A question for people from Generation X or Y: What is your opinion of Baby Boomers?
My Boomer Tips
Many of them seem to be too confrontational or too competitive, as if they have to "prove something" all of the time, or try to "out-do" generation Xers, which causes them to give up or try less than their parents. I'm 36, and I can think of numerous times when I would try to befriend or have a pleasant conversation with baby boomer men, and their replies were often a predictable sarcastic response, such as, "Ha!, you weren't even born back when this happened" (in a less than kind, non-joking tone), and things like "Our music, our cars, etc, were better." Yet, I tend to get along just fine with people born in the Silent Generation, because even though many of them were competitive, they treated each other, including younger people, with a bit more class and dignity.
As a person born in 1975, I have really grown tired of Baby Boomers trying to pick generational fights with their offspring. I despise being told how we are less productive, when it was their generation that exported all of our quality factory jobs, shunned the true classical works of music and art, and became the impetus of the modern-day drug epidemic. Many of them are never satisfied with life as it is, and try to force their will upon the masses rather than letting people and things live and be as they are.
Does anyone else feel this way, too, sometimes?
- Better look again at the age of the CEOs who are exporting jobs. Many aren’t baby boomers.
And of course the "silent" generation treats other people with more dignity. Statistics show a greater reliance on multiple family homes and adult children living at home than ever in history. Call that "better" or "worse", but the current generation is statistically known to be less independent. I watch commercials aimed at the youth generation that use baby boomer music and themes. I assume that is because the boomer music is more appealing than current stuff. Are you going to blame the baby boomers for your preference for our music? I see remakes of baby boomer movies (usually inferior), and the art of music that was revolutionized by the electric guitar, synthesizer, multichannel mixing, and videos has seen no major advances since the reigns were passed on. Perhaps I’m wrong, but name the equivalent of the invention of the electric guitar that has taken place since 1970.
All that said, I do not think the the baby boomers are the ultimate generation. Our parents belong to that generation. The determination to survive a depression, the sacrifice of it’s youth to WWII and Korea, the vast infrastructure of highways and national parks they created, their contribution to civil rights, and the advances of technology and manufacturing are unmatched by any since the Civil War era.
Ummm… that they’re old? Once, they’re gone, you’ll replace them as that annoying old people generation!
A question for people from Generation X or Y: What is your opinion of Baby Boomers?
~~~ Your feelings are your feelings, no matter what, and I could never argue otherwise!
But it is not ‘philosophy’ (‘critical thought’)), but an error of thought, to attempt to categorize a whole generation of individual, unique, humans, and broad brush ‘them’ (ony the schizophrenic sees such difference as a ‘them’, and a ‘we’, ‘us’. We are One!).
Such an unphilosophical error of thought is the backbone of genocide, racism, hatred… All symptoms of schizophrenia!
Strauss and Howe say it’s mostly a generational thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss_and_Howe