Born in 1951 in Victoria BC, between 1957 and 1959 I returned to my birthplace and lived at the corner of Cranmore and Hampshire in Oak Bay, a wealthy suburb of the greater Victoria BC.
My tiny Catholic primary school was over on Trent and I had a long, long twice daily walk (at age 5 !) along the street that was fronted by the city's big High School and Junior High School.
So while I clearly remember the nuns and lay teachers at my own school, you will excuse me when I say I don't remember the kids of my own boring age at my school but much preferred to constantly examine close up the glamorous seeming "Big Kids" at the High School.
These were mostly kids born between 1941 and 1947 , the first wave of my own postwar generation - now incorrectly called the Boomers.
To put it in context, if the Dylan, Baez and the Grateful Dead had lived in Victoria, they'd all be attending High School in these years - so you known the sort of generation I'm talking about.
Years later, I learned that 1950s Victoria was supposedly locked into a British Victorian time warp.
Perhaps - for those over the age of 30 .
But my sense then (and now) was that the young people there acted as if this was just California North Extended right down to our fair share of classic beatnik types.
After all it was far cheaper and quicker to fly to exciting San Francisco than to go to staid Toronto.
I knew then from my TV how teens in California of the 1950s acted and this well-to-do , urban High School in my provincial capitol was clearly no different - the Hot Rods were exactly the same, the clothes too and even the lingo.
Not living at this street corner till late 1957, I obviously never knew any of the earlier postwar high school kids.
I mean this group's older brothers and sisters - born in the mid to late 1930s, who had shared their parents' wartime patriotism first hand.
As a result, I can't say for certain that the two groups of siblings were clearly very different in outlook.
But we know for a fact that this generation I saw before me twice daily never thrilled to the stoic British endurance of the Blitz years - only knew of bombing as seen at Hiroshima and Dresden.
They never got uplifting accounts of prewar BC's eugenic successes in Hygiene class - knew only of Auschwitz's better known example of applied eugenics.
If the Staten Island born Baez was any example, they did indeed think and act differently than their slightly older siblings.
(Some people even date the birth of the entire folk protest age to the moment when Baez became the classic 'overnight star'.
She had appeared on stage, unannounced, as a last minute addition to the first annual Newport Folk Festival in July 1959 and was an immediate nation-wide media sensation.
I was still living at Cranmore and Hampshire at the time, but knew nothing of her until 1961.)
And the war years truly were "The Great Divide" that made these 18 year olds' thinking closer to that of eight year me than to their slightly older siblings.
My first book will go back to the wartime years these high schoolers were born into, to understand what effects it had upon them and upon me ....
Showing posts with label boomers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boomers. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Postmodern Science came from postwar kids : the question is WHY ?
Postmodern science began in the 1980s as postwar kids got tenure and became journal editors, society presidents, lab chiefs and department heads - replacing all those who were young adults during the heady war years of Big Science, Reductionism, Determinism and who were educated in the classical science of Newton, Dalton, Darwin and Lyell.
But why didn't these kids - call them Boomer kids if you wish - simply carry on the tradition as their scientific fathers and grandfathers had done for centuries before them ?
Why such an abrupt shift in a scientific worldview ?
What had these postwar children learned about the real - actual - world that led them to so disbelieve the explanations provided by the classical models of science being taught within the cloistered walls of their High School.
( And still are being so taught ! )
But why didn't these kids - call them Boomer kids if you wish - simply carry on the tradition as their scientific fathers and grandfathers had done for centuries before them ?
Why such an abrupt shift in a scientific worldview ?
What had these postwar children learned about the real - actual - world that led them to so disbelieve the explanations provided by the classical models of science being taught within the cloistered walls of their High School.
( And still are being so taught ! )
Sunday, February 15, 2015
BOOMERS : too young to have had nightmares about daddy, brother, uncle, grampa dying in the invasion of Japan
The postwar's first (transitional) generation of very young children, all grown up now, may feel an intellectual ambivalence about whether to decision to drop the A-Bomb on Hiroshima was indeed the only way to save lives by ending the war.
But they don't feel the searing emotional ambivalence that their older siblings, parents and grandparents had to feel, all their lives, about that same decision.
We never had to reconcile the joy in knowing that a close relative didn't have to die in the invasion of main islands Japan with the thoughts of all those Japanese grandparents and grandchildren fried and boiled alive at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
My own father might would have been on a Canadian warship off Japan if Operation Olympic had happened, as planned, in October 1945 - been there almost for sure, if Operation Coronet had gone ahead in March-April 1946.
I know this, know the extreme risk for small (all Canadian warships were small) vessels under a Japanese Kamikaze attack - but I don't feel it in my gut - I don't recollect any searing childhood fear - because I wasn't even born until six years after the war's end.
I am in fact in a similar situation about the Korean War - my father re-joined up to serve in Korea but was never assigned there - I do not recall the Korean War at all, let alone as the source of the possible death of a parent.
So, although as a Canadian I always knew my father, uncle or I would never have to fight there, Vietnam ended up becoming my first real war...
But they don't feel the searing emotional ambivalence that their older siblings, parents and grandparents had to feel, all their lives, about that same decision.
We never had to reconcile the joy in knowing that a close relative didn't have to die in the invasion of main islands Japan with the thoughts of all those Japanese grandparents and grandchildren fried and boiled alive at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
My own father might would have been on a Canadian warship off Japan if Operation Olympic had happened, as planned, in October 1945 - been there almost for sure, if Operation Coronet had gone ahead in March-April 1946.
I know this, know the extreme risk for small (all Canadian warships were small) vessels under a Japanese Kamikaze attack - but I don't feel it in my gut - I don't recollect any searing childhood fear - because I wasn't even born until six years after the war's end.
I am in fact in a similar situation about the Korean War - my father re-joined up to serve in Korea but was never assigned there - I do not recall the Korean War at all, let alone as the source of the possible death of a parent.
So, although as a Canadian I always knew my father, uncle or I would never have to fight there, Vietnam ended up becoming my first real war...
Friday, February 13, 2015
Four years difference really matter : when you're four and eight
On August 15th 1945, the two children (ages four and eight) of a young American serviceman in the Pacific preparing to invade Japan probably responded quite differently from the united way their two grandmothers (aged 59 and 63) reacted to the news that the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had caused the Japanese to sue for peace.
The two grandmothers were both united in giving comparatively little thought to all the grandmothers and grandchildren killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki , so glad were they that their son/son-in-law wasn't going to be killed during the Allied invasion effort.
The eight year old child agreed - very glad that Daddy wasn't going to die overseas and would be coming home soon unharmed.
But the four year old child probably hadn't even been told that Daddy was facing imminent death overseas or that two bombs that killed thousands of children would now bring Daddy home safe.
This child's reaction was no reaction.
Because when you are very young, even only being four years apart in age makes a huge difference - though four years difference means nothing when you are two grandparents nearing retirement.
