatically (while humanity has not), and humanity’s circumstances therefore are the more likely key ingredients for the path we are on. 

I’m not saying bad decisions were not made by boomers, but what conditions accommodated those decisions, and allowed a series of degenerate shifts in society at all levels, without consequence to their near term survival?

My answer is prosperity.  Without proper governance (which humanity seems incapable of), prosperity sows the seeds of its own destruction.  This is not without historical precedence.  Study prosperous societies (for example: Roman, or Greek), and how they end.  Why don’t they last?  Human nature under prosperous conditions is destructive, and the prosperity creates an environment where the feedback for stupid decisions is blunted if not eliminated.  The feedback in prosperity is certainly not consequential to survival. 

After all, why do you think “feelings” have been elevated to such a level of reverence in our society?  Survival is no longer a factor, so the focus of the survival instinct has shifted to “feelings.”  Before prosperity, anyone with a propensity to focus on feelings had a survival disadvantage.  Now, they don’t.  The personality characteristics that come with focusing on ones feelings are clearly destructive in many ways. 

The advantages of principled decisions and common sense are reduced in proportion to prosperity, the proportion of the population without proper mooring to reality rises.  Worse yet, they thrive.  SJW are the realization of the fulfillment of this populations’ “self-actualizations.”  It wouldn’t be possible without prosperity.  They wouldn’t be tolerated or even given attention if survival were an issue, and their own survival would be threatened by their own propensities. 

The human (and Christian) trait of empathy works best under conditions where survival is threatened.  For those whose empathy is not tempered by rational principles and larger historically informed context, poor decisions are common: for example supporting illegal immigration. 

In the end, the proportion of the population with destructive characteristics rises.  Their power also rises because there is no survival threat for their psychological self-absorption or other anti-survival characteristics.  It is the diversity of humanity, in the presence of prosperity, which allows devolving of key elements of a prosperous society, because the worst characteristics can thrive. 

There are plenty of boomers who didn’t (and don’t) agree with the path taken.  A huge number didn’t just lie down and let it happen, but it happened anyway.  There was a dramatic rapid shift in society.  The rules changed wickedly fast with only subtle evidence at first.

The shift to the current state was rapid, and hard to believe in real time.  Things that seemed ridiculous, nonsensical, even impossible, occurred, and then became mainstream so rapidly many were blindsided.  The ones who saw it coming were actually considered kooks.  “How could that ever happen?”  “You are nuts.”  There was no reward for having warned of the future.

Boomers grew up when survival was still at the forefront of people’s minds, just one generation removed from the great depression.  They didn’t recognize there would be no negative consequences for all the irrational foolishness and abandoning of common sense.  And when there were no consequences, the bar was moved, and those trying to hold the line were marginalized.  This is still happening today. 

Those of us who saw it coming, and thought we were working against the wave, didn’t realize it was a tsunami.  And could only be stopped, can only be stopped ever, by a larger counter-tsunami.  Otherwise, maybe the flood comes, and we start over with natural selection in survival mode.  Humanity seems to self-select best when survival required good choices.

I think it is reasonable to say that the Boomers didn’t grasp the consequences of their actions and their ideology in their youth. And perhaps that is even moderately excusable. But what I, and other Generation Xers find so unforgivable, is the way that so many Boomers still attempt to justify their actions, defend their ideology, and deny the consequences observed.

The penitent can be forgiven. But how can one forgive the unrepentant?

The magic of generational division

Hawaiian Libertarian has an intriguing spin on the subject:

Prior to the advent of mass mind control enabled by mass media technology, there was no real substantial differences between generations…at least not the sort that so thoroughly and contentiously divided us for the past century. Culture was far more static and slow changing, and influenced much more by religion and cultural traditions and norms.

But the advent of the tell-a-vision, radio broadcasting, the consolidation of print media and the popular music industry all gave those with the same agenda of societal control as the Pharisees of old, the means to “Speak” to the mass audience so as to create such artificially imposed divisions as “generations.” THEY told each different generation that the older generations were “uncool” and “old-fashioned.” With mass media and commercial consumerism, THEY were able to institute a continuous, dynamic change in music, dance, fashion, clothing, hairstyles, slang and lingo, and ultimately an ethos and moral code for each generation of youth entering their young adult years, so that THEY successfully severed the connections between generations to divide and conquer we the sheeple.

