Boomer Backlash

Did boomers ruin the world, and if so, was it really their fault?

I've been noticing that "boomer bashing" has become all the rage among younger generations. Apparently boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) have ruined the entire world. Having been born when Eisenhower was the US President, I had somehow contributed to the destruction. I had no clue.

Here is a little exchange I had online with some young men:

Me: Why do some people here want to trash boomers? Don't throw the boomer out with the bathwater. I know plenty of millennials, gen x, gen z etc. who are all worthy of being trashed. Has nothing to do with age. Your worth comes from what contribution you're making to Universe.

Young Man 1: Boomers as a whole fucked society. They were basically given everything. No wars, no depression. They are the "weak men make hard times" of the equation

[This is quite a skewed perception. The boomer generation was not “given everything”–this generation came out of a world ravaged by World War II and the unleashing of the atomic bomb. Just as boomers began to come of age, the draft sent young men to fight in Vietnam. It was also an era of racial inequality and civil unrest. As far as an economic depression, many boomers who had taken advantage of the technological advances and abundance of those years lost their income and/or savings in the 2008 Great Recession.]

Young Man 2: We trash boomers because they managed to destroy an entire nation. Melenials [sic] made things socially worse. It's up to the mext [sic] generations to fix it

Scrolling through the chat I found other comments such as the following:

• I feel it was the boomer curse.

• I think the boomer years of changing reality to suit your views are over.

* I'm renting, we have some money but not enough for a house (in UK whom [sic] does!) We dont [sic] have parental help; because boomers! .(dark side Pluto Leo aka Boomers). See Adam Curtis, “Century of the Self” for Boomer on Boomer truths.

• We can now just focus on our love - like it used to be before Boomers!

• Its a generation that brought down the entire worlds civliations [sic] and was done so by ego and greed.

• I honeslty [sic] have meet only one boomer family that actually care about their kids and grandkids AND changed their lives to help them.

• a whole a lot of us are suffering and have had their life/hope/dreams obliterated by boomers.

Me: No. Your life was obliterated by globalist scumbags. Not "the boomer generation.". Give credit where it's due.

Young Man: They are boomers as well. We are all charged with keeping life going and co-creating and for my experience almost every boomer I know only care about themselves and their money and social status. Almost every friend I have had decided against having kids because they cant afford housing yet most their parents have all the wealth and just watch on as their kids suffer so much.

So I agree, not all are bad and some of my heros [sic] were Boomers (RIP david Lynch). But most interations [sic] people have with boomers are negative.

Me: Let's not look at history in a lazy way. Again, globalist scumbags screwed everything up, not the boomers.

Young Man: I hear you and agree to the most part. To caviate [sic], you become what you hate so I dont [sic] hate them. However we have to be honest with ourselves to heal and there [sic] a lot of hurt and a lot of hurt comes from boomers for generations below. More than any other. Yes there are scumbags globalists. I'll stand on the hill with you supporting this, sometimes I question if they are human. But we cant [sic] just blame these people. As a whole the generation was very selfish. I read that studies (honeslty [sic] I cant find now so do take with a pinch of salt) that boomers were the first generation that actually hated their kids. I think there is more "local" suffering at the hands of loved ones then [sic] there are global scumbags - whom [sic] are also boomers. Immense cultral [sic] damage has also been done.

Me: Every generation feels screwed by the previous one to various degrees. To paraphrase Buckminster Fuller, don't complain about a broken system or try to fix it. Create a new one.

 Young Man: Again I hear you and agree with that. I'm not (just!) complaining baout [sic] boomers I'm acknowledging the pain they have caused. By looking into the problem one can start to heal. As to creating new, this I have to disagree. The "lets [sic] create new" seems to be what the boomer generation tried to do. "New" is egoic and avoident to issues. By doing so you create new issues not fixing old. I feel the way out of this is to acknowledge more the old issues and work on those issues. As a kid I was badly neglected and abused and ran to start "new" on an isalnd [sic]. I wanted it to be paraidice [sic] but it was as dark as the town I was in.

I've not got any CBD today and my condtion [sic] is pretty bad, so if I've come across as rude, too intense, or even boomer hating - I apologize. I'm really not.

*******************

I find it interesting that Young Man, after trashing boomers repeatedly, insists that he doesn't hate boomers, indeed some of his heroes are boomers...then he excuses his online behavior by blaming it on lack of CBD meds, which is an excuse–dare I say–that a boomer would never make.

Here's a story that encapsulates the difference between boomers and their kids: My husband Johnny grew up as an adventurer who knew how to hunt and fish, and how to survive in the wilderness. He used to have contests with his friends to see who could camp in the mountains the longest without having to run home to mommy and daddy.

When Johnny's son Juan was around 10, Johnny thought it was time for him to start learning some of those skills. He took Juan outside and showed him how to kill a pigeon with a slingshot, with the intention of teaching him how to prepare and cook it. But little Juan was horrified. He scooped up the dead bird and cradled it in his arms, crying. Then he went and got his cousins and all the kids in the neighborhood, and they made a procession, complete with candles and chanting, to bury the bird in the park with a proper funeral!

