I was born in the mid 1950s so am a Boomer as these things are defined, but I would like to think I am not typical of my cohort. I certainly absorbed some of the Boomer mentality while growing up in the '60s and '70s but I consciously rejected a lot of the more overt liberal/leftist and anti-traditional stuff though some of it will undoubtedly have rubbed off on me. But I understand why many people in the generations that followed despise the Boomers for trashing Western civilisation, an accusation which I regard as a fair one even if previous generations cannot be exonerated. Nothing comes out of nothing and the Boomer generation was merely the blossoming of a seed that had long been germinating
The Boomers thought they could change the world and they set about it, in their eyes as practical idealists. However, there were generous helpings of selfishness involved and even narcissism. They were the first generation who were spoiled and cosseted in their youth and did they ever take advantage of it. They had the material goods and developed a moral/spiritual superiority complex, but they completely misconceived the idea of love, reducing it to a pleasurable emotion and expunging it of any sense of sacrifice. Sacrifice is the essence of love but the Boomers turned love into indulgence.
Boomer self-centredness is one thing but where this generation really failed is where they thought they were at their best. When I lived in India in the 1980s the caste system was officially disowned but in reality it was still operative. As a Westerner, I was supposed to condemn caste but I understood the reasons for it even if it had been abused in the practice as any hierarchical system will be in a fallen world. Nonetheless, life is hierarchical and if you destroy hierarchy, you simply reduce standards to a lowest common denominator. Tradition which knew this was wise. Modernity which denies it is ignorant.
Ignorant, you might say, but well-meaning to which the obvious answer would be that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But that aside, is it really well-meaning to have this attitude or is it just weak, a symptom of that spiritually corrosive desire, the desire to be liked? I was warned by someone of the higher castes that I should not bring my liberal Western prejudices (and they are prejudices) to any relationships with Indians of the lower castes because if I did they would just take advantage. In words which struck me then and stay with me now he said, "Don't try to be kind. They will take your kindness for weakness".
Now, this has to be unpacked a little. It doesn't mean, don't be kind. Kindness is good and right - obviously. What it means, and what the Boomers have missed, is that often what you tell yourself is kindness is actually weakness and, in the Boomers' case, it is weakness supplemented by a misplaced sense of guilt to which they have succumbed partly because of indoctrination but also because of their own spiritual failings which include the lack of acknowledgement of the transcendent reality of God or, if God is acknowledged, his demotion from All Father and Creator to impersonal universalised compassion. The self-perceived victim and underdog classes see this weakness and exploit it, and this is leading to the downfall of the West.
Kindness is weakness when it ignores reality for the sake of being, or appearing to be, nice. In line with the general feminisation of the West it is largely a feminine failing (of both sexes). When counterbalanced by masculine authority it can help mitigate any resultant severity, but when that authority has been as undermined as it has been it is purely destructive of any higher order. It opens the door to attack from below and societal dismantling as the structures that have built that society and culture are torn down in the name of equality and fairness. Fairness to what? To those that want what others have or to the truth?
The Boomers are like the decadent progeny of an aristocratic class that consumes what its ancestors have built up with no thought for its descendants. They will have a spiritual bill to pay. But this doesn't let subsequent generations off the hook. They may complain about Boomer selfishness but is that because they want what the Boomers have or are they prepared to suffer and sacrifice to put things right? Not that things can be put right. The momentum of dissolution is too far advanced for that to happen. This cycle is coming to a close. But the effort to turn the tide and redress past failures will pay spiritual dividends on an individual level and maybe even mitigate what is traditionally known as the wrath of God, an outmoded but evocative term for the consequences of wrong thinking and wrong actions.
17 comments:
Interesting and distinctive thoughts.
(I am assuming that the boomer generation is a real "generation" and that therefore it goes from people born in 1945 to at least 1970 - which comfortably includes me too).
One big mistake of boomers was/is to wax nostalgic and lyrical about "the 1960s"; by which they mean sex and drugs, music and fashion - and what was actually attention-seeking, shallow, incoherent posturing in "politics".
The question I ask myself is along the lines of "what should boomers have done differently?"