Flash forward to the Spring of 1956 and the news that deadly nuclear fallout from an American Bravo Castle Test of an hydrogen bomb had gone around the world in the atmosphere strong enough to kill a Japanese fisherman thousands of miles from the test site.
The grandmothers are now in their seventies and the eight year old is now 19 and drafted into the Army.
Their fear over American nuclear fallout worries and their regret for the loss of a human life is undoubtedly tempered by the thought that the American A-Bombs had saved thousands of American lives and that the wartime Japanese had been particularly cruel to other ethnicities on many well documented occasions.
By contrast, the four year old is now 15 and this child is distinctly uncomfortable with possible death or genetic damage from fallout radiation - possibly because of her viewing of many youth-oriented movies on the subject.
The child knows - from schoolbooks - that the A-Bombs killed hundreds of thousands but also shortened the war , saving the lives of starving millions in Japan and in her overseas occupied territories, as well as tens of thousands of American servicemen.
But that child doesn't feel it - in her bones - as her older brother does.
She, being four, wasn't literally there, at the time on the dropping of the Bomb.
In body yes - but not in heart, mind and soul.
Four years difference among the young really matter --- this is the starting thesis of this blog.
My postwar transitional generation, by definition a little too young to remember WWII first hand, only learned of WWII (and how supposedly Big Science won the war) second hand, learned it in the mind but not experienced it in the heart.
During its key plastic formative years, my generation held both this second hand kernel of support for prewar modernity's Big Science and first hand support for the beginnings of post-modern/postwar human rights protests of the Sixties.
The key characteristic of this transitional generation was not Sixties street conflict but internal mental conflict - knowing both modernity and postmodernity but not being totally in either camp, unlike their parents or children...
The two grandmothers were both united in giving comparatively little thought to all the grandmothers and grandchildren killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki , so glad were they that their son/son-in-law wasn't going to be killed during the Allied invasion effort.
The eight year old child agreed - very glad that Daddy wasn't going to die overseas and would be coming home soon unharmed.
But the four year old child probably hadn't even been told that Daddy was facing imminent death overseas or that two bombs that killed thousands of children would now bring Daddy home safe.
This child's reaction was no reaction.
Because when you are very young, even only being four years apart in age makes a huge difference - though four years difference means nothing when you are two grandparents nearing retirement.
Flash forward to the Spring of 1956 and the news that deadly nuclear fallout from an American Bravo Castle Test of an hydrogen bomb had gone around the world in the atmosphere strong enough to kill a Japanese fisherman thousands of miles from the test site.
The grandmothers are now in their seventies and the eight year old is now 19 and drafted into the Army.
Their fear over American nuclear fallout worries and their regret for the loss of a human life is undoubtedly tempered by the thought that the American A-Bombs had saved thousands of American lives and that the wartime Japanese had been particularly cruel to other ethnicities on many well documented occasions.
By contrast, the four year old is now 15 and this child is distinctly uncomfortable with possible death or genetic damage from fallout radiation - possibly because of her viewing of many youth-oriented movies on the subject.
The child knows - from schoolbooks - that the A-Bombs killed hundreds of thousands but also shortened the war , saving the lives of starving millions in Japan and in her overseas occupied territories, as well as tens of thousands of American servicemen.
But that child doesn't feel it - in her bones - as her older brother does.
She, being four, wasn't literally there, at the time on the dropping of the Bomb.
In body yes - but not in heart, mind and soul.
Four years difference among the young really matter --- this is the starting thesis of this blog.
My postwar transitional generation, by definition a little too young to remember WWII first hand, only learned of WWII (and how supposedly Big Science won the war) second hand, learned it in the mind but not experienced it in the heart.
During its key plastic formative years, my generation held both this second hand kernel of support for prewar modernity's Big Science and first hand support for the beginnings of post-modern/postwar human rights protests of the Sixties.
The key characteristic of this transitional generation was not Sixties street conflict but internal mental conflict - knowing both modernity and postmodernity but not being totally in either camp, unlike their parents or children...
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Writin' 'bout my generation - This is my generation baby !
Janus Manhattan's Children : writin' 'bout my generation baby !
Truth be told, I don't actually know when my generation , the postwar's first (transitional) generation of children, really ended.
That is because I define this key transitional generation as those too young to remember WWII as WWII but old enough to remember the rebellious 'turn to postmodernity' of the late sixties first hand - so around 1961 should marks its ending.
( I really should love this definition - it places me, born in 1951, conveniently plunk (Janus-like) in the middle of this generation !)
But, as a writer, my difficulty revolves around this question : is some vague personal memory of 1950s (modernity-oriented) public schooling also required as well ?
Many people think it so.
Many people think it so.
If so, my generation runs from 1941 to around 1956.
Now in Canada, for example, the Baby Boom began in 1941 and ended in 1966 .
However, I feel we must re-define this transitional generation away from the question of whether its members were baby boom members or not .
We should focus instead on a worldwide set of kids who grew up within my original definition --- even in countries that experienced no visible baby boom.
That is those kids who were old enough to feel the postwar glow of WWII scientism second hand, but also young enough to share the 'rock 'n' roll' rebellion of the mid to late 1960s.
Even if that only meant wildly dancing, as elementary school kids, to a noisy Rolling Stone record because they knew their parents clearly disapproved ....
Even if that only meant wildly dancing, as elementary school kids, to a noisy Rolling Stone record because they knew their parents clearly disapproved ....
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Boomers transitioning from pre-war socialism to post-war greenism
I do not know if the comfortable (conservative) boomer mind, in its innermost heart of hearts, actually changed at all between 1941 and 2015.
I mean most conservatives of all ages have learned not to describe the world's various 'colored'* people as inferior -at least not in public .
But I do not know how they actually feel about them in private.
(*Colored people as in 'not-pink colored' people presumably.)
But the uncomfortably minded boomer does seemed to have gone through quite a sea change between 1941 and 2015.
In 1895 future King Edward II was reported to have said "we are all socialists nowadays" and it seemed that all of the uncomfortable , at least while young and unsettled in good jobs, were a bit bolshie in the Era of Modernity.
But somewhere along the line as Modernity faded out, the young stopped being socialist - either of the bolshie red kind or of the barely pink democratic socialist kind.
I know this was my personal trajectory - being a strong democratic socialist from age of 18 until my late thirties (coincidentally when a whole lot of young people in the bolshie east of Europe declared they felt the same way).
Socialists like pie , being merely unhappy that it isn't divided fairly, with a much bigger slice going to the ordinary worker.
And an absolutely bigger pie to them was always better - even if their relative slice size failed to reach what they deemed fair.
To use Schnaiberg/Dunlap/McCright's term, they were pro 'production science' --- bigger was always better.
But green minded people began to feel that it was the constant chasing after the ever bigger pie (and even the pie itself) that was making them unhappy - sick and unhappy.
