What a wild ride! I
was born in 1964…the last year of the “Baby Boomer” generation. You know..it’s the generation that describes
the big population boom between 1946 and
1964. I was a little young to understand
the generation, but it must have been fun!
Man, we set the world on fire, didn’t we? The peace and love generation! Do whatever FEELS right! Question authority! Down with the man! Woodstock was a blast…there will never be
anything as epic as that, right? That’s
when music was good…”Puff the Magic Dragon”…..”Talkin ‘bout My Generation”
We have always been the “in” generation. The media targets us making us feel that
whatever age we are…it’s THE age to be!
When we were young…it was cool to be young. When we were in our early adult years, it was
all buy, buy, buy and we did so …on CREDIT.
Now we are getting older, we are getting blasted with drug commercials
to make us feel better. If you are 60 it’s the new 50, 50 is the new 40…. I
remember when I was younger I could not imagine the rock stars of our day getting
old…now look at Mick Jagger! Our parents
catered to us in our early years and now our children will probably have
to cater to us in our elderly years.
We had free love and now the world has aids. We
had the feminist movement and now the world has emasculated men. Our individualism has left the world with
many fatherless and/or motherless children.
We had rock stars wanting to be politicians and now we have politicians
who want to be rock stars. We polluted
the planet and now the world has to clean it up. We got high and now the world is paying for
our disability and rehab. We will
bankrupt the treasury with our welfare state and retirement. Our youth movement has left the world with
men who have never grown up. Our “no
competition schools” has led to the world surpassing us in education. The provocative sensationalism on TV and in the
arts has numbed the next generation to what is truly beautiful. Our non stop news propaganda has numbed our
next generation to violence and we have forgotten how to love our fellow
man. The lyrics in our music has taken
the innocence of our young. We have
taken God out of our schools and now we wonder why youth have no morals and
there is violence in school.
Our parents sacrificed much to build us up a better
life. Many lived through the depression
and world wars. Our parents saved their
money and did not go into debt. They
paid for our educations. They had one
car, one tv, one washer/dryer, etc and took care of them for years. They had
pride in responsibility of themselves and cringed when others offered
help. They lived WITHIN their budget and
respected wealth. Now we have two or
three cars, two to three flat screen TV’s and those must be updated every two
years. Do not worry about debt because
we can always go bankrupt and start all over again. Don’t worry about teaching your kids
values…the government has that handled.
I realize perception isn’t always reality. The generation made great strides with
dealing with race and equality. Most of
the thoughts here do not represent the generation as a whole. I realize the extreme is what gets publicized
and it is not reflective of MOST people.
I bring these issues up because I see the country I know changing. I had a conversation recently with some
people convinced we should adopt the Swedish socialism ideal. I read elsewhere that now almost half of our
population may want that. My parents passed
to me a great nation…now we want to abolish it through our own greed. I am
not proud of the socialist welfare state we may be leaving our children. The socialist thought (as all politically
motivated thoughts) work on the ideal that everyone has the good of the state
at heart. It is not always the
case. I believe people know they need
to take care of themselves, it is a much more rewarding life than those who
feel they do not have to take care of themselves. As I look at my two children, I can only hope
that they can do better than we did as a generation passing the torch.
I read from a good friend of mine (thanks Greg Owens) the
following…"The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more."
