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Monday, November 14. 2011

Mead goes medieval on us Boomers

Listen Up, Boomers: The Backlash Has Begun. One quote:



What the Boomers as a generation missed (there were, of course and thankfully, many honorable individual exceptions) was the core set of values that every generation must discover to make a successful transition to real adulthood: maturity. Collectively the Boomers continued to follow ideals they associated with youth and individualism: fulfillment and “creativity” rather than endurance and commitment. Boomer spouses dropped families because relationships with spouses or children or mortgage payments no longer “fulfilled” them; Boomer society tolerated the most selfish and immature behavior in its public and cultural leaders out of the classically youthful and immature belief that intolerance and hypocrisy are greater sins than the dereliction of duty. That the greatest and most effective political leader the Baby Boom produced was William Jefferson Clinton tells you all you need to know.



But gee, Prof Mead, those stuffy old moralities and values like honor, integrity, self-restraint, self-reliance, duty, sacrifice, loyalty, etc. are so...inauthentic, hypocritical, uptight, old-fashioned - and no darn fun.

Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 18:13 | Comments (23) | Trackbacks (0)

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Mead lays a blanket guilt on age instead of putting the blame accurately on Democrats values. Yes I was a hippie and thoroughly enjoyed that period but I got married and had a job with one company for more than 30 years. I was divorced against my wishes and raised two sons, one a Certified Jeweler and the other an Electrical Engineer. I consider myself a Conservative. and Yes, that is my real name
#1 Bruce Wayne on 2011-11-14 19:20 (Reply)
WOW!! Batman is a Maggie's Field Hand!! Who knew!? :-)

I think you are over stating it. The so called Boomer Generation was a direct reflection if their parents desire for their children to have better kives than they did. The net result was a relaxation of social values and tolerance/rejection of any constraint on the Boomers. There are other reasons but I think That is the main one.
#1.1 Tom Francis on 2011-11-15 06:52 (Reply)
My parents had kives? And i have 'em too? Web MD here i come
#1.1.1 buddy larsen on 2011-11-15 07:37 (Reply)
But you're missing the fact that it was Boomer's GRANDparents who pushed "relaxation of social values and tolerance/rejection of any constraint "

Boomer's parents learned lessons the hard way, through the depression and WWII. They wanted their children to learn, but not through quite as much adversity.

They looked to their parents for advice, forgetting that it was that generation that produced the Roaring Twenties: living large on borrowed money, government corruption, discarded morals on college campuses, flappers, drugs ... Sound eerily familiar?

The Boomers lived out their grandparents' dreams. And with similar consequences.
#1.1.2 DrTorch on 2011-11-15 08:50 (Reply)
It might do more to support Mead's thesis if his chosen illustration (The Who) weren't a bunch of war babies.

M
#2 Mark Alger (Link) on 2011-11-14 19:28 (Reply)
I think you will like the Art of Manliness site. Not that the virtues listed are limited to men, but that it used to be insisted upon, if young men wanted to take their place in respectable society,

http://artofmanliness.com/
#3 Assistant VIllage Idiot (Link) on 2011-11-14 20:52 (Reply)
Would someone be so kind as to give me the time-frame of what is considered a 'boomer'? Is Mead considering himself as not a 'boomer'? What is his age? As is obvious, I'm confused about this generational hoopla.

I think Bruce Wayne has a good take though. Age hasn't a damn thing to do with it. Everything is politics.

Oh hell, now I'll probably be condemned for using damn. So there, hell and damn in the same sentence, twice.
#4 XRay on 2011-11-14 21:44 (Reply)
1946 to 1964, is the way i hear it. Dunno why the seemingly arbitrary 18 years, except that the last two digits on each are reversals of each other.

Most of the 58,000 names on the Wall are boomers --a fact that ouhjt to deserve a footnote at least, in the article.
#4.1 buddy larsen on 2011-11-14 22:04 (Reply)
Thanks, Buddy.

So, then, I'm a boomer by Mead's interpretation. Then he can damn well take a long walk off a short pier. As you, Buddy, are right about those 58 thousand names, of which the great majority were not draftees. But names of folks who were trying to help others live free. Though, in the end, all betrayed by a Democrat congress.
#4.1.1 XRay on 2011-11-14 22:36 (Reply)
According to John Kerry, nothing much happened after that Democratic cut-off of help for South Vietnam:

http://archive.boulderweekly.com/080907/thedanishplan.html
#4.1.1.1 buddy larsen on 2011-11-15 01:01 (Reply)
NO...Boomers are 1943 to 1960 per almost any resource on Generational Theory. The dates you give correspond only to the numerical birth boom. They're most definitely NOT the same thing.

