[One Degree]

I believe Babyboomers have been challenged by the most change in one generation in human history.
I started life in an environment that was racist, homophobic, sexist, and dependent upon assembly line jobs that required little education.
We have been asked to adapt to a totally alien environment that we began the creation of ourselves, while being criticized for the terrible things we have done to the world.
I feel that I have gone through so many transformations to the point that I no longer recognize the previous 'me's'.
Many of us are now faced with challenging the very ideologies we set in motion.
Has any other generation faced challenges to this level?
Are other parts of the world being confronted with this amount of change now?
How will history view our generation?

[The Immortal Goon]

The WWI generation was far, far, more challenged by far more changes in a generation.

They went from plumbing and electricity not being standard, to rockets.

They went from the long 19th century with all of its attempts to maintain a status quo from before the French Revolution, to fascists and communists butchering each other in the streets of major European capitals.

They went from there being two truly independent republics left on the face of the planet, to the last of the monarchs left in pools of blood or being escorted firmly but politely into the shadows of irrelevancy.

They went from lines of agricultural workers and specialists jobs that span back thousands of years to paying rent piecing together coin from industrial jobs.

They went from having had their parents make everything for them (or that be very common anyway) to a fully functional world capitalist system where the shoes they wore could not have been made but for an African losing his hands in the Congo.

I could go on.

The Baby Boomers think a lot of themselves, but that's only because they've had the time. Their grandparents came staggering out of the last traces of the dark ages when World War I destroyed the old world. Their parents (or sometimes grandparents) created the plastic world they had imagined back home while going to the ends of the Earth to fight enemies far and wide.

The Boomers grew up in the plastic bubble that was created to cover up the scars of stretch and change that their predecessors had been forced to endure. They staggered and marched and clapped and sang their way to adulthood and threw themselves into jobs designed so that they never had to suffer. They had plenty of time to look deeply into their mirrors and, terrified their children would grow up like them, elected Ronnie Reagan and Maggie Thatcher to make sure their children wouldn't be the layabouts that they were.

...But they needn't bother. The false facade of egalitarian capitalism that made everyone rich was collapsing. The X'ers ironically celebrated its descent into the ground and ate everything that was left. The last of the X'ers, like myself, emerged silently to toil far more than our boomer parents, who still look deeply into the mirror at themselves and sigh heavily atop the entitlements their forefathers gave to them and they stripped from their children.

It couldn't have lasted anyway. Capitalism doesn't work like that. Everyone doesn't get rich, there isn't a big swollen upper middle class with people that have too much to do. The system is being restored to how it was designed to be. And one day it will raise a generation that is not infected with the false idea that working hard enough will make everyone middle class. And that generation of heroes will destroy what destroyed us.

[One Degree]

Thank you for the deserved criticism.
I had forgotten we were also the last generation that could expect to have things better than our parents.
It just seems a lot of the criticism is undeserved considering the changes we did make in ourselves and society.
I was not part of the active protester group (I was an Independent leaning strong Republican), but I believe our generation did give the world a social conscience that was necessary.
We served our purpose in the course of history and now it is time for a new direction.

[The Immortal Goon]

I was probably too harsh.

Just learned that the Boomers may be the last generation to live as long as they do. People my age will start dying off faster, and that will accelerate.

Obesity is a big issue, but so is overwork, lack of entitlements, and possibly exposure to much more artificial radiation and and chemicals than previous generations.

The last generation to be able to fuck just for fun, get to live the longest, get to work the least. Makes a goon jealous is all.

[One Degree]

The last generation to be able to fuck just for fun, get to live the longest, get to work the least. Makes a goon jealous is all.

Okay, now I understand why the younger generations may want to criticize us.
I did not say our life was all bad.
If it helps, I have often thought of the sex and work part, and felt sorry for the current generations.
The 'live the longest part', I guess it is fine if you are capable of being productive the whole time, otherwise it is just torture.

[Dagoth Ur]

Yeah my granny went from barely able to afford food during the depression and they lived on farm. My Granddad was in mines before he was 13. They both lived to see the internet being in houses. From outhouses to home internet. It is a real trip when you consider all that happened in the 20th.

[One Degree]

We had indoor plumbing when I was small, but my Grandparents still did not. I did live in a house heated by a small coal stove in the hallway that was also used for cooking. I was about 7 or 8 before I saw a TV set. It is amazing looking back at the changes and wondering what the next century could produce.

[kobe]

When I think of the baby boomer generation, I think of climate change deniers. People that still fight to this day to make sure people are still ignorant as to the destruction that will be wrought by that generation's refusal to accept the idea that man is going to face a reckoning for how we have treated the Earth.

[One Degree]

Curious. I tend to think it is the younger generations, with their me'ism and greater faith in technology, who are the climate change deniers.
An opinion poll might be interesting.

[Ummon]

Curious. I tend to think it is the younger generations, with their me'ism and greater faith in technology, who are the climate change deniers.
An opinion poll might be interesting.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/2972 ... eneration/

[Cartertonian]

This is a very interesting thread - I hope it doesn't degenerate and remains at the level of mutual civility displayed by TIG and One Degree.