As I've said before, I think the mistake was in the middle 1950s when the "anything but Christianity" mind-set captured the intellectual class; on the basis that Christianity was defined as the package they had been fed as young children.
After this, people would put great efforts into trying to find or invent an ideology or (usually "Eastern") religion that would satisfy their needs - but they gave up on doing the same for Christianity (and the churches colluded with this, by insisting on "package or nothing").
Since Christianity is the truth this means that our culture was for decades struggling to make sense of an impossible error - and has now (it seems) given up altogether.
This was mainly the fault of the boomers - at least quantitatively; although they were just continuing an established trend going back to the early 1800s - but the subsequent generations have been, in this vital respect, even-worse than the boomers.
I believe part of the criticism is that this generation helped themselves to the fruits of the past but didn't plant for the future. It's really all to do with the rejection of transcendence so that even spirituality for the Boomers is all about me.
@William - As so often the criticisms of boomers are broadly true; but this kind of mainstream cultural criticism is made from a position that is no better (and often worse) than what is being criticized. I don't see even the slightest sign that subsequent generations have corrected the deadly faults of boomers.
For instance, younger people today look ahead and try to find some kind of better future much, much less than boomers did - especially in the 1970s, when futurology, alternative lifestyle explorations, possible utopias and model societies - became almost mainstream.
It was half-hearted and too shallow - but there has been nothing comparable at even that somewhat superficial level since.
Oh, I quite agree. Each generation seems to compound the faults of the previous ones at the moment.
To continue (if I may - this post has set me thinking) something true about this born since 1945 generation of old people, is their selfishness and immaturity.
It really is common for the old-retired to try to project a false and misleading youthfulness (fashion, plastic surgery, lifestyle) and to burn-up nearly-all their capital on selfish pleasures at first; then later on astonishingly expensive and needlessly luxurious levels of "care" - when there would be immediate and much greater benefit from these resources going down to the younger generations (children, grandchildren etc).
All true, and understandable on the basis of metaphysical assumptions (no purpose in reality, no meaning but current gratification and avoidance of suffering).
But, it seems the younger generations currently share these assumptions, perhaps even more strongly - and so I can't see why they are any better.
Being victims of the selfish materialism of boomers, actually does Not make the victims morally superior.
Yes, the selfishness and immaturity possibly come from their abandonment of religion coupled with the comparative wealth they now have which they fritter away on cruises and restaurants etc, and attempts to stay young. But, as you say, the generations down from them show little sign being much different though they may express their selfishness and immaturity differently.
The Great Generation
The Silent Generation
The Boomers
Generation X
Millenials
Gen Z
Gen Alpha
If we consider Time to unfold in a septenary rhythm then perhaps it fits with the sense that we are in some kind of end-game.
The inter-war generation don't escape blame, but it seems that the Boomers guilt seems clearer. As the first post-war generation they had a genuine chance to course correct. But the idealism that could have blossomed was outsourced to the State instead. They had not understood that, as Valentin Tomberg put it - the State is not superhuman, rather it is sub-human.
The very national and international institutions that were created then - now thwart all future generations from fulfilling their destinies.
Your last point is very pertinent. We are certainly at a disadvantage but at the end of the day that cannot absolve us of spiritual responsibility.
It is a thought-provoking topic. Plenty of criticism of the Boomers is warranted, but they are not uniquely bad. For instance, the idea from the hippie and new age movements that things would just get better without us having to be moral or prudent was mistaken. But then again much of the Internet hype decades later was the same.
I think for people in general, the way things are when you grow up influences what you think of as normal. No one is immune to it. So, while Boomers are criticized for being stuck in the 1960's or 1970's, there are plenty of Generation Xers who seem to be stuck in the 1980's. But also everyone is able to learn.
Hi, William. This part really caught my attention, but I don't understand it: "often what you tell yourself is kindness is actually weakness and, in the Boomers' case, it is weakness supplemented by a misplaced sense of guilt to which they have succumbed partly because of indoctrination but also because of their own spiritual failings which include the lack of acknowledgement of the transcendent reality of God or, if God is acknowledged, his demotion from All Father and Creator to impersonal universalised compassion."