Example: Is Barack Obama (1961) a Boomer??

Answer: Absolutely not...he's nihilistic GenX [Nomad Generation] all-the-way; from his disrespect for his two boomer predecessors, his disrespect for the bitter clingers, to his anger at his abandonment by both parents.

The only thing that differentiates Boomers [the current Prophet generation] from previous Prophet generations is that the post-WWII abundance has allowed them to run further from reality before hitting the wall. The previous Prophet generation (post Civil War 'Missionary Generation') blessed the US with the progressive program of the early 20th century (wrm's 'blue social model'?) the collapse of which is the real animating factor of our times. How is that any different from what the Boomers are accused of?
#4.1.2 Soviet of Washington on 2011-11-16 20:47 (Reply)
There's an old joke that applies here ... something to the effect that oh sh!t I said dam oh dam I said hell, oh well, I didn't want to be a nun anyway.

And to tell the truth, we've all been betrayed by a Democrat Congress.

Marianne
#5 Marianne Matthews on 2011-11-14 22:54 (Reply)
Well said, MM. There's a bunch of gotchas out there. But the bottom most salient line is Democrat. They have got us for a long time. Shall the tide ever turn, I wonder.
#5.1 XRay on 2011-11-14 23:03 (Reply)
The thing about integrity is that only those with it are aware of it.
#6 PacRim Jim (Link) on 2011-11-14 23:03 (Reply)
--like conscience broken is con science.
#6.1 buddy larsen on 2011-11-14 23:59 (Reply)
It's easier to paint with a roller than a brush.
Some of use did not support the lefties.
#7 PacRim Jim (Link) on 2011-11-15 01:32 (Reply)
Mead is talking about the prevailing political and social cultural leadership not individuals. I think he's mostly correct about the rot and corruption that has infested everywhere. Wherever you look around at what's behind the scandal it is most likely led by boomers. I'm at the very tail end of that demographic and don't really consider myself part of it.
#8 phil g on 2011-11-15 05:45 (Reply)
I am likewise at the tail-end of that scale, but realize how short-sighted, self narcissistic, and plain old 'dumb' the Boomers have been, and the pending car crash that they have left us.

And, how we all gawk at the pending crash, wondering how we got here, what a nice car, and how the neighborhood has recessed, not thinking on how to avoid it, or taking steps to prevent it.

Who cares whom is driving; I'm worried about my kids and future grandkids, and the effects of the crash on them...
#8.1 Fred Zeppelin on 2011-11-15 07:16 (Reply)
Let's not lose sight of the fact here that the poster also believes what Mead said. They are both guilty of pandering to the sheeple with wide, blanket statements that are void of both meaning and reality.

But if you really want to boil down Barrie and Mead, consider the blatant hypocrisy of whining and bitching about the Boomer generation on a Boomer-invented computer. Wasn't that nice of us to make it so easy for them?
#9 Dr. Mercury (Link) on 2011-11-15 07:52 (Reply)
There's nothing "hypocritical" about it.

You're just bitter b/c your "Wonder Years" interpretation of the baby boom generation is being blasted to pieces by reality.
#9.1 DrTorch on 2011-11-15 09:32 (Reply)
"Collectively the Boomers continued to follow ideals they associated with youth and individualism: fulfillment and “creativity” "

Hmmmm......

I always thought individualism, creativity and fulfillment were signposts of a free society.

Apparently those are undesirable traits and I have it all wrong.

Silly me.
#10 feeblemind on 2011-11-15 08:42 (Reply)
buddy larsen wrote: "1946 to 1964, is the way i hear it. Dunno why the seemingly arbitrary 18 years, except that the last two digits on each are reversals of each other."

1946--The year after WWII ended. In the last half of '45 the troops came home, got married, and started having kids...

1964, 18 years later: a generation is often considered to be 18 years. Sometimes rounded up to 20 years for easy counting.

I was a war baby.
#11 Sam L. on 2011-11-15 11:37 (Reply)
Nothing personal, Sam, but --well, the hippies broke out in 1966, so the oldest of them were but 20 years old. Who then started (and led) the movement? I guess you could start with the Beat poets, Kerouac. Ginsberg, Burroughs, whatnot, but the fire lit with that Free Speech dude with the megaphone standing on top a VW in Berserkely --Mario something or other. Cut to the Folkies and Dylan and the Beatles, all war babies. The feminists, Freidan and Steinem and them, all war babies and older. Tomothy Leary? Boomer's parent's age. Lots more but i'm getting depressed thinking about 'em.
#11.1 buddy larsen on 2011-11-15 12:35 (Reply)

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