Industrial pie making was making their families and the environment sick and now it appeared that it would certainly kill off the planet in a way that the pre-1989 capitalist versus socialist nuclear arms race had merely threatened to do.
Greens dislike uncontrolled production science and want to see its excesses tempered by more 'impact science' - again to use Schnaiberg/Dunlap and McCright's term.
That is, they wanted scientists to monitor the ratio of all the bad outputs of industrial production against all the good things it gave us.
And that is what happened to me --- I gradually saw more and more clearly how socialists could ruin the Earth just as quickly as capitalists could.
The sin they held in common - I saw - was Modernity.
I was becoming post or anti Modernity without becoming what the textbooks called postmodernist.
I prefer to think of my new faith as being more an 'involuntary open commensality' with all of the planet's beings .
Not exactly lambs lying down with lions, but there you have it....
I mean most conservatives of all ages have learned not to describe the world's various 'colored'* people as inferior -at least not in public .
But I do not know how they actually feel about them in private.
(*Colored people as in 'not-pink colored' people presumably.)
But the uncomfortably minded boomer does seemed to have gone through quite a sea change between 1941 and 2015.
In 1895 future King Edward II was reported to have said "we are all socialists nowadays" and it seemed that all of the uncomfortable , at least while young and unsettled in good jobs, were a bit bolshie in the Era of Modernity.
But somewhere along the line as Modernity faded out, the young stopped being socialist - either of the bolshie red kind or of the barely pink democratic socialist kind.
I know this was my personal trajectory - being a strong democratic socialist from age of 18 until my late thirties (coincidentally when a whole lot of young people in the bolshie east of Europe declared they felt the same way).
Socialists like pie , being merely unhappy that it isn't divided fairly, with a much bigger slice going to the ordinary worker.
And an absolutely bigger pie to them was always better - even if their relative slice size failed to reach what they deemed fair.
To use Schnaiberg/Dunlap/McCright's term, they were pro 'production science' --- bigger was always better.
But green minded people began to feel that it was the constant chasing after the ever bigger pie (and even the pie itself) that was making them unhappy - sick and unhappy.
Industrial pie making was making their families and the environment sick and now it appeared that it would certainly kill off the planet in a way that the pre-1989 capitalist versus socialist nuclear arms race had merely threatened to do.
Greens dislike uncontrolled production science and want to see its excesses tempered by more 'impact science' - again to use Schnaiberg/Dunlap and McCright's term.
That is, they wanted scientists to monitor the ratio of all the bad outputs of industrial production against all the good things it gave us.
And that is what happened to me --- I gradually saw more and more clearly how socialists could ruin the Earth just as quickly as capitalists could.
The sin they held in common - I saw - was Modernity.
I was becoming post or anti Modernity without becoming what the textbooks called postmodernist.
I prefer to think of my new faith as being more an 'involuntary open commensality' with all of the planet's beings .
Not exactly lambs lying down with lions, but there you have it....
Monday, February 9, 2015
Environmentalism : HOPE, as well as fear ...
It is easy - too too easy - to credit fear, fear of Fifties nuclear war and fallout in particular, as the main reason for the Early Seventies worldwide rise of the Environmental Movement.
As one of those young 1950s Boomers who did join the formally organized environmental movement early in the 1970s and who now has a great interest in the history of the early days of the Environmental Movement, may I beg to differ?
Not seeking tenure, I offer up only my memories as the primary archival source for my historical thesis.
I was an unusually small and skinny kid, very nearsighted, hated formal sports and loved books.
This might have been alright - I boldly loved to physically explore my neighbourhood and was a bit of a wiseapple in class, but for the fact that we moved frequently, or so it seemed.
( I attended three different schools in both Grade Three and Grade Eight.)
I got bullied as a result.
My dislike of the big and the strong and my sympathy for the weak and the small developed right there on the playground.
I enjoyed the stories my teachers told of how the antibiotic medicines that had saved the lives of kids like me that had come (could only come) from small and primitive weak microbes living in sewer water, basement slime and the jungle mud of primitive lands.
I really enjoyed this unlikely triumph of these microbial davids over the Chemist Goliaths of smug modern science.
For while the salad days of the Chemist and Chemical Synthesis had faded by time I first went to school, their unaltered hubris has merely transferred out to another school - that of the physicist.
So while our Fifties collective motivation was rather shallow and utilitarian (we valued Mother Nature's other beings only from the fear that their extinction might rob us of our rightful access to something useful and profitable) I joined in to the general view that we must treasure - not destroy - even the smallest and most slimy of beings.
I hope I went beyond that .
Beyond that to a belief that the smart aren't always as smart as they seem nor the dumb as dumb as they seem and that all life has a form of high intelligence merely by being able to survive and flourish so long and had a right to exist on its own terms.
I know for a fact this was the reason I so enjoyed all the franker, more revisionist, books about WWII that had been coming out in a flood by the mid 1960s - books I dearly loved as a pre-teen.
Mostly by accident, they were much less 'rah rah' than the first wave of postwar military histories.
They still thought they were celebrating bravery but , unconsciously, by providing many new details, they tended to reveal the unflattering sides of military operations the propaganda ministries had earlier successfully concealed.
I saw WWII revealed as six long years of the supposedly smart nations and leaders humbled and the supposedly dumb nations and leaders exalted.
In 2004, I stumbled upon the little known WWII tale of the supposedly smart chemists' synthesized penicillin humbled and the supposedly dumb natural penicillium exalted ---so given my history, how could I resist making it much better known ??
As one of those young 1950s Boomers who did join the formally organized environmental movement early in the 1970s and who now has a great interest in the history of the early days of the Environmental Movement, may I beg to differ?
Not seeking tenure, I offer up only my memories as the primary archival source for my historical thesis.
I was an unusually small and skinny kid, very nearsighted, hated formal sports and loved books.
This might have been alright - I boldly loved to physically explore my neighbourhood and was a bit of a wiseapple in class, but for the fact that we moved frequently, or so it seemed.
( I attended three different schools in both Grade Three and Grade Eight.)
I got bullied as a result.
My dislike of the big and the strong and my sympathy for the weak and the small developed right there on the playground.
I enjoyed the stories my teachers told of how the antibiotic medicines that had saved the lives of kids like me that had come (could only come) from small and primitive weak microbes living in sewer water, basement slime and the jungle mud of primitive lands.
microbial davids vs Chemist Goliaths
I really enjoyed this unlikely triumph of these microbial davids over the Chemist Goliaths of smug modern science.
For while the salad days of the Chemist and Chemical Synthesis had faded by time I first went to school, their unaltered hubris has merely transferred out to another school - that of the physicist.
So while our Fifties collective motivation was rather shallow and utilitarian (we valued Mother Nature's other beings only from the fear that their extinction might rob us of our rightful access to something useful and profitable) I joined in to the general view that we must treasure - not destroy - even the smallest and most slimy of beings.
I hope I went beyond that .