Now I'm mindful of Rule 15 and I don't want to hijack the thread, but why it's interesting to me is because I have a firm and growing belief that a great many mental health complaints come about as a result of our species' inability to adapt psychologically to the rapidity of social change. Uncertainty, for example, is a perennial contributory factor to reactive and stress-related depression. Watching the goalposts of your life constantly moving undermines our ability to plan and to hope and to dream. It's like walking a path up a mountain that has lots of false summits. I take a very anthropological view of sociology and of my clinical practice and often when I relate a patient's circumstances to a more primitive existence they can start to make sense of their adverse responses to life. The fight or flight response, for example, is how we describe the body and mind's reaction to the release of adrenaline. As a hard-wired survival instinct, humans will generally assume danger until proven otherwise and adrenaline will be released in response to potentially threatening stimuli. If our whole world is a bewildering kaleidoscope of the unpredictable, uncertain and unknown our subconscious will detect repeated potential threat and our system will be flooded with adrenaline as a result. How we manage that psycho-physiological over-stimulation will vary from person to person but I fear that for many the end result is unsatisfactory and interpreted in modern society as a mental health problem.

[blackjack21]

This is a very interesting thread - I hope it doesn't degenerate and remains at the level of mutual civility displayed by TIG and One Degree.

Don't count on it.

Rei,

You should appreciate Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for the part of the mind fuck that you didn't have to grow up in. At any rate, Jeb Bush is a Baby Boomer, which is why we can't allow him to be president.

I started life in an environment that was racist, homophobic, sexist, and dependent upon assembly line jobs that required little education.

Now you are ending life in an environment that is racist, homophobic, sexist in a country that cannot afford to pay people with little education doing assembly line jobs due to politicians making them far more expensive than wogs in a world of free trade.

We have been asked to adapt to a totally alien environment that we began the creation of ourselves, while being criticized for the terrible things we have done to the world.

I wasn't around at that time, but I'm guessing the Jews had it coming to them. Lois Lerner and her ilk is all the evidence I need. As far as industrialism is concerned, that's not a problem in the West. The Chinese and perhaps India are a different question. As for being asked, just make like Nancy Reagan. Just say "No!"

I feel that I have gone through so many transformations to the point that I no longer recognize the previous 'me's'.

You know that you Baby Boomers are going to hell, right? Then, hell will be overcrowded, just like American prisons.

1970s Men’s Fashion Ads You Won’t Be Able To Unsee


Look! Women and homosexual men!

Look! Straight men who aren't getting laid, ever! It makes you pity those sheep, doesn't it?

Look! Bruce Jenner's friends!

Look! '70's gay!

No comment.

Fuck Baby Boomers! Just fuck 'em.

Look! Homosexuals pretending not to notice each other!

Look! A good lookin gal and a homosexual guy! Damn he has nice legs!

Many of us are now faced with challenging the very ideologies we set in motion.

Everybody told you that you were wrong... so just fucking admit it!

Has any other generation faced challenges to this level?

No other generation had as much exposure to tetra ethyl lead.

Are other parts of the world being confronted with this amount of change now?

Actually, no. We have Muslims who want to remain as stupid as humanly possible, ride around on camels, and oppress women. Perhaps we should expose them to tetra ethyl lead. God knows what it's done to America.

[fuser]

You seem to browse too many old timey homosexual photographs, Blackjack.

[blackjack21]

You seem to browse too many old timey homosexual photographs, Blackjack.

They're all from the same link above. It just reminded me of childhood and how I was able to relate to my grand parents and my father (Korean War, Elvis generation), but could never understand Baby Boomers. They're just so magnificently fucked up. That's just one link. One. Do you want me to go find another one?

[fuser]

If you say so.

[Tomato_Cake]

One of those things in life that one can be sure of is change. One of the great things about life on Earth is our ability to adapt to an ever changing environment. Those who refuse to adapt are the ones who suffer most and ultimately die off, like the dinosaurs.

[blackjack21]

Look! A woman with no tits!


Look! Two women with no tits!




Maybe I'm watching too much FoxNews, but aren't women supposed to have tits?



Do you see what I'm saying? Baby boomers cream for men, and look disappointedly at women with no tits.

Doesn't the guy on the right seem disappointed? He's probably straight.


Okay, okay... the girl on the left has a hint of tits. Very nice.




Okay, now lets compare to FoxNews.





I love Kimberly Guilfoyle's boobs. Now with the boobage, you also get the big McDonk-a-donk. That comes with the package, so there are trade offs.

I actually did a search on that stuff, and there is apparently a little cottage industry of putting FoxNews babe heads on top of porno bodies.

Unfortunately, the gender bender experiment is not over. What is over is my love of the United States, as such. It could possibly be restored by a Baby Boomer Holocaust, I suppose.

[Red Skull]

The problems of the newer generations inheriting from the baby boomer one is enormous.