Youth Narcissism: Blaming the 1980s? Try the 1960s

American Thinker ^ | 3/1/07 | Steven M. Warshawsky

[zimfam007]

The study, conducted by five psychologists, examined the responses given by 16,475 college students, between 1982 and 2006, on a written personality test called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory.....But the real source of today's narcissistic personalities, it seems to me, is the "liberation" movement of the 1960s (actually the late 1950s to early 1970s)....

[Incorrigible]

Once again, evidence of Baby Boomer malfeasance with respect to the Psyche of the country.

[proxy_user]

But you will note that the boomers themselves are not narcissists. They grew up in the fifties, got a swat on the behind if they misbehaved, and worked hard to learn and be successful.

Now that they have lived in the world as adults for thirty years and more, they are intensely realistic about what is possible.

[joe fonebone]

Time to get the old hippies out of government

[Tijeras_Slim]

The 1979 book "The Culture of Narcissism" by Christopher Lasch makes this point very eloquently.

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

When I hear about all of the silly sh*t coming out of the demorat party one word comes to mind, HIPPIE ! We will just have to outlive these dirtbags and pray they dont screw things up so bad that we are not able to straighten the mess out.

[qam1]

Xer Ping

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[reformedliberal]

I was there. There was a real cadre of labor organizers and university professors who organized and encouraged everything that made the news.

Why does anyone believe that one generation suddenly materialized and all by itself became the bete noir of America? How would that happen?

I am not a Boomer. I am a War Baby. I did hang out with Boomers; I married one and my younger sib was one. Where did all the engineers, physicians,CPAs, pastors and rabbis come from if an entire generation was somehow Bad Seed? How did Evangelical Christianity and Orthodox Judaism grow in the past 40 years if all Boomers are responsible for everything bad?

FDR had many dedicated Soviet agents within his administration. It wasn't Boomers who filled those positions and it wasn't Boomers who demonized McCarthy.

It wasn't the Boomers themselves who organized the music industry of the 60s and sold it to those kids. I know of several instances where so-called communes were begun by people in their 40s who then recruited and brainwashed people from 16-20. I was, in fact, responsible for tracking down the personal history of one of these instigators, in an age with no Internet. He was a congenital liar and a sociopath who was trying to manipulate a lot of younger people.It took actual paper letters, physical time in the library and expensive long distance telephone calls over nearly a year to get the goods on this person, who then simply vanished, changed his name and continued his game elsewhere.In another instance, ranging from 1972 to 1998, it only became possible to track another wealthy cultist who was preying on wealthy college dropouts after almost 20 years of living among the victims and it took the Internet and personal disregard for extreme attempts to marginalize me socially and economically to finally put the pieces together.

The oldest Boomer is 59-60. The youngest is 42. As I look around the world, I see a lot of normal, average productive people in those cohorts. I also see a lot of narcissists aged 20-40.

Look instead to people who were in positions of power and influence in 1965. Most of them were 40-60 at the time and were part of what is now called The Greatest Generation. Most of them were also parents of the people denigrated today as Boomers.

Yes, the present incarnation of the disintegration of Western Civilization began sometime in the mid-late 60s. Yes, the targets of that manipulation were part of the Baby Boom and yes, many of them bought it, propagated it and passed it on. But to simply denigrate an entire generation is simplistic. I see a lot of sad individuals who unthinkingly accepted the cultural changes they encountered in their 20s. People who didn't have children because of the lies of Paul Erlich. People who had normal angst against their parents twisted into hatred over what was really just another little war in Southeast Asia begun by a Kennedy when most Boomers were still in high school. It was those Boomers who fought in Vietnam. It was Boomers who began YAF. It was Boomers who worked for Reagan's election. It was Boomers who began the conservative movement itself.

How old are you? How many Boomers do you know? Are they all evil and are the evil ones so powerful as to be unstoppable? What did you do to stop the madness that became mainstream in 1965? What are you doing now? How many Gen Xers, the children of the Boomers, are working to undo the myth we now we call The Sixties? Why are they so obviously uneffective?

Please, people: think and read some real history if you didn't actually live in the 1960s/1970s.

[KoRn]

The 60s is the root of many bad things in our society. Dammed hippies!

[WV Mountain Mama]

Stinking hippies with their stinking hippie lettuce...

[Hemingway's Ghost]

It was Boomers who began the conservative movement itself.

There were "Boomers" in 1765?

[cinives]

Blame Maslow and Rogers and the humanist movement.

[ryan71]

Many of the "baby boomers" (not all) realized they could not live up the the heroic deeds and moral fiber of their WWII parents and turned against them and their God.

[joylyn]

Okay, but why blame Baby Boomers? Humanistic psychology, which spawned all this self-esteem nonsense, was the product of people like Maslow, Rogers, Timothy Leary, etc., who were born in the early decades of the 20th century. Baby Boomers were, at most, in their early twenties in the 1960's, and many were quite a bit younger. Their minds were influenced by people who were widely admired by their contemporaries and lauded by the press.

Socialism as a system had lost credibility, so the socialists switched from economics to psychology to pursue their utopian goals.

[horse_doc]

An interesting and eloquent post, but the reality is that in a war (real or cultural), a simple message wins the battle.

I've got three Boomer siblings. I mercifully was born later. They are lovely people, whose values suck. They rebelled against their God, against their parents, against their families, and against their culture. They cause an immense swath of damage because it is always about them.