Beyond that to a belief that the smart aren't always as smart as they seem nor the dumb as dumb as they seem and that all life has a form of high intelligence merely by being able to survive and flourish so long and had a right to exist on its own terms.
WWII as a study in the smart humbled and the humble exalted
I know for a fact this was the reason I so enjoyed all the franker, more revisionist, books about WWII that had been coming out in a flood by the mid 1960s - books I dearly loved as a pre-teen.
Mostly by accident, they were much less 'rah rah' than the first wave of postwar military histories.
They still thought they were celebrating bravery but , unconsciously, by providing many new details, they tended to reveal the unflattering sides of military operations the propaganda ministries had earlier successfully concealed.
I saw WWII revealed as six long years of the supposedly smart nations and leaders humbled and the supposedly dumb nations and leaders exalted.
In 2004, I stumbled upon the little known WWII tale of the supposedly smart chemists' synthesized penicillin humbled and the supposedly dumb natural penicillium exalted ---so given my history, how could I resist making it much better known ??
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Boomers - at age (50-75) of highest voter turnout - now will dominate elections
Boomers - born after 1941 and before 1966 - will all be 50 to 75 in presidential election year 2016 - and those are precisely the peak years for highest voter turnout.
Forget what the marketing gurus are saying about the numbers of customers in each age cohort - be it The Greatest Generation or The Millennials.
Only 'votes in the ballot box' count on election night - and the very young and very old might buy a lot of drugs ---- but neither tends to vote very much.
This dominant voting bloc could choose to elect governments determined to slowing human carbon output in the atmosphere.
Or they could, once again, put in office government leaders committed to tossing ever more carbon dioxide into the heavens, all in the name of ever faster 'growth'.
Boomer voters will decide election night results for the next few decades ---- right up to the presumed climate change tipping point.
But unlike their growth-oriented parents or their survival-oriented children, the boomers - as a group - are genuinely conflicted and divided.
All the result of growing up as the Transitional Generation between modernity and postmodernity....
Forget what the marketing gurus are saying about the numbers of customers in each age cohort - be it The Greatest Generation or The Millennials.
Only 'votes in the ballot box' count on election night - and the very young and very old might buy a lot of drugs ---- but neither tends to vote very much.
Boomers : dominant voter bloc
This dominant voting bloc could choose to elect governments determined to slowing human carbon output in the atmosphere.
Or they could, once again, put in office government leaders committed to tossing ever more carbon dioxide into the heavens, all in the name of ever faster 'growth'.
Boomer voters will decide election night results for the next few decades ---- right up to the presumed climate change tipping point.
But unlike their growth-oriented parents or their survival-oriented children, the boomers - as a group - are genuinely conflicted and divided.
All the result of growing up as the Transitional Generation between modernity and postmodernity....
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
(Not so) "Silent Generation"
What do Eric Burdon, Dylan, Baez, Jagger, Lennon, McCartney, Charlie Watts, Ringo Starr, Brian Jones, Keith Richards, George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Phil Ochs - I could go on and on, but that's more than enough to make my point - all have in common ?
'Besides singing that God-damned caterwaul music ???? -Turn it DOWN NOW !!!!'
Yeah, besides that.
Well they are all - we are told by lots of historians who shall remain unnamed - members of The Silent Generation (1927-1943) so unlike us loud 'n' lively Boomer Generation types.
All the leaders of my boomer generation were musicians and they almost all born during WWII's uptick in babies while remaining too young to be able to share in 1945's collective glow of modernist self-satisfaction.
These guys were loud - in their singing, drumming and in their opinions and their dress.
They were part of us, first as part of the same long baby boom.
And that remains true, even if these early boomers remained unrecognized as such by lazy postwar journalists .
They all much preferred to peddle a 'nudge nudge' story of horny dad coming home from years overseas in 1946 and making lots and lots of whoopee.
They were also part of us, as part of the post -1945 Transitional Generation, and that is in fact why they felt so compelled to sing and say what they did.
But 'silent' ? Never !
And they say historians have no sense of humour ...
'Besides singing that God-damned caterwaul music ???? -Turn it DOWN NOW !!!!'
Yeah, besides that.
Well they are all - we are told by lots of historians who shall remain unnamed - members of The Silent Generation (1927-1943) so unlike us loud 'n' lively Boomer Generation types.
All the leaders of my boomer generation were musicians and they almost all born during WWII's uptick in babies while remaining too young to be able to share in 1945's collective glow of modernist self-satisfaction.
These guys were loud - in their singing, drumming and in their opinions and their dress.
They were part of us, first as part of the same long baby boom.
And that remains true, even if these early boomers remained unrecognized as such by lazy postwar journalists .
They all much preferred to peddle a 'nudge nudge' story of horny dad coming home from years overseas in 1946 and making lots and lots of whoopee.
They were also part of us, as part of the post -1945 Transitional Generation, and that is in fact why they felt so compelled to sing and say what they did.
But 'silent' ? Never !
And they say historians have no sense of humour ...
WWII ruptured modern continuity
I argue - after recalling various international long term social survey results * - that over questions of humanity's ability to control physical reality, a person born in 1941 (a Boomer) tends to have more in common with someone born in 2001, sixty years later, than with someone born in 1935, only six years earlier.
And that similarly, on this issue, someone born in 1935 tends to have more in common with someone born in 1875, sixty years earlier, than they do with someone born in 1941, only six years later ...
*Large scale (35,000 or so respondents) national "General Social Surveys" have been repeatedly conducted in many nations over the past few decades, annually or biannually.
They usually freely available over the internet and are always the first port of call for academics,authors and journalists when reviewing changes in social attitudes over time in various sub groupings of society.
And that similarly, on this issue, someone born in 1935 tends to have more in common with someone born in 1875, sixty years earlier, than they do with someone born in 1941, only six years later ...
*Large scale (35,000 or so respondents) national "General Social Surveys" have been repeatedly conducted in many nations over the past few decades, annually or biannually.
They usually freely available over the internet and are always the first port of call for academics,authors and journalists when reviewing changes in social attitudes over time in various sub groupings of society.
Monday, January 19, 2015
Boomers most likely to vote in 2016 : trouble for conservatives
The 2016 presidential election will be a massive watershed in terms of generational change among voters - one few pundits yet recognize.
Even the youngest of the once all mighty Greatest Generation will be over 75 and as we all should know, over-75s simply don't turn out to vote like those 55-75 do.
The Greatest Generation and their children (the Transitional "Boomer" Generation) have always differed the most over their varying "memories" of WWII.
No boomer ever has any direct personal memories of WWII as WWII, even if born during the war -- just too young.
But even someone born in 1939 has enough memories of the Home Front side of WWII to feel part of its triumphalist glow.
That is all that most of today's Greatest Generation voters remembers of WWII - the Home Front propaganda victories rather than the darker truth revealed out there on the front lines.
