Save the Boomers, Save the World: Redeeming Culture

patheos.com ^ | July 19, 2010 | Barbara R. Nicolosi

[Publius804]

The entertainment industry is in the full throes of the changing of the generations; films and television are beginning to reflect the visions of Generation Xers like Jason Reitman, (Up in the Air), Judd Apatow, (Knocked Up), Brad Byrd (Up, The Incredibles), and other young artists who dare to buck the tired irony-cool cynicism that has shaped and stifled too much of the culture. Suddenly, after decades of being shut out, minimized, or mocked, film characters have room in their lives for optimism, and even something almost like faith. The Church, if it seeks to be relevant in the future, needs to welcome this development and encourage -- even patronize -- such talents.

Pope Benedict XVI, who has an artist's heart, seems to realize this; he recently met with artists to discuss the role of beauty in the health of the world. That is a start, but more is needed. The Boomers' exit from cultural influence creates a two-sided pastoral challenge for the 21st-century Church.

First is the effect on the gargantuan Boomer generation of a lifetime of listening almost exclusively to their own voices. The movies being created by and for the Boomers today are a very unentertaining mix of "Never regret! Life starts at 70!" and "Life is a cruel joke, ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'" Movies like It's Complicated showcase a bunch of grey hairs still acting badly, swallowing their shame, and ignoring their appropriate role as the wise mentors of the younger generations. The Dorian Greyish dark echo of this kind of story, are movies like There Will Be Blood and the chillingly titled No Country for Old Men, in which the characters' lives of narcissism and greed devolve into cynicism and brutality.

[Publius804]

Ping!

[Spok]

Obama will temper the spoiled generations of this country with hardship, privation, suffering and war. They better get tough, get smart or perish.

[Niuhuru]

“The Boomers’ exit from cultural influence creates a two-sided pastoral challenge for the 21st-century Church.”

In other words, to clean up the mess the Boomers made.

[qam1]

Xer Ping

Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.

Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.

[qam1]

Do not think me flippant in suggesting that pastors and teachers of the faith must quickly provide substantive, moral reasons for GenXers not to euthanize the Boomers; for them, the Entitled Generation will quickly morph into the Expensive Generation as they and Millennials are bent low under the weight of social programs that were strapped on their backs without their consent.

OK

I won't think you flippant

[Niuhuru]

Pity we have to be tempered along with them.

[Blind Eye Jones]

Boomers are romantics with the full force of nihilism driving their boats onto the rocks. The sirens song means death is attractive — and it is necessary to think so growing up on romantic existentialism — while at the same time they crave special entitlements, special pleadings to live the live forever dream of the 60s hippie youth crowd. They are a mixed bag to live such a mixed up life, a life that is narcissistic and shallow, and luxuriously decadent at its core. The kids of the boomers can`t be like them, even if they wanted to... and that is a good thing.

[RC51]

Kids of the Boomers will be the next greatest generation because they carry the scars left by the abandoned of their narcissistic parents. Kids today will not repeat the mistakes of the Boomers because the pain it caused to them.

What are these boomers doing today? Are they taking their grandkids to the park? Are they passing on their wisdom to the youth? Are they leaving future generations safety & security?

No! They are spending like mad in a final party before their time is up. They don’t attend little league games - they are too busy on their trip to Vegas. They don’t offer to baby-sit, that would conflict with their dinner party plans they use to relive their youth to simulate a dating atmosphere. Are they leaving any money or property to their kids or grandkids? Nope they are selling everything to finance a luxurious retirement.

If you’re a Boomer about to go on a vacation. STOP! Laying on your deathbed that vacation you took a few years prior will be meaningless. Instead grab your grandkids for a week or two this summer and just spend time with them, teach them something they will never forget. Offer to take your grandkids to their sports practices and stay and watch. If you don’t then don’t be surprised when you look down upon your corpse laying in the casket and the room is not hardly full and the only tears being shed are by your kids over the funeral bill you stuck them with.

[a fool in paradise]

Red Diaper Doper Babies brought us where we are today. But I can't lay it all at the hands of Baby Boomers. The leading radicals of the 1960s were pre-boom agitators (and well off).

We now have several generations of red diaper doper babies and a cultural reversal in which they have have become the new establishment yet still pitch themselves as being "revolutionary" and "outsiders".

