Posted on 09/27/2011 12:02:34 PM PDT by Kaslin
I often joke with my wife that I wish my generation — the Baby Boomers — could die without taking me with them. I’d sure as hell like to be around to see them go. They ruined the culture of this country, threw away the untold riches bequeathed to them, betrayed and undermined centuries of wisdom, spread the use of drugs, legitimized divorce and abortion, and even managed to screw up the civil rights movement that might otherwise have been their signal achievement. On the other hand, they did give us pre-faded jeans, so I guess that’s something.
All this misery they (we, I fear I should say) heaped on America and the west while retaining a sense of arrogant self-satisfaction and self-justification that, were it not for our knowledge of sinful human nature, would defy understanding. The television show Mad Men is excellent drama, I admit, but it fairly drips with the Baby Boomers’ overriding notion that America used to be nothing more than a desert of falsehood, bigotry, and oppression before the Sixties cavalry arrived to rescue us from ourselves. Which, not to put too fine a point on it, is crap.
A book called Willpower has been making a splash lately and will, I’m told, appear on the New York Times bestseller list next week. I have not read the book yet, but while in New York last week at the behest of the Manhattan Institute, I attended an MI-sponsored presentation by the book’s authors, psychology researcher Roy F. Baumeister and science writer John Tierney.
Willpower surpasses even intelligence as a predictor of success in life. And Baumeister has performed a number of experiments that convinced him that willpower is something like a muscle: it can be strengthened, conserved, and fatigued. Like a muscle, it also needs to be fueled. Baumeister’s assertion that glucose in the blood is essential to willpower has featured in the headlines about the book.
But in the question period after the presentation, I asked Baumeister how else, aside from eating well, could willpower be strengthened. His response was this: Exercise strengthens willpower just as it strengthens muscles. Even a meaningless exercise of will — training yourself to use your left hand for a task instead of your right, for instance — can make the will stronger over time. He added — I quote from memory: “When I was a boy, I used to be baffled by the idea of profanity. I used to wonder why there should be all these words that everyone knew but nobody used. But now I understand: that strengthens willpower.”
Well, right. In other words, behaving well, behaving responsibly, learning the norms of politeness and refusing to abandon them without good reason tend to make you a more self-controlled, successful, and finally better person.
This is precisely the wisdom my generation threw away. Their promiscuity, adolescent foul-mouthedness, bad manners, and disregard for tradition — all of which they claimed were a new kind of freedom — were in fact the precursors to the very oldest kind of slavery: slavery to one’s own impulses and desires. This slavery, packaged in the Sixties as “identity” or “culture” or “the right to be yourself,” ultimately leads to enslavement by others as it makes you indolent and irresponsible and in need of protection and restraint by the powers that be. A poor black man’s journey from hip hop culture to prison is a perfect example. So is a middle class white man’s journey from moral license and unwarranted praise to his sniveling need for an all-providing — oh, and by the way, all-powerful — state.
A government that wants more power knows well it can acquire that power by stripping the citizenry of every need and opportunity to provide for and take control of themselves — every reason to exercise their will. Welfare, unending unemployment benefits, “free” health care, business bailouts, the “right” to live off your parents’ insurance until you’re 47 or whatever: these, not religion, are the true opiate of the people.
My generation, using the loftiest possible language, destroyed the loftiest possible image of man — his image as God-made creature endowed with the right to be left alone. Instead, they declared him a weak collection of needs with some mysterious right to have those needs paid for by other people’s earnings. They told us government had to provide the citizen’s material needs even if it hampered his ability to live free.
Instead they should have asked: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he forfeits his own soul?”
FDR and the Progressive movement sowed all of their deadly seeds before the first baby boomer was even born.
The “Greatest Generation” kept a solidly Democratic congress in place for 30+ years, which did even greater harm.
I also might add that it was the “Greatest Generation” that managed to raise a bunch of winer self-absorbed children.
Look at who was voting and when.