Because by November 2016, almost all still living WWII vets must be very near ninety or older - much older.
And thus hardly a big part of the voting pool.
Boomers and their parents both know (in their hearts) that the government, military, media, business and science lied repeatedly to the voters during WWII.
But only the Greatest Generation heard these lies first hand and bought into them, mostly.
To ever publicly admit that their wartime government lied is to admit that they themselves were lied to and were fools for buying it.
Few of us like to ever publicly admit we were fools.
In their hearts they know its true, but publicly - above all to their kids - the Greatest Generation finds it very hard to admit that all the powerful (and once fully trusted institutions) of WWII systemically lied to them.
This generation is still the one most likely to 'back our troops right or wrong', to trust that the big people in government 'know things we little people don't' etc.
This generation has been the conservatives' best friend.
But now their much more ornery kids are the key voting demographic --- and they don't take kindly to bull and cant ...
Even the youngest of the once all mighty Greatest Generation will be over 75 and as we all should know, over-75s simply don't turn out to vote like those 55-75 do.
The Greatest Generation and their children (the Transitional "Boomer" Generation) have always differed the most over their varying "memories" of WWII.
No boomer ever has any direct personal memories of WWII as WWII, even if born during the war -- just too young.
But even someone born in 1939 has enough memories of the Home Front side of WWII to feel part of its triumphalist glow.
That is all that most of today's Greatest Generation voters remembers of WWII - the Home Front propaganda victories rather than the darker truth revealed out there on the front lines.
Because by November 2016, almost all still living WWII vets must be very near ninety or older - much older.
And thus hardly a big part of the voting pool.
Boomers and their parents both know (in their hearts) that the government, military, media, business and science lied repeatedly to the voters during WWII.
But only the Greatest Generation heard these lies first hand and bought into them, mostly.
To ever publicly admit that their wartime government lied is to admit that they themselves were lied to and were fools for buying it.
Few of us like to ever publicly admit we were fools.
In their hearts they know its true, but publicly - above all to their kids - the Greatest Generation finds it very hard to admit that all the powerful (and once fully trusted institutions) of WWII systemically lied to them.
This generation is still the one most likely to 'back our troops right or wrong', to trust that the big people in government 'know things we little people don't' etc.
This generation has been the conservatives' best friend.
But now their much more ornery kids are the key voting demographic --- and they don't take kindly to bull and cant ...
"Transitional Generation" : too young to remember WWII, old enough to remember the Sixties - but above all, a child of the Fifties
In most of the world that had a baby boom, it began after 1941 and it began tailing off after 1959.
My postwar "Transitional Generation" - by sheer coincidence - shares that time period with the actual baby boomers - because we find the Transitional Generation effect even in countries where there was in fact no noticeable baby boom.
But consider this : all these boomers and transitionalists share at least one thing - maybe even only one thing - in common.
For even someone born in early 1941 is still "a child of the Fifties" (age 9) in 1950, just as a baby at the other end, born in late 1959, is at least technically still "a child of the Fifties".
Someone born in 1937 (a teenage in 1950), or someone born in 1960, can't ever share that fact with this cohort.
A shared Fifties childhood - rather than experiencing the very occasionally turbulent Sixties and Seventies with many other age groups - might be the key bond and glue for this large body of current humanity...
My postwar "Transitional Generation" - by sheer coincidence - shares that time period with the actual baby boomers - because we find the Transitional Generation effect even in countries where there was in fact no noticeable baby boom.
But consider this : all these boomers and transitionalists share at least one thing - maybe even only one thing - in common.
For even someone born in early 1941 is still "a child of the Fifties" (age 9) in 1950, just as a baby at the other end, born in late 1959, is at least technically still "a child of the Fifties".
Someone born in 1937 (a teenage in 1950), or someone born in 1960, can't ever share that fact with this cohort.
A shared Fifties childhood - rather than experiencing the very occasionally turbulent Sixties and Seventies with many other age groups - might be the key bond and glue for this large body of current humanity...
Friday, January 9, 2015
GOP 2016 : 'don't trust voters under 75 !' (they're all Boomers and their kids) (and relatively few 75+ vote)
In November 2016, all of "THE GREATEST GENERATION" (all those in the Allied nations born before 1941 and who can thus personally feel part of the WWII 'victory for modernity' {sic}) will be over 75.
Now journalists of all stripes never tire of telling us that the elderly vote more than the young.
But what very few journalists admit (the charitable view) or actually know (the uncharitable view) is the truly awkward fact that voting turnout actually drops off sharply after 75, as physical and cognitive infirmities keep the very old from voting.
Bad bad bad news for the GOP.
Because starting in 1968 with Nixon's first victory, the GOP has had a very good half century romp by exploiting The Greatest Generation's fundamental distaste for the fact that their children and grandchildren no longer think or vote like their parents do.
In terms of voter support , the GOP has always remained a major party based solely upon its reliable support among the pre-war generations, even when the Republican Party faltered temporarily among this or that class, gender, geographic location or ethnicity/religion.
Let me be extremely clear about what I mean : the GOP does not survive due to the vote of the elderly but solely due to the vote of a cohort - all those born before 1941.
Being 'well off' or being 'eighty' is an eternal event but not so being born before 1941: yes it is a big resource for votes, but it is also a constantly wasting resource.
And importantly, the divide in social values between the war generations and the post war generations is far, far, far greater than any internal divisions within each of these two groups.
So if the GOP doesn't start re-aligning its values with the shared values of the Boomer and post boomer generations it will soon find itself going the way of the Whig Party ...
Now journalists of all stripes never tire of telling us that the elderly vote more than the young.
But what very few journalists admit (the charitable view) or actually know (the uncharitable view) is the truly awkward fact that voting turnout actually drops off sharply after 75, as physical and cognitive infirmities keep the very old from voting.
Bad bad bad news for the GOP.
Because starting in 1968 with Nixon's first victory, the GOP has had a very good half century romp by exploiting The Greatest Generation's fundamental distaste for the fact that their children and grandchildren no longer think or vote like their parents do.
In terms of voter support , the GOP has always remained a major party based solely upon its reliable support among the pre-war generations, even when the Republican Party faltered temporarily among this or that class, gender, geographic location or ethnicity/religion.
Let me be extremely clear about what I mean : the GOP does not survive due to the vote of the elderly but solely due to the vote of a cohort - all those born before 1941.
Being 'well off' or being 'eighty' is an eternal event but not so being born before 1941: yes it is a big resource for votes, but it is also a constantly wasting resource.
And importantly, the divide in social values between the war generations and the post war generations is far, far, far greater than any internal divisions within each of these two groups.
So if the GOP doesn't start re-aligning its values with the shared values of the Boomer and post boomer generations it will soon find itself going the way of the Whig Party ...
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Boomers, let the epitaph on our collective headstone read thus : "From the Greater Generation , One MORE Good Thing : the Boomers' Successful March to save the Climate"
Let's not rest on our laurels --- because if the climate is lost , so is all our legacy, along with all our grandchildren and their grandchildren.