I know what you mean by "this misplaced sense of guilt", but can you please explain more about where it comes from? How is it related to "the lack of acknowledgement of the transcendent reality of God"? I don't see the connection, but I really want to.
No, NLR, you're right, the Boomers are not uniquely bad and you might even say they are in many ways the victims of circumstance, that being the time in which they came to awareness of themselves which was a culminating point of mankind's rejection of God. Also, the 2 world wars destroyed the past and left us with different attitudes to all that had gone before. And then, of course, there is all the new technology which had such an impact at the time of the Boomers' coming to adulthood. But still you can respond to all this and the new currents that were undoubtedly flowing into life in the '60s with greater understanding and less self-indulgence than this generation did.
Jonathan, the misplaced sense of guilt is related to the dogma of egalitarianism which is the great idol of modernity. If we are all equal then the cultural or ethnic success, even supremacy, of one group must be at the expense of another group who by virtue of that fact become exploited victims rather than people who just weren't as good as the first group. And egalitarianism comes from a false idea of God and life and human beings. The transcendent God is the Most High and creation is worked out in a hierarchical fashion from above to below.
We have flattened God and creation to make everything one and everything equal because everything is one. But the oneness, though real, is only part of the story, the part that relates to immanence. Bring transcendence into the picture and you have hierarchy and that means there should be no guilt because of greater achievement.
"this generation helped themselves to the fruits of the past but didn't plant for the future. It's really all to do with the rejection of transcendence so that even spirituality for the Boomers is all about me." " I don't see even the slightest sign that subsequent generations have corrected the deadly faults of boomers."
Both true. The key word is "corrected". The Boomers rejected Western/Christian tradition and created a new liberal tradition. The other generations copied this new tradition and developed it. They didn't correct the failure of the Boomers, they followed their ideas and developed them until their logical consequences.
So the Boomers were not the intellectual sons of their fathers but the other generations were the intellectual sons of the Boomers. You see this very graphically in Catholic architecture: the cruciform church had lasted 2000 years, then the 60s started a new awful modernist architecture style that continues until our days (they are building a new Church in my parish and it is like this. It is 2025).
The later generations are clearly worse than the Boomer except in one aspect: the sheer self-confidence of Boomers (should I say "arrogance"?). You can see this article. https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/baby-boomer-secrets-of-power. My parents never admitted to be wrong in their lifetimes. Not once. They were very confident that they owned the truth. They criticized their own kids to death every time they did anything that was not exactly what they thought it should be done. This way Generation X was not that confident (many of them were victims of their parent's divorce too or TV was their nanny). Later generations (Millennials, etc.) had a much worse life so it is difficult to have self-confidence this way.
But self-confidence is dangerous and the Boomers was the generation of the Dunning-Kruger effect (the more ignorant a person is, the more confident he is) They rejected 2000 years of tradition for fortune cookie slogans ("If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem", "expansion of conscience", "New Pentecost" - in Catholic circles - "Make Love, not War", "Pull yourself by your bootstraps") which are the shallowest of the shallow ideas. They did not bother to study in detail the things of the past: they knew they were outdated because they were produced before them. “Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30”. And they were so full of themselves that they thought that these slogans were brilliant ideas produced by their brilliant minds. Take that, Aristotle!
To be fair, this is what all teenagers do but the Boomers was the only generation that grew old but didn't grow up. At the end of the day, this was not their fault: every generation submitted to the same environment would have reacted the same way. There was a perfect storm: they were the first generation of the sexual revolution so they rejected Christianity and found a new ethical framework in liberalism so they could be promiscuous (not all of them, of course). Since they were lucky to live in an economic boom, they interpreted their worldly success as validation of their "wisdom" (a common human tendency). They were the first generation to be educated not by their parents but by the school and mass media. This is another cause why they rejected tradition. Since they didn't have the Internet and mass media was full of Boomers and validated their preconceptions for 40 years, they were full of themselves and lived in a bubble of Boomer ideas. If you go to Youtube, you will find that videos about The Beatles outnumber videos of other bands with a wide margin. This Beatles hegemony has been this way for 60 years, the time of the Boomers. The Beatles broke up in 1970.