The lesson in wilderness survival had modulated into F#, and Johnny was mortified. He had to disappear for the rest of the day. (By the way, Johnny says pigeon is excellent in a soup.)

Well, I certainly don't want to stand on the Substack Soapbox defending boomers, or anyone else for that matter. What is truly disturbing about Young Man’s rant is not where he directs his anger, but rather the "groupthink" aspect. (The cognate "groupthink" derives from Orwell's novel 1984, in which he created words like "crimethink" and "doublethink.")

"Groupthink occurs when individuals in cohesive groups fail to consider alternative perspectives because they are motivated to reach a consensus which typically results in making less-than-desirable decisions. For example, group members may ignore or discount information that is inconsistent with their chosen decision and express strong disapproval against any group member who might disagree." Source

In one of Young Man’s comments I'm advised to consult British filmmaker Adam Curtis' documentary Century of the Self. According to Young Man this video explains and rationalizes the boomer bashing argument.

So I watch it. The opening explains how Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud) was the first one to coach businesses on how they could manipulate the masses into buying products that they didn't actually need. Through the power of print advertising and the nascent television industry, a desire-based rather than need-based economy was created. We still live in this economy today.

The documentary goes on to explain how the boomer generation became the self-centered, world-destroying, child-ignoring (according to Young Man) generation. Adam Curtis, himself a boomer although a British version, analyzes how boomers' opinions and behaviors were formed. He attributes the origin of these opinions and behaviors to public relations campaigns designed to sell products. These campaigns were so successful in the commercial realm that politicians and governments adopted the very same techniques in order to sway the public toward the desired political agenda.

Curtis spends a good deal of time on the career of Edward Bernays (1891-1995). Bernays was born in Vienna but migrated to the States with his family when he was one year old. Bernays used the theories of his Uncle Sigmund to develop the nascent field of public relations, which Bernays referred to as "engineered consent."

Freud, the creator of pychoanalysis, saw human beings as driven by instinctual desires that were mainly sexual and aggressive. Because such desires were dangerous if acted upon in a conscious way, they were repressed. Freud saw these primitive suppressed instincts as the cause of World War I.

Bernays' entry into the political world began with his assignment to write propaganda for Woodrow Wilson, who brought the U.S. into the war. Later he was again called to the White House to revamp the image of President Calvin Coolidge, who had been Vice President under Warren Harding, ascending to the Presidency when Harding died suddenly in 1923. But when it came to election time the following year, Coolidge's team worried that his "fuddy duddy" lackluster image would hinder his chances. Bernays to the rescue! He invited the current Vaudeville stars to the White House and filmed them being greeted by the President. Al Jolson hanging out with Pres. Calvin, how cool was that? The newspapers picked up on it of course, Idge became Cool overnight, and was elected to a full term in 1924.

One of Bernays' next successes was a campaign to sell more cigarettes, specifically to women. In 1929 most women did not smoke, at least in public. Smoking was seen as a man's activity. The American Tobacco Company realized that such a taboo, leaving out half of all the possible cigarette consumers, was leaving half the money on the table. They hired Bernays to fix the problem.

In order to do that, Bernays had to change the perception of smoking and make it appealing to women, and simultaneously make women smokers acceptable to men. First he paid a considerable fee to consult one of the leading psychologists of the day, A.A. Brill, who told him that a cigarette represents the penis. So in order to get women smoking, he would have to convince them they needed penises. He staged a public event that featured several young debutantes. At an agreed-upon time, all these young ladies pulled out cigarettes hidden under their clothing and began to smoke. The cigarettes were re-branded as "freedom torches," with all the accompanying patriotic associations insinuating themselves upon the unconscious mind of the public.

Previous advertising campaigns had focused on convincing the public using facts. The innovation of Bernays was that he realized people were not sold on something by throwing facts at them, but rather by their emotional involvement, especially if it originated in the unconscious mind. He used his Uncle Sigmund's theories to associate products with people's unconscious desires. This type of advertising was soon adopted by politicians. They realized the same way the masses could be controlled economically, they could be controlled politically as well.

The original “Marlboro Man” was a chick.

The Century of the Self documentary continues up through the 90s, explaining how these psychologically manipulative techniques based on Sigmund Freud's theories were foisted on the unconscious minds of an entire generation–the boomer generation. Wall Street banker Paul Mazer of Lehman Bros. said "People must be trained to desire; to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man's desires must overshadow his needs."

Frankly, the message "You might not need this, but you'll feel better having it” seems just as current today as it was 40 years ago!

I thought it curious that Young Man was referring me to a documentary that purportedly justified his boomer-bashing, yet it did nothing of the kind. The documentary is about how people are controlled by subconscious/unconscious forces and programming. Countless psychological experiments, such as the Milgram Experiment, show that most people obey commands from authority figures even if the actions conflict with their actual values. The Curtis documentary points out how easily people are manipulated. This is why it's so important to cultivate individual thinking based on sound values. Otherwise people will just parrot beliefs and slogans that are fed to them in various nefarious ways, that they adopt without realizing these are not their own ideas.