If we mess this one up now, what was the point of all the others ?
If we mess this one up now, what was the point of all the others ?
THE GREATER GENERATION and its internal critics : if only
Contrasting the Boomer Generation (1941-1966*) to their parents' generation (The Greatest Generation), Leonard Steinhorn feels boomer efforts to bring the reputed Allied aims of WWII to actual fruition at home makes them fully worthy of being called The GREATER GENERATION.
It is a claim he carefully lays out and in my mind, proves up , in his 2006 book of that title.
If you are a boomer and fear for this planet's climate, I strongly urge you to read and re-read Steinhorn's book.
But, not unexpectedly, I wish Professor Steinhorn had written another book on this subject.
Basically, I want to see him answer this question :
For a time these two contrary ways of viewing and dealing with physical reality fused as one in peoples' minds.
Gradually, though, they became separated and became soon were seen as so opposite that boomers, their parents and their own children had to choose definitely between one or the other.
Let me give one specific example : in 1960, Time Magazine's Person of the Year was "The American Scientist" and at that point in time, no one would ask, with deep dark suspicion , 'Hang on a minute, exactly what sort of scientist are they praising ?'
In 1960, on the left and on the right, all scientists were seen as being fused together in one big tribe.
But by the time of the rise of science-based environmental movements in the early 1970s, they stopped being so - separating out instead into modern and postmodern scientists, as I see it. But few others see it exactly as I do.
Instead, in 1980, Canadian sociologist Allan Schnaiberg usefully divided scientists into those involved in production (new ways to dig up deep deposited coal) versus those involved in studying the impact of all that new coal on the climate.
It is his terminology that has become the accepted way to describe this growing divide between scientists since the 1970s.
The boomers kids , in parallel, only seemed to be fused together as they moved from childhood to adulthood.
But as the twin icons of their childhood (nuclear energy too cheap to meter, and Nature-made medicine) moved apart, so did they : forced to choose one or the other but no longer both.
This can produce some very odd results among we boomers with inherent weaknesses in logic and consistent reasoning.
We boomers are free to do much on this earth : change our nationality, our class, our ideology, our spouse, to some extent even our gender.
But we can't change our birthdate ---- and it seems to be in the DNA of all true conservatives to deny that simple fact.
Being a boomer simply isn't a lifestyle choice - it is simply an accident of life why you were born between 1941 and 1966 and so many others weren't.
So in Chapter Three of Steinhorn's book , entitled "The Revenge of the Luddites", he makes great sport of all those conservative who pour scorn on the boomers.
Now I have no kick against these particular conservative constantly pouring scorn on liberals , or 'left wing boomers', or 'other boomers', or 'we boomers'.
But upon "the boomers" - from the outside- when you yourself are a boomer ?
Because virtually all the conservatives** Dr Steinhorn cites in this chapter are themselves boomers-in-good-standing, by birth and from birth.
So conservative boomers : please criticize 'the boomers' all you want - but from the inside, for God's sake , as you yourself were born in the boomer years too.
But why pretend you are not a boomer when a Google Search of your birthdate so quickly proves you dead wrong.
Is this bizarre behavior self-hatred/illogical or what ?
What is what it is, I think.
The conservative boomers still share something with left wing boomers I am afraid.
Both exhibit an unwillingness to accept boomers as being a group of individuals who experienced two conflicting ways of viewing reality as just one -- as children .
And that as adults, they came to understand that that can't possibly be so --- and in the process began dividing into two warring boomer camps....
_________________
** Andrew Sullivan born 1963, Sean Hannity 1961, Christopher Hitchens 1949, Doug Coupland 1961, George F Will 1941, Dinesh D'Souza 1961, Ann Coulter 1961, Bill O'Reilly 1949, David Brooks 1961, Peggy Noonan 1950, Roger Kimball 1953.
(Similarly,worldwide, the vast majority of the best known conservative writers are boomers.)
* Time Magazine in its January 1967 issue declaring the boomers "People of the Year" for 1966, but did not call them 'the under twenty year olds', as it should have done according to the supposed baby-boom experts of the day.
These experts all saw the baby boom as beginning in 1946, after the men returned home from overseas.
Instead Time consulted the facts, not the wannabe experts, and correctly saw the boom beginning in 1941 - hence the cover lauded 'the under 25 year olds'.
This cover article really did its homework and still reads well a half century later.
It is a claim he carefully lays out and in my mind, proves up , in his 2006 book of that title.
If you are a boomer and fear for this planet's climate, I strongly urge you to read and re-read Steinhorn's book.
But, not unexpectedly, I wish Professor Steinhorn had written another book on this subject.
Basically, I want to see him answer this question :
Was the baby boom (the unexpected blip upwards in births from 1941-1966 against a century and a half of decline) caused by postmodernity, or did it itself cause postmodernity, or were the two simultaneous events (the coming of age of boomers and of postmodernity) mere coincidences in time?My own personal view is that a combination of scientific successes in 1945 , both modern and postmodern (though not called that then), gave young would-be parents reason to hope for the future and to want to bring lots of kids into that bright future.
For a time these two contrary ways of viewing and dealing with physical reality fused as one in peoples' minds.
Gradually, though, they became separated and became soon were seen as so opposite that boomers, their parents and their own children had to choose definitely between one or the other.
Let me give one specific example : in 1960, Time Magazine's Person of the Year was "The American Scientist" and at that point in time, no one would ask, with deep dark suspicion , 'Hang on a minute, exactly what sort of scientist are they praising ?'
In 1960, on the left and on the right, all scientists were seen as being fused together in one big tribe.
But by the time of the rise of science-based environmental movements in the early 1970s, they stopped being so - separating out instead into modern and postmodern scientists, as I see it. But few others see it exactly as I do.
Instead, in 1980, Canadian sociologist Allan Schnaiberg usefully divided scientists into those involved in production (new ways to dig up deep deposited coal) versus those involved in studying the impact of all that new coal on the climate.
It is his terminology that has become the accepted way to describe this growing divide between scientists since the 1970s.
The boomers kids , in parallel, only seemed to be fused together as they moved from childhood to adulthood.
But as the twin icons of their childhood (nuclear energy too cheap to meter, and Nature-made medicine) moved apart, so did they : forced to choose one or the other but no longer both.
This can produce some very odd results among we boomers with inherent weaknesses in logic and consistent reasoning.
We boomers are free to do much on this earth : change our nationality, our class, our ideology, our spouse, to some extent even our gender.
But we can't change our birthdate ---- and it seems to be in the DNA of all true conservatives to deny that simple fact.
Our birthdate - contrary to FOX NEWS - is not a lifestyle choice
Being a boomer simply isn't a lifestyle choice - it is simply an accident of life why you were born between 1941 and 1966 and so many others weren't.