Hippies ruined the Republic. That's the one line that they get in the book of American history. Hippies get to be the fall guy, now and forever, whether it is true or not (I happen to believe that it is true).

[the OlLine Rebel]

The Hippies have ALWAYS been tagging EVERYONE ELSE but themselves (and consequently their own generation) as "selfish".

They came up with the "ME Generation" to describe the teenagers of the very next generation (still considered part of the "Boomer" nonsense), so that the disco '70s had that sobriquet.

Look in the mirror, '60s hippies. The finger points at you.

[the OlLine Rebel]

The problem is the hippies became the voice of the generation (and I hesitate to say "Boomer", because covering 20 years is NOT a single generation, per se - certainly not a single subculture). Of course many normal people existed, but they were the "silent majority". The loud-mouthed (significant) minority drove everything, however.

And as far as blaming previous generations, just note that it was the hippie generation that was the "watershed" of blatant socialism and hedonism. You can cite examples prior, but they are too few to be notable. Things changed hugely after the '60s (and I mean, everywhere - even our dogs aren't as good and it all started there!).

Personally, I blame primarily Dr. Spock, who "raised" hedonism and selfishness. His book was mysteriously popular when it 1st came out with those post-war moms, as well as later in the '50s. HHhhmmmm, 20 years later - guess who was "in charge"?

Don't take it personally every time someone talks about the '60s or the "Boomers". What they really mean is the vocal minority who got all the publicity and consequently changed too much in this country - the hippies.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Again, you aren't acknowledging the fact of the "watershed" moment. Things changed greatly with the '60s, much more than before OR after. And it's not because a few "inventors" from early on were "in power" - it's because they convinced a whole huge swath of people to accept their previously trivial nonsense and spread it - the hippies were the "innovators" partly by sheer #.

Innovation is often much more important than the invention. How many things were invented way before you knew they existed? They weren't important to the culture until someone INNOVATED and spread it like wildfire. While important of course, the invention itself isn't very important if the "masses" don't pick it up.

Socialism wasn't highly important (although it was building, for sure) to the US until after the '60s. It's just a fact.

[joylyn]

I'm not denying that there was a watershed effect in the 1960's. The early Baby Boomers -- of which I'm one -- were brought up with high expectations and no clear mission. Our parents had to deal with the Depression and WWII. We had no comparable struggles (at least those who weren't being drafted didn't), so we could prolong our pre-adulthood for years.

Also, you can't overestimate the influence of the civil rights movement. It seemed, if you believed the media, that a few young people engaged in marches and sit-ins and suddenly Jim Crow laws fell. (Of course, this wasn't really the case.) White students were tempted to think they could achieve similar results -- just be against peace, materialism, etc. and the world will be magically transformed.

So go ahead and blame the Boomers if you want. I'm not saying there isn't a lot of responsibility there. But don't forget the older generation. How many professors took a stand agsainst student radicals on campus? There were a few prominent cheerleaders for radicalism and the rest were mainly passive.

Notice also the way the media fawned over the Weathermen. We're talking about a few hundred individuals, at most a few thousand. A lot of the people who were glorifying Che in the news back then and making money from selling Che posters, and so on, weren't Baby Boomers.

As for socialism, maybe a hard socialist program never counted for much at the polls. But there were an awful lot of liberal sympathizers who basically believed in welfare state socialism. This definitely didn't start in the sixties
-- Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson weren't Baby Boomers.

[norton]

"Many of the "baby boomers" (not all) realized they could not live up the the heroic deeds and moral fiber of their WWII parents and turned against them and their God."

Puleeeze!

Post WW2 was economic boom time and a societal sigh of relief in the US.

Boomers (like the original poster, I'm a war baby) grew up hearing (constantly) about how the world was saved and watching the rapidly expanding schism of a wartime alliance and post war conflict between the US and USSR/PRC.

Korea proved that our traditional way of war was badly flawed and 'war on the cheap' became partner to 'mass retaliation' and 'mutually assured destruction':
pretty scary stuff leading up to shadow wars and counter insurgency.

Almost by definition there is little glory in either of those alternatives - but a president (JFK in particular) could lead us neck-deep into it without giving particular heed to popular opinion.

While the draft was a constant reminder (and most tried to avoid it), and contrary to your 'could not live up to heroic deeds..' bit, most went when called and tried to carry on with what had gone before.

However...
Most of the protesters I knew (and have not spoken to since 1973) were (a) sick of hearing about all that heroic stuff, (b) young enough to believe that socialism was everything they'd been told it was - meaning better than what we had, (c) happily abetted by both academia and the media, (d) afraid to put their own lives on the line, and finally, (e) internally wired to maintain their superior self image thereafter.

The stigma assigned to that part of the generation(s) that did go to war for their three years or so, and the 'activism' of those who did not, gave you the leaders of today's dem party and the bureaucracies that sustain it.

There is more than a single 'boomer' format.

PS: Yes, there were some vet's similar to Kerry who came home and worked against the war. But, unlike kerry, few of them believed they were working against other veterans and I worked with several on veteran affairs in the eighties...we agreed to disagree (way back when I had some tolerance left).
PPS: Kerry and Murtha both fall into the 'no tolerance left' category and both ARE hurting the troops today right along with Nancy P and Tehran.