Even those whose thinking goes against the "normal" thinking, may be merely joining other contrarians (another type of conformity) instead of having their own original thoughts!

So one could argue that the consumer-driven, self-absorbed mentality which originated with the boomers was artificially created by advertising. We are told, "you can be anything you want to be." You can create an identity.

Now consumer desires can have no limit because they're dominated by self-expressiveness. But your "identity" is directly tied to marketing from business, so what kind of identity is that?

Once I was browsing in a women’s boutique in Brooklyn. A customer was speaking with the sales clerk, trying to decide between the green leather wallet and the blue leather wallet. “It’s important what my wallet says about me,” she remarked.

I remember thinking, I know what my wallet says about me. It says I’m broke.

As members of the public we’re bombarded not only with advertising, but also with even more insidious manipulative techniques that we have no control over, and may not even be aware of.  For instance, I've written before about subliminal carrier frequencies that are broadcast alongside Muzak in a department store, or in an office building.  Such frequencies contain hidden messages like "if you shoplift you'll get caught" or "work harder."  Subliminal messaging is not only condoned, but encouraged by the U.S. Dept. of Justice. It's really the same as in Huxley’s Brave New World, where children were conditioned from the womb to accept their class status and their role in society.

“Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse.”

–Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Writer Elinora Gudmundsdottir gives a number of examples of subliminal messaging in advertising:

In the Fedex logo there is a hidden arrow, implying speedy and accurate delivery.

The Amazon logo connects the "a" to the "z", suggesting everything "from a to z" can be found there. Additionally, the arrow looks like a lopsided smile–the sheepish grin of Amazon customers pleased with the great deal they got, one surmises.

The "Feel the Curves" Coca Cola ad was part of a 1980s Australian campaign. If you magnify the ice cubes, a rather vulgar image is revealed. "Sex sells" is probably the biggest takeaway from Business 101.

Subliminal messaging doesn't have to be manipulative, merely suggestive. In its logo the Swiss chocolate brand Toblerone uses mountain imagery reminding the viewer of the Swiss Alps, and a discreet bear representing the location of the company's headquarters in Bern, aka the "city of bears."

The internet, which has only existed on a mass basis since 1983, is a double edged sword.  Its a walk-in closet the size of Disney World and filled with an equal amount of junk.  It's getting harder to tell a bot from a human, real footage from CGI.  At this stage of the game no one should doubt that hackers, bureaucrats, globalists and common criminals are using all available technology to control our behavior and rob us blind while we're deaf to the warnings from tech bro white hats.

So is all this just to excuse boomers from social responsibility?   No, it's more like, boomers may have done the best they could with the cards they were dealt. Yes, they benefited from the post-war abundance. But if millennials/Gen Z/Gen X/Gen whatever (don’t we love these labels) had received a handful of aces, would they have gone all Buddhist and run off to ashrams, renouncing sushi dinners and mocha lattes and devoting the rest of their lives to making gluten-free turkey ham and soy cheese sandwiches for the homeless?  

No one is promoting the recognition of shared values and similarities. Are we not all human beings? Seems like we should have a few things in common. It used to be that you could have a conversation with someone regardless of whether they agreed with you politically. Not any more.

In the media push toward “identity” society is sectioned into smaller and smaller units. In caveman days it was men and women. In Biblical times it was men, women, Christians, Jews. In medieval times it was men, women, Christians, Jews, Arabs. In the 60s it was men, women, Christians, Jews, Arabs, Buddhists, gays, Blacks, Latinos, students, hippies. Now it’s men, women, gays, lesbians, trans, Christians, Jews, Arabs, Buddhists, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, boomers, milennials, Gen X, Gen Y, vaxxers, anti-vaxxers, Trumpers, anti-Trumpers, Leftists, Conservatives…have I left anyone out…OMG I’m so sorry!

The technique of "divide and conquer" dates back to Sun Tzu, and probably earlier. In battle, a general achieves victory by dividing the opposing army. Similarly, by segmenting society into smaller and smaller factions rulers are able to better control the populace. Even grassroots movements are co-opted by our "leaders" to play into their own game plan. Take the Women's Lib movement of the sixties, for example. On the surface, it made total sense that women should be welcomed into the job market, and that they should receive the same pay as men for the same job. Behind the scenes though, the real reason the movement gained traction with the establishment was so that families could be more easily fractioned, children separated from their mothers, and more taxes could be collected. Yet the official script was worthy of Bernays himself.

Why do we allow ourselves to be divided according to commercial agendas whose raison d’etre is merely to sell more products, and the political agenda du jour ? Young Man, the problem is not with generations. It's with individuals who truly don't know how to be an individual without being assigned an identity by some commercial or political entity. And realistically, how are they supposed to know this? Individuality has been trained out of us our whole lives, starting in Kindergarten. Anyone who really wants to be an individual with their own thoughts and ideas is basically starting from scratch.

Good luck. We’ll need it.