The Baby Boomers Failed

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute here; let’s face it.  The baby boomers is an example of a failed generation.

Can you honestly say that the world is better off today than it was before they took charge?

I mourn the people I see around me who were raised by idiots who bought into the hype of the 1960’s.  Liberalism has destroyed this country.

But how did this happen?  Was it the drinking water or Japanese atomic winds that mutated the young boomers’ genetics into some kind of self-actualized bastardization of humanity?  Personally, I blame Hitler.

Check it out.  Our grandparents, “the finest generation”, were drafted to go kill Nazis in 1942.  This really sucked a lot of ass for them.  Even the ones who were too young to see combat were still immersed in a war culture and looked up to young men who were shaped and hardened by war, discipline, and order.  You did your job or the guy in the foxhole next to you gets his head shot off.  All because Hitler had a tiny dick.  Oh, and he also invaded Poland.

So now you’ve got a society inherited by our grandparents.  You get unions, and somehow we get John F. Kennedy.  Their kids, who were raised to be little soldiers, come to the bright conclusion of, “fuck this shit” and alternatively, “hell no, we won’t go.”  They see how their parents did it — far too “right” — too militaristic, disciplinarian, orderly, fascist — that they have to swing too far left to compensate.  Now you get the 60’s and hippies.

Here’s where everything goes horribly wrong.  And it goes horribly wrong because our parents, in their infinite 20 year-old wisdom, come to the conclusion that drugs are good, sex is good, and doing anything the way it was done before is bad.  The result is the Age of Aquarius and what has become modern liberal thinking.

Of course, modern liberal thinking suffers from a serious problem that nobody ever seems to mention.  The 60’s liberal movement was based on the premise that everything in the past was done wrong and that they alone knew the secret to enlightenment.  Take a step back and think about that for a minute.

Does it sound even remotely feasible to you that a group of kids with longer hair than their parents could possibly know how to live their lives to achieve happiness and fulfillment better than every other generation before them?  I hate to break it to you, kids, but there have been thousands of generations before yours and there will be thousands after.  What makes you so special?

“The times they are a changin’” … but were they?  Our parents, the all-knowing Boomers, decided to discard every ounce of traditional wisdom about how to be happy in life in favor of smoking weed and listening to new edgy music like The Beatles and … *gasp* … Jimmy Hendrix!  Society wasn’t brick and mortar any more — theirs was a generation where ideals were as good as facts.  If you give poor people money, they will use it to escape poverty and help contribute to Utopia.  As long as my drug use doesn’t directly affect anyone else, it should be perfectly legal and will have absolutely no consequences.  Let’s get married for love and only love.  I think there’s a Shakespeare play that says that, right?

Wrong.  You were wrong.  And your children, and everyone else, is paying the price.

If your parents were born in the period between 1940 and 1960, you’re screwed.  You have inherited a world in abject disrepair that we are charged with fixing.  Politically, the Boomers will continue to live and vote themselves into office until we can finally be rid of them and actually bring back some common, instinctual sense.  We live in a Western cultural wasteland that I am afraid we are simply too stupid and incapable to fix.  And why?

Because our parents have no idea how to be happy.  We were raised by them, and they can’t give us any good advice.  They’re all divorced, self-centered, and doped out on anti-depressants.  How are we supposed to know how to live to find happiness?

Look at what the average person in the 40-50 age group did, and …

Here’s where it gets tricky: if you ask a Boomer, he’ll finish that sentence with: “the exact opposite!”

That’s how and why they got themselves into trouble and ruined the world.  They blindly discarded everything their parents knew and did because they knew better.  But they were wrong.  The answer is:

Look at what the average person in the 40-50 age group did, and figure out what made them so unhappy, and avoid that.

The biggest single factor: divorce.  Divorce makes everyone unhappy.

This isn’t an easy task.  You could easily argue that I’m doing exactly what my parents did: reject the old, because I know better.  But there’s a key difference here.  I don’t believe that I know better.  I believe that former generations — my ancestors — did know better.  Unfortunately, the Boomers forgot it all, and my grandparents are dead.  So I’m on my own.

In addition to adamantly rejecting the possibility of divorce, I also reject many of the tenets of Boomer culture.  Here are some that have worked for me so far:

• Forget how something sounds on paper or in theory.  How does it work in practice?  If there’s one value that the Boomers threw away entirely it’s practical thinking.  This is evidenced in everything from romantic for-love marriages up to the war in Iraq.  Sure, in theory, the Iraqis want to be free.  On the planet Earth, they like to worship Allah and kill the other kind of Muslim and have civil wars and gas each other.  In theory, everyone should be free to do whatever they want, but in practice, society suffers.  In theory, socialism is awesome.  In practice, it’s at best capitalism + bribes and at worse, it’s Joe Stalin.  The Boomers couldn’t get around this idea, which is why we have things like Earth Day and the feminist movement.
• Proverbs kick ass.  A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.  A penny saved is a penny earned.  Look before you leap.  These tiny little sayings were “square” in 1960.  Proverbs contain more truth per sentence than anything you will read anywhere.  In fact, you should leave this blog immediately to go google proverbs.  Read them and use them.  Your life will instantly improve by orders of magnitude.
• Your actions always influence other people.  If you think that you can sit around in your house and smoke heroin all day and that’s okay because you’re not robbing people to pay for it therefore you are not impacting society, you’re wrong.  You are, because your very existence serves as an example to other people.  We are a culture, a society, an a nation, and we are cooperating.  If you choose to do things that contribute to nothing other than your own happiness, you are hurting everyone else.  Because at some level, we’re propping you up.  Here’s a question that a Boomer will never ask: “If everyone is doing what I’m doing, will that be OK for my society?”
• Listen to your heart, not your brain.  Your brain is usually wrong.  Your heart almost never is.  Instincts — gut feelings — are you.  Whatever complex logic and rationale you may use to justify things like buying that shit you don’t need, cheating on your lover, voting for Hillary Clinton, etc., is all bogus.  Your emotions drive you.  Your brain is just along for the ride. 

I could go on forever but I’m already starting to sound preachy.  Take a closer look at the culture your parents created and ask yourself if it’s something you really want to perpetuate.  Let’s forge a better path based on sanity.  That would be totally fetch. 

Boomers: you fucked up.  Thanks a lot.