Tarring an entire generation with the same brush is beyond stupid.
I think it is like what William James called ‘moral fighting form’
Are we turning a bit liberal-simple-minded here?
My boomer compatriots (from one of the service academies) are largely doctors, lawyers, pilots, and generals. Very very few demonstrate the sub-human IQ which appears to have infected a large part of the MSM boomers.
So please, let’s not indict the entire generation with the afflictions of those who had the misfortune to smoke their life away in Berkeley or Columbia.
How in the world did they go from building all those beautiful ships and aircraft in 43-45, straight back to building the same horrible ugly cars and houses the day after the war ended and for three decades afterwards???
Dr. MLK Jr was born in 1929....
Not sure what the boomers contributed to the civil rights movement.
I totally agree. The Internet stands as one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments. In fact, it’s all the greater because we take it so much ffor granted.
I think Woodrow Wilson started the whole think. The man was a snake.
Cindie
They jumped in at the end, when the battle had essentially been won, and gave themselves all the credit for the accomplishments they did so little to bring about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_(book)
You beat me to it.
Everybody knows what he means by “The Baby Boomers.”
It’s a short-hand way of describing the dominant tendency of a large group.
I can find examples of fine upstanding (not to mention clean and articulate) character in any group which has dominantly negative characteristics. This doesn’t make the generalization inaccurate, it only demonstrates the fairly obvious fact that all generalizations have exceptions.
I’m right dead center in the group and I agree 100% with everything AK says here. It’s just that I never felt part of the group and have consistently opposed its dominant tendencies all along. That just makes me an outlier, which is exactly where I want to be.
Yep, it's about time someone lowered the boom on the Boomers. (full disclosure: I am one)
Same for the "Greatest Generation". The lowest generation IMO.
There is no excuse for squandering the richest legacy ever bequeathed to a generation, throwing away the sovreignty of the greatest nation on earth, and spending borrowed money like there's no tomorrow.
Can generation "X" pull our fat out of the fire?
An indictment of the Boomer generation like this usually originates from a member of Gen X or Gen Y.
I was born in 1948 and those my age whom I know seem quite normal. The dopers and demonstrators of the late 60’s were and are of another planet. Hate to sound Kerrylike but I served in Vietnam and saw what drugs did to people over there so I wasn’t insulated from all the turmoil of that time.
JMHO but the boomer misfits the author describes have now pretty much segregated themselves into liberal superghettos (southern California, NY/NJ/MA) and smaller `progressive’ enclaves (Austin TX, Madison WI, Asheville NC).
Here in South Carolina things are mostly copacetic except Lindsey Graham did get reelected.
But yes, depicting all Boomers as aging adolescents is to smear with a broad brush.
“Willpower” - a rather Nietzschean-sounding term. I’ve always preferred “self-control” or “self-discipline”. (Wasn’t it Thucydides who said, “Self-control is the chief element of self-respect”?)
Then again, a book titled “Willpower” probably sells better than one called “Self-Control”.
While much of the article paints with a broad brush, I agree with the basic premise.
The "Greatest Generation" was determined that our generation had it better than they. While it is a reasonable sentiment shared by every generation, they lost sight of the fact that it was the deprivation of the Great Depression and the sacrifices of WWII that made them great.
Unfortunately, they were also wildly successful in seeing that we had it easier, and it was resulting lack of challenge and purpose that turned so many of our generation into self-absorbed, self-loathing whiners.
Greedy Geezers, as Rush would say.
Andrew Klavin can speak for himself. Maybe he is the suckiest of them all but as for myself and my same age friends and relatives we are patriots all and never took a handout from the govt or anyone else. We all worked our azzes off to make a living for 40 plus years, paid our taxes and raised the kids. By the way the vast majority of these kids are now productive hard working Americans.
Blame the Progressive movement which has hijacked our educational sytem and our mainstream culture.
Hey Klavin you dipstick, who do you think the Tea Party is? Its the suckiest generation.
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