So in Chapter Three of Steinhorn's book , entitled "The Revenge of the Luddites", he makes great sport of all those conservative who pour scorn on the boomers.
Now I have no kick against these particular conservative constantly pouring scorn on liberals , or 'left wing boomers', or 'other boomers', or 'we boomers'.
But upon "the boomers" - from the outside- when you yourself are a boomer ?
Because virtually all the conservatives** Dr Steinhorn cites in this chapter are themselves boomers-in-good-standing, by birth and from birth.
So conservative boomers : please criticize 'the boomers' all you want - but from the inside, for God's sake , as you yourself were born in the boomer years too.
But why pretend you are not a boomer when a Google Search of your birthdate so quickly proves you dead wrong.
Is this bizarre behavior self-hatred/illogical or what ?
What is what it is, I think.
The conservative boomers still share something with left wing boomers I am afraid.
Both exhibit an unwillingness to accept boomers as being a group of individuals who experienced two conflicting ways of viewing reality as just one -- as children .
And that as adults, they came to understand that that can't possibly be so --- and in the process began dividing into two warring boomer camps....
_________________
** Andrew Sullivan born 1963, Sean Hannity 1961, Christopher Hitchens 1949, Doug Coupland 1961, George F Will 1941, Dinesh D'Souza 1961, Ann Coulter 1961, Bill O'Reilly 1949, David Brooks 1961, Peggy Noonan 1950, Roger Kimball 1953.
(Similarly,worldwide, the vast majority of the best known conservative writers are boomers.)
* Time Magazine in its January 1967 issue declaring the boomers "People of the Year" for 1966, but did not call them 'the under twenty year olds', as it should have done according to the supposed baby-boom experts of the day.
These experts all saw the baby boom as beginning in 1946, after the men returned home from overseas.
Instead Time consulted the facts, not the wannabe experts, and correctly saw the boom beginning in 1941 - hence the cover lauded 'the under 25 year olds'.
This cover article really did its homework and still reads well a half century later.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
One MORE Great Thing : Boomers' March for the Climate
"I ain't gonna march no more" should never become the boomers' song- no matter how old and retiring we feel.
Because whenever we marched we eventually got some halfway hopeful results: marching for racial civil rights, against the Vietnam war, to ban the bomb, for women and gay rights, for the environment.
We were the generation destined to do Great Things and by and large we succeeded.
But no time to rest on our laurels.
We must once again take to the streets as Boomers - even as wheelchair-bound Boomers with gray hair beneath our tie-dye caps - even through the streets of Washington DC , to fight for the climate.
We indeed didn't start the climate change fire but we must try to fight it.
To do one more Great Thing, before we go ....
Because whenever we marched we eventually got some halfway hopeful results: marching for racial civil rights, against the Vietnam war, to ban the bomb, for women and gay rights, for the environment.
We were the generation destined to do Great Things and by and large we succeeded.
But no time to rest on our laurels.
We must once again take to the streets as Boomers - even as wheelchair-bound Boomers with gray hair beneath our tie-dye caps - even through the streets of Washington DC , to fight for the climate.
We indeed didn't start the climate change fire but we must try to fight it.
To do one more Great Thing, before we go ....
Climate meltdown & boomer epitaph : "we didn't start the fire but we tried to fight it"
Was baby boomer Billy Joel really singing about harmful human climate change and our need (as fellow boomers) to take the lead in putting out the fire that our parents, grandparents & great-great-great grandparents actually started ?
I'd like to think so.
And so the lyrics from Joel's song may live on and on and on, long after he is just a brief entry in a book of quotations :
I'd like to think so.
And so the lyrics from Joel's song may live on and on and on, long after he is just a brief entry in a book of quotations :
BILLY JOEL (1949-2039) this now obscure singer and songwriter is remembered in the 25th century solely for this fragment from one of his forgotten songs, which has become the epitaph of the famous Boomer Generation who first stalled and then reversed human induced global warming threatening Humanity's continued existence...
Boomers : the 'Greater Generation' or the generation that precipitates the ending of the entire human experiment ?
Come on Boomers, we can do so much better !
We were supposed to be the generation from whom great things were expected.
Instead (somebody, somewhere, certainly not humanity itself) will remember us merely as the pathetic little generation that ended the entire human experiment for all time in a great big global meltdown.
Some of us Boomers will do so actively (big shout out to PMs Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott !)
But most of us will merely passively help end the human experiment : apparently we Boomers are not ones for much passion --- or commitment.
We'll just be inert Netflix Potatoes, as the equivalent of our parents' war against Nazi values grinds on outside our comfortable living rooms.
What we do - or don't do - on harmful human climate change, not Elvis, Rock 'n' Roll or Civil Rights Marches, will end up being what defines us Boomers.
Yes, we're all a little older, a little slower : the youngest of us are almost fifty and the oldest are in their early seventies - but we're not dead yet, not yet in the nursing home.
We still have time to do that One Great Thing that we all promised the world way back when....
We were supposed to be the generation from whom great things were expected.
Instead (somebody, somewhere, certainly not humanity itself) will remember us merely as the pathetic little generation that ended the entire human experiment for all time in a great big global meltdown.
Some of us Boomers will do so actively (big shout out to PMs Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott !)
But most of us will merely passively help end the human experiment : apparently we Boomers are not ones for much passion --- or commitment.
We'll just be inert Netflix Potatoes, as the equivalent of our parents' war against Nazi values grinds on outside our comfortable living rooms.
What we do - or don't do - on harmful human climate change, not Elvis, Rock 'n' Roll or Civil Rights Marches, will end up being what defines us Boomers.
Yes, we're all a little older, a little slower : the youngest of us are almost fifty and the oldest are in their early seventies - but we're not dead yet, not yet in the nursing home.
We still have time to do that One Great Thing that we all promised the world way back when....
I have here in my hand a list of names : rogue Boomers who deny climate change
I don't - yet - have 205 or 81 or 57 names or whatever alcohol-induced fantasy number Senator Joe came up with in the end.
But I'm working on it.
First, definitions.
The Baby Boom wasn't really a boom in babies conceived , taking the long view.
Rather it was a 25 year long interregnum (a blip upwards) in the one hundred and fifty year long slow slide downwards in the number of live births among families in the westernized world.
Starting generally around 1941 and continuing generally till 1966, the number of live births in the West edged upwards from its nadir of the Great Depression decade, before settling down once again to Great Depression levels or less.
In social science terms, harmful human climate change deniers/skeptics/hubrists aren't exactly hard to define (or to find) : they come right out and freely admit to their disbelief.
Traditionally, we denier watchers have tended to focus on the most strident ones and I now believe this to be wrong.
They are the most strident because (a) they are either very old, know they are dying and out of office or (b) they are very young and not yet in office.
But the ones with all the actual power to do things and not just to complain about things are the Boomer deniers.
They will be running our world - in terms of both formal politics and informal wealth and cultural influence - right up to the global melt down tipping point.