Just for one example of this, we need only look at the differences in marriage and family between the different generations. Our Grandparents were for the most part the last generation that followed the patterns of multiple generations that preceded them. They mostly dated, got married, had sex, then had children. Our parents dated, got married, had sex, had children, got divorced, dated, re-married, had more kids and often got divorced again. We (GenX) dated, had sex, had children, then got married, then divorced, then remarried. The younger generation don’t date, they hook up and have sex with a multitude of partners (or they’re incel and resort to teh Pr0n, or gay or transgendered or whatevers). Marriage is mostly out of the question, whether they have kids, use birth control, or have abortions or not.

The common cultural ethos and paradigm that drove the changes in mating patterns and family formation (and disintegration) trends are all different for each generation, and it was this artificially created division causing each successive generation to reject the former generations morality that lead to this cultural devolution and attitudes towards family over the span of a few decades.

Mating patterns are an important element in determining culture, so it should come as little surprise that altering the mating patterns would tend to exacerbate the cultural differences between the generations.

It also might help explain the way in which Boomers are totally unable to understand GenX and the succeeding generations as well as the contempt in which Boomers are held by GenX; the Boomers simply don’t perceive that anything structural has changed.

They tend to think of “change” as something that an individual does within the context of a permanent infrastructure. GenX, on the other hand, sees that there is no permanence to the infrastructure, and that the infrastructure is not only transforming, but is imposing its changes on the individual.

The Millennial doesn’t even see the cultural infrastructure, and thereby doesn’t understand either the Boomer perspective or the GenX fury at the order and infrastructure they have lost.

Mailvox: WTF Vox?

There is literally nothing is more important to the average Baby Boomer than the idea that his generation is the coolest, wonderfulest, and most envied by other, lesser generations. This exchange with TS not only made me laugh, it serves rather nicely to demonstrate everything GenX has observed about the Boomers:

WTF Vox? What’s with all the Boomer bashing? Have you hit a wall or something? Bashing us isn’t going to remove the logjam in your crusade or your intestines.

Can you afford to alienate any percentage of your supporters? I’ve been a SF fan since long before you were born. The Hippies’ main tactic was to bash the greatest generation America ever produced so you are in excellent company.  ::roll eyes::

Also, if you’re going to bash boomers and actually be effective, you may want a spokesman who is NOT referred to in Wiki as:  “the Godfather of hipsterdom”[5] and one of the “primary architects of hipsterdom”.[6]” Most Boomers think Hipsters are people with no little to no purpose.

My response: Obviously you haven’t been on VP very long. Do a search for “Boomer”
on VP. You’ll see that I have always had contempt for that
generation, taken as a whole. They are the locust generation.

TS replied with all the wisdom and restraint that has caused so many GenXers to develop such deep respect for the Baby Boomers:

Sayonara motherfucker.

Adieu, sweet prince. I shall comfort myself with the knowledge that we will not only bury the Baby Boomers, we will write their history. What I find so amusing about this is that insufficient respect for his generation is, in TS’s Boomer eyes, a legitimate reason to write off someone he claims to have supported.

And yes, I can afford to alienate 100 percent of such “supporters”. That’s not exactly the sort of fortitude upon which one ideally wants to rely.

But wait, there’s more!

No wait, I thought of a better comeback! Hating boomers makes you an SJW too.

 And to think they thought they were cool. (shakes head)

Confessions of a Baby Boomer

Steve Sailer admits to possessing the conventional bulletproof Baby Boomer delusion bubble:

When I was young, music was seen as a zero sum warfare, a blitzkrieg to take social validation away from older people. When it comes to music, my Baby Boomer ego is generationally bulletproof. My generation having won a massive victory, I, like many Baby Boomers, am convinced that all forms of music were already existent by, say, my 23rd birthday, or are merely trivial extensions or recombinations. Flipping through the radio dial, I never have the feeling “Wow, I’m really old.” Instead, it’s like, “Oh, sure that new style the kids like these days … it’s just a combination of Killing Joke and Seals & Croft, with a little Chic guitar and Curtis Mayfield falsetto. Been there, done that.”