The powers that be used Boomers as useful idiots to destroy the old order and implement our current world. So, full of sheer confidence, they destroyed the old world think they were constructing something better with their half-baked ideas. The title of Hellen Andrews book is fitting: "Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster". Chesterton's fence never came to their minds.
Their sons and grandsons believed in these ideas (which destroyed civilization). It was not their duty to correct the destruction of the Boomers: they were said that these ideas were good by their parents, school, mass media, . A minority (which I belong for God's grace) took many decades to find out that all of this was a bunch of lies, because everybody was telling me the same. The Boomers had the voice of their parents, but they didn't trust anybody over 30, so they listened to other liberal voices. But we had nobody to tell us the truth and it was a painstaking task. Our parents were liberal. It is like being given a map of Paris and, after some decades, you find out that your are in New York, after being lost for so many times. I lost multiple decades of my life because of this.
This is not to say that Boomers should be approached with anger. They were the product of their time, like we are a product of ours. And our generation (Gen X) is very privileged towards later generations, so I will let the complaints to them. But if we don't see clearly the reality, we are going to repeat it. The Boomers had an awful impact in Western civilization and we are living in the consequences of their impact.
The only thing I have to blame to Boomers is that they are unable to say "we were wrong. Sorry" or "I was not this way but my generation was wrong". It is not that hard. They are the masters of coping mechanism: "The later generations are worse" , "Every generation thinks they know better”, “Not everything wrong with the world is our fault.”, “Maybe look in the mirror before blaming someone else.”, “We’re not perfect, but we did our best.”, “You’ll appreciate us when you’re older.” All of this are true but irrelevant. They didn't apply this to earlier generations either.
Since they don't feel sorry and they feel right they are continuing the destruction until their last days. See, for example, Biden, Trump or the authorities of Christian churches: they "know" that they can break everything and a new paradise will appear. Too much self-confidence.
A really excellent couple of comments which cover pretty much the whole Boomer problem, encapsulated by the they grew old but didn't grow up point. Thanks.
Eric Hoffer called it "an ordeal of affluence."
As noted by previous commenters - the worst aspect of the boomer generation is near-universal *non-repentance* - despite an enormous amount to repent.
e.g. Among my contemporaries and colleagues, it is almost true to say that they "all" sold-out to the greatest degree that they could manage - and I think probably none have repented, not even slightly.
When I compare what people said aged 20 with how they ended-up, awareness of the contradiction is absent; zero awareness that there has been almost complete betrayal and inversion.
Mass-produced, corrupt, servile, conscienceless, materialist bureaucrats who really believe that they are (still) radical idealists, bravely battling against the Establishment!
This is such a damnable quotation. I am allowing that he is worthy of much forgiveness, and this is certainly characteristic of the age of dissolution of which the "high" caste seems unaware of, or is, rather, forgivingly, pragmatic of, especially in light of the scale of suffering that is beyond insane or obvious to most - detachment being always a welcome redoubt - to the end of so much materially wasted. Where to even begin? Or, more improbably, how can these attitudes be mended?
There is the quotation of mountain climbing as an affirmatively bodily action to exercise the spirit, or rather both, an exercise of the spirit upon the body: "However, it is not possible to always remain on the peaks, since it is necessary to descend... But then, what is the point? The point is that the high knows the low, but the low does not know the high." - René Daumal (gathered together as it were in J. Evola "Meditation Upon the Peaks")
One sees spirit fleeing INTO matter, rather than the opposite, fleeing FROM matter, in such a diabolic formula. The very inversion of traditional caste and of any notion of hierarchy, an eternally valid and individual dignity that supercedes the Self in the place of Destiny that works wonders throughout the Kosmos. The acceptance of a downward spiraling inertia, degenerative - even de-evolutionary - that is very much the "crab bucket" metaphor of living beings using the weaknesses of others to prop themselves up, only to become victim to the crush of the press of the all the climbing bodies oppressing the rest.
These notions already take up enough space in the wordless, formless abyss of thoughts. It is beyond time to accept that our "elites" are proletariat, nevermind - please God - the Boomer, and that it is the individual duty of every being to perceive their given dignity and the dispensations that such dignity allows. Jesus Christ is inexhaustible. Can the same be said of one of us?
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