Just for example : Mitt Romney and prime ministers Harper, Abbott, Key and Cameron.
All leaders of the Anglo Saxon cum free world, all Boomers and all very weak on stopping harmful climate change.
I'm making a list of powerful Boomers, checking it twice trying to find out ,on the issue of the climate, who has been naughty and who has been nice.
And I will post the names of naughty little boomer kids permanently on the side column of this blog ....
But I'm working on it.
First, definitions.
The Baby Boom wasn't really a boom in babies conceived , taking the long view.
Rather it was a 25 year long interregnum (a blip upwards) in the one hundred and fifty year long slow slide downwards in the number of live births among families in the westernized world.
Starting generally around 1941 and continuing generally till 1966, the number of live births in the West edged upwards from its nadir of the Great Depression decade, before settling down once again to Great Depression levels or less.
In social science terms, harmful human climate change deniers/skeptics/hubrists aren't exactly hard to define (or to find) : they come right out and freely admit to their disbelief.
Traditionally, we denier watchers have tended to focus on the most strident ones and I now believe this to be wrong.
They are the most strident because (a) they are either very old, know they are dying and out of office or (b) they are very young and not yet in office.
But the ones with all the actual power to do things and not just to complain about things are the Boomer deniers.
They will be running our world - in terms of both formal politics and informal wealth and cultural influence - right up to the global melt down tipping point.
Just for example : Mitt Romney and prime ministers Harper, Abbott, Key and Cameron.
All leaders of the Anglo Saxon cum free world, all Boomers and all very weak on stopping harmful climate change.
I'm making a list of powerful Boomers, checking it twice trying to find out ,on the issue of the climate, who has been naughty and who has been nice.
And I will post the names of naughty little boomer kids permanently on the side column of this blog ....
Monday, January 5, 2015
Boomers : self indulgent, self centred - or a generation from whom great things are expected ?
Well, fellow Boomers - its 'do or die' time - literally.
Because some of us actually are --- dying of old age, having enjoyed our full three score and ten.
And as for "Never trust The Man" (or The Woman) or anyone over thirty : we are all well well over thirty -- even the very youngest of us is over fifty.
We run the world - as prime ministers, CEOs, generals, publishing magnates - we own its wealth - we hold its tenures and its Nobel Prizes, write its most widely read daily columns and books-for-thinking people.
That great thing of which it was long expected we were to do : its here, been here, is almost gone.
Its 'deciding the fate of the world' - for now and forever.
Great enough a thing for ya ?
We can stop and reverse - NOW ! - the ever increasing amount of human carbon waste we are pouring into the sky - stop the rush to an irreversible tipping point and climate meltdown - or do nothing.
Or worse - we can help throw a few more coals on the barbie/bier.
We can make a terrible crisis even worse by listening, once again, to our childhood teachers, our TV sets, all those upbeat books and magazine articles from our childhood .
All those lies about how the Manhattan nuclear Project won the war, that it is now providing us energy too cheap to meter and how it can be a future model for big bold plans to change the shape of the earth and the shape of the weather.
(Today we call it geo-engineering, but back then it was called just plain civil engineering : for example, plans to melt both Poles with nukes, changing the weather --- and then farming the results.
That was just a proposal - meanwhile the Manhattan nuclear Project had changed our weather ; now those once so cheerful April showers glowed in the dark all over the world --- filled with baby-killing strontium 90 fallout. Oh joy !)
So even as little bitty boomer kids we knew a different tale : we fully understood that the helplessness felt by the hero of the film The Invasion of the Body Snatchers got 1950s reality just about right.
We knew the Manhattan natural penicillin project that saved our baby sister wasn't made from coal tar, air and water like Man-made nylon and DDT all the other things the chemists were always dreaming up.
It and dozens of other marvellous life-saving antibiotics were made naturally - made by some of the smallest, weakest beings in existence.
Made definitely by the moral lowest of the low, the 4Fs of the 4Fs of the natural world : bottom-of-the-barrel smelly slime oozing in the dankest darkest corners of our collective basements.
We kids had learned if we held our noses and checked our gap and morality reflexes and worked with the slimiest part of Nature, instead of against it like the nuke boys, good things happened to good and bad children alike.
So what is it going to be boomers : Door #1 --- geo-nuke the world, all to save it ?
Or door #2 ----accepting nature as having an equal right with humans to co-exist on this planet and take a little advice from their 3.5 billion year success story at surviving on this planet ???
Because some of us actually are --- dying of old age, having enjoyed our full three score and ten.
And as for "Never trust The Man" (or The Woman) or anyone over thirty : we are all well well over thirty -- even the very youngest of us is over fifty.
We run the world - as prime ministers, CEOs, generals, publishing magnates - we own its wealth - we hold its tenures and its Nobel Prizes, write its most widely read daily columns and books-for-thinking people.
That great thing of which it was long expected we were to do : its here, been here, is almost gone.
Its 'deciding the fate of the world' - for now and forever.
Great enough a thing for ya ?
We can stop and reverse - NOW ! - the ever increasing amount of human carbon waste we are pouring into the sky - stop the rush to an irreversible tipping point and climate meltdown - or do nothing.
Or worse - we can help throw a few more coals on the barbie/bier.
We can make a terrible crisis even worse by listening, once again, to our childhood teachers, our TV sets, all those upbeat books and magazine articles from our childhood .
All those lies about how the Manhattan nuclear Project won the war, that it is now providing us energy too cheap to meter and how it can be a future model for big bold plans to change the shape of the earth and the shape of the weather.
(Today we call it geo-engineering, but back then it was called just plain civil engineering : for example, plans to melt both Poles with nukes, changing the weather --- and then farming the results.
That was just a proposal - meanwhile the Manhattan nuclear Project had changed our weather ; now those once so cheerful April showers glowed in the dark all over the world --- filled with baby-killing strontium 90 fallout. Oh joy !)
So even as little bitty boomer kids we knew a different tale : we fully understood that the helplessness felt by the hero of the film The Invasion of the Body Snatchers got 1950s reality just about right.
We knew the Manhattan natural penicillin project that saved our baby sister wasn't made from coal tar, air and water like Man-made nylon and DDT all the other things the chemists were always dreaming up.
It and dozens of other marvellous life-saving antibiotics were made naturally - made by some of the smallest, weakest beings in existence.
Made definitely by the moral lowest of the low, the 4Fs of the 4Fs of the natural world : bottom-of-the-barrel smelly slime oozing in the dankest darkest corners of our collective basements.
We kids had learned if we held our noses and checked our gap and morality reflexes and worked with the slimiest part of Nature, instead of against it like the nuke boys, good things happened to good and bad children alike.
So what is it going to be boomers : Door #1 --- geo-nuke the world, all to save it ?
Or door #2 ----accepting nature as having an equal right with humans to co-exist on this planet and take a little advice from their 3.5 billion year success story at surviving on this planet ???
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