Don’t try to persuade me otherwise with your “facts” and “logic.” I am a Baby Boomer, so my ego is the final authority on all questions involving pop music.

I imagine that this imperturbable complacency among us Baby Boomers that our musical tastes are the be all and end all of youthfulness is discouraging to younger generations, making them feel old before their time. As Camille Paglia would probably say, we Baby Boomers are the vampiric Dorian Grays of culture, siphoning youthfulness from everybody else.

The amusing thing about this is the way that the Boomers actually believe they are more youthful than the people who are two and three generations younger than they are. Guys, you’re old, you’re over it, and you’re going to die soon.

Isn’t it time to grow up and get over yourselves already?

I always find the vast gulf between what the Boomers think later generations think of them and what everyone else actually thinks of them to be hilarious. Which, of course, is why Boomers get so upset on the rare occasion that they stop contemplating their collective navels long enough to find out.

Their “imperturbable complacency” isn’t discouraging in the least. It just makes us look considerably more favorably upon euthanasia than we otherwise might.

Baby Boomers graduated from high school!

Fifty years ago! And they wonder why Generation X can’t wait to euthanize them all:

Fiftieth reunions are not new, of course. They’ve been celebrated for
decades — by small numbers at first, and larger numbers as more people
lived long enough to put a party together. But this year, there is one
difference: The Class of 1964 is the first graduating class of the
post-World War II baby boom and the leading edge of the generation
retreating — however reluctantly — from the center stage to the backlot
of retirement.

Well, if that’s not a news item, I don’t know what is. I mean, no one has ever had a 50th high school reunion that involved Baby Boomers before! But I’m sure we can all come together in celebrating the fact that this landmark means the Baby Boomers are one step closer to all of us never having to hear about their idiot generation again.

Don’t be bitter, Boomers. We just hoped you’d die before you got old too.

Mailvox: somehow, I doubt it

One of the Baby Boomers who was defending her generational cohort emailed me this morning:

Well, I’ll give you this much, Vox. In twenty years of Internet discussions, this is the first time I have ever been told by a fellow Christian to SHUT. THE FUCK. UP and hurry up and die. I have never talked about myself in the NYT (or, for that matter, the Poughkeepsie Palimpset); I didn’t destroy America; I haven’t personally ruined your life. In fact, up until three months ago, neither of us had ever heard of the other. But I guess none of that matters. Because I’m a boomer.

I have no idea what inner demons you’re wrestling with on this issue, or why. I would wish you peace, but the truth is I don’t give a rat’s ass.  However, I do have more important things to do with my time than hanging around just to be abused by you for the apparent crime of not sharing your personal hatreds.

Therefore, your wish is granted. I will SHUT. THE FUCK. UP. and go away.

The amusing thing is that this is the commenter who kept saying that GenX was whining. Who is whining now? Isn’t it terrible that we don’t abase ourselves in admiration before their special world-changing specialness! The amazing thing is that even when it is being directly pointed out to them, this sort of Baby Boomer is so haplessly narcissistic that they cannot tell the difference between personal and generational criticism. Their identity is apparently so closely tied to that of their generation that any criticism directed at it is taken as a personal affront.

Nor can the commenter bear to recognize, in spite of the evidence right in front of them, that my feelings about their generation are, in fact, quite widespread. I do not know a single member of Generation X who admires or speaks well of the Baby Boomer generation. If you do, by all means, I’m quite open to hearing your reasons why… but only from an actual member of Generation X. Not from a Baby Boomer with cool stories about how the kids think she’s amazingly with it and not at all old because “love Sam Cooke!”

I will be utterly shocked if this individual does, in fact, manage to shut up and go away. Because, let’s face it, few Boomers can resist when someone is t-t-talking about their g-g-generation.

Steve Sailer adds:

Babyboomers like me are pretty much impervious to the strategies that we pulled on our parents to put them at a generational disadvantage, which disadvantages newer generations.

See how cool they are? They’re still at the top of the generational heap and impervious so you totally can’t, like, say they’re old and irrelevant. Now, I wonder why that might be? I find it telling, as only a Boomer would be so obtuse as to brag about his generation’s bulletproof self-absorption.

They certainly don’t seem to be impervious to hearing that they’re not admired.