You'll hear more derision in the media if you claim to be a Christian than a Communist.

[chesley]

As I Boomer, I deny all responsibility for the mess that my cohort, and those surrounding it have made.

For two reasons. First, I have fought against that mess all my life. Second, the Greatest Generation was responsible for inflicting FDR and the New Deal on us, and LBJ and the Great Society. These were the incubators where the egg of the New Left hatched and wrought its destruction on America and the World.

[Lucky9teen]

The movies of today are either A) remakes of older movies; B) stolen story lines, already done to death; C) liberally biased, anti-american trollop; or D) movies without morals or ethics.

Granted, there are a few that are really good, that promotes a hero or a good moral story line. But weeding out the crap that is coming out of Hollywood is pathetic.

What we need is some true conservative film makers and actors who will do a serious job of revamping the industry. Unfortunately, it is owned by the liberal lefty crowd, but I think more and more, with what is happening with America right now, conservatives are standing up and out and hopefully can take back part, if not all, of that industry.

It could also be wishful thinking.

[Blind Eye Jones]

I agree. The boomers motto is: “I’m OK, you’re so so.” And that applies equally to the next generation.

[ansel12]

In 2008 the 18-29 year old vote went a stunning 66% for Obama.

In 1972, during the Vietnam war, the hippies, the draft, etc, the 18-29 year old vote went 52% for Richard M. Nixon.

[Blind Eye Jones]

The Red Diaper Doper Babies were brought up to fear communism in the 1950s. It was the boogie man monster living under their beds. Little that they realized that they would grow up to be the monsters they feared. I guess that is why they like the word “ironic.” But you are right, Christianity is now the monster under their beds. If they can now become what they fear the most, history would repeat for the better.

[livius]

Second, the Greatest Generation was responsible for inflicting FDR and the New Deal on us, and LBJ and the Great Society. These were the incubators where the egg of the New Left hatched and wrought its destruction on America and the World.

Well put. I am a Boomer (earliest of the crop) and my teachers in NYC in the 1950s and 60s were all raving leftists, many of whom had actually served in WWII and come back and gone to school on the GI Bill and emerged as full-blown leftists. Boomers didn't think these things up on their own; even the leaders of the so-called "youth movement" were a good 10-15 yrs older than any of the Boomers they were leading (astray).

[Blind Eye Jones]

Didn’t Nixon say he was pulling the troops out of Vietnam? If so maybe that explains why 52% youth voted for him. Correct me if I’m wrong on this.

[a fool in paradise]

Arthur Miller and those who subscribed to “Dissent” didn’t not fear Communism. They saw nothing wrong with it and though it was a “witchhunt” of fair people.

There were witches in the Crucible too. They questioned the judgement that said witches were evil.

It took some Stalinists like Pete Seeger 40 years to admit that Joseph Stalin had done some wrongs like killing tens of millions of people.

Red Asner still wants to know “what else did he did” (as in good works).

[ansel12]

This writer is an idiot, she is blaming the boomers that didn’t even start coming into power until the late 1980s for stuff that the “greatest generation” and to a lesser degree, the “silent generation” did.

By 1980 the worst of the attacks on our nation that took place from the 1930s to the 1970s were being blocked and the left’s victories were becoming less dramatic when compared to the Great Society, FDR, and the Warren Court, and the 1965 immigration act, etc.

Boomers are currently age 46 to 64, now look at who was that age from 1935 to 1975, and look at the irreversible damage that those generations did, permanent, and continuing changes that we can never recover from. We are literally being colonized and replaced because of their change in our immigration laws and institutions.

[a fool in paradise]

“spiritual” leaders of the “youth movement”:

Madalyn Murray O’Hair, born April 13, 1919
Timothy Leary, born October 22, 1920
Allen Ginsberg, born June 3, 1926
Paul Krassner, born April 9, 1932
Gloria Steinem, born March 25, 1934
Abbie Hoffman, born November 30, 1936
Jane Fonda, born December 21, 1937
Jerry Rubin, born July 14, 1938
John Lennon, born 9 October 1940
Huey P. Newton, born February 17, 1942

The closest you get is Bill Ayers, born December 26, 1944.