Generational
Awareness
To many in the Baby Boomer Generation, the 1960s seemed like the dawning of
the age of Aquarius; one of those backwards churning 2,150-year (roughly)
astrological cycles that season the universe with certain qualities or
characteristics. The Age of Aquarius, which may or may not have begun already,
is projected to be a period of enlightenment and understanding. Young people
come of age in the 1960s gave themselves, for the obvious reasons, to the notion
that they were the avatars of this age of humanity and spiritual advancement.
That worked pretty well on cultural and social levels for a brief time, until
the hippies and those who adopted their fashion sense had to get jobs in the
1970s. The whole facade collapsed within itself at that point and the same Baby
Boomers who embraced the counter-culture went on to develop the most predatory
brand of capitalism the world has yet known. It might lead one to wonder if the
constellations have lost their authority.
By RAR
That
chart above is interesting, the way it gives broad definitions of people born
within various periods of time, defined by major, shared events, most notably
whatever happened to take place in their "generation", defined here in cycles of
human reproduction. That makes the definition of a generation a tricky thing in
itself, because in large families the youngest child may experience an entirely
different life that does the oldest child. There is such a thing as a cultural
generation, so that the way people experience life changes dramatically every
seven years or so. This is why my brother and I, born of the same gene pool,
have a completely different take on and approach to life: two different
realities.
Generations are also defined by
"wars", which continue to be the greatest unifying force in any society, and
America has defined itself through an almost continuous commitment to social and
cultural violence.
"Patriotism means equipped forces and a prepared
citizenry. Moral stamina means more energy and more productivity, on the
farm and in the factory. Love of liberty means the guarding of every
resource that makes freedom possible--from the sanctity of our families and
the wealth of our soil to the genius of our scientists." - Dwight D.
Eisenhower's 1953 Presidential Inauguration Address
Since we started naming
generations in the U.S., all of our warring has been done abroad. In fact, one
senses that those U.S. historians who established those generational names mark
the 1880s as the real beginning of the America because that's the part they
wanted to write about. America before that was younger, smaller and filled with
malevolence on the domestic front, from the genocide of Native American
populations to the enslavement of African people and bloody civil war. All
American history prior to 1880 would be "white-washed" eventually; cleaned up
for popular consumption in later times, when the powers of legend and myth would
play a whole lot better than the grim truth of what preceded "The Lost
Generation". So, George Washington did chop down the cherry tree but was
incapable of lying about it. Abraham Lincoln was "Honest Abe", and so forth. We
even got a wave of dime store accounts of legendary gunfighters that
romanticized and popularized the notion that firearm possession and use was
virtually synonymous with being American.
The Lost Generation is said to
have been named by Gertrude Stein's car mechanic, who was under-impressed by the
discipline displayed by his young workers. Hemingway nicked the line and used it
in his novel The Sun Also Rises to describe what he and others
experienced fighting in Europe in World War I. The British thought of the Lost
Generation in terms of the vast casualties suffered by the elites of its nation,
which cost Britain the brainpower and means to continue their elite position in
the global scheme of things. This would have a great deal to do with the
terrible conditions of surrender forced upon Germany with the Treaty of
Versailles. Article 231, the "War Guilt" clause, had forced Germany disarm its
military, give up land, and pay huge reparations for war damages - $442 billion
in present value of U.S. currency. Economist John Maynard Keynes called the
Treaty of Versailles a "Carthaginian peace" that was excessive and that would
prove counterproductive, and he was proved to be correct. The despair into which
the German people plummeted gave rise to German nationalism, Adolph Hitler, and
led to the second World War. The idea had only been to help Britain continue on
competitive footing after their blood and brain loss, but there you had the law
of unintended consequences.
Hitler was the odd sort of
military leader. In using war as a unifying influence in societies, the world
has long followed the cast system where armies were organized under the
leadership of society's elites, who would plan campaigns and manage engagements.
Napoleon Bonaparte, for instance, was the son of a lower level of Corsican
aristocracy, who eventually took command of the Italian division of the French
Army. He had worked his way up from an artillery commander's position to get
this less-than-plum role leading the rag-tag Italian division against the
Austrians and Piedmont-Sardinians. He obviously made the most of opportunity.
Hitler, on the other hand, was
never a member of the Austrian-German elite class, and how he managed to work
his way through the class system - his journey began with his 1919 enrollment in
the "German Workers Party", which in 1920 changed its name to the National
Socialist German Workers' Party, commonly known as the Nazi Party - was a
function of Germany's World War I losses to their elite classes, and a myriad of
other odd twists that have continued to fascinate historians ever since. There
were associations with occult teachings and rituals. Somehow Hitler, the
somewhat talented but unsuccessful art student, became the strongest stand-up
presenter in the Nazi Party, and he leveraged his oratorical skills to ensure
that he got a leadership position in the organization. He organized well,
leading thug groups in street confrontations with supporters of the Weimar
Republic, which had been put in control of Germany through the Treaty of
Versailles.
As Hitler gained power and
authority, American money began pouring into Germany to help finance the rise of
his Third Reich, encouraged by his 1925-26 book Mein Kampf ("My
Struggle"). One must remember that all of Europe and Russia was in the grip of
economic despair at the time, and worker revolts were a common feature of the
times. Novelist Arthur Moeller van den Bruck had coined the term "German Reich"
(i.e., German Empire) in 1923, identifying earlier Reichs that had existed
during the Holy Roman Empire (962–1806 - Charlemagne, Charles the Great, King of
the Franks, had been crowned Emperor of the Romans on Christmas Day 800 by Pope
Leo III), and then of the German Empire (1871–1918). Hitler, ascended to power
in 1933 with his appointment as Chancellor of Germany by Weimar Republic
President Paul von Hindenburg. He immediately began eliminating his enemies in
the government, and Hindenburg was dead by 1934.
Hitler was going to be
confronted by what NBC news commentator Tom Brokaw dubbed "the Greatest
Generation". Like Hitler, this generation of Americans had experienced the
outfalls of WWI and they had gone through the Great Depression. They resisted
entering the war against the Axis powers but mobilized factories to support the
Lend-Lease agreement that provided Great Britain with the war materials. Some
public opinion polls prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor showed that 95
percent of American were opposed to involvement in what became WWII.
If there was a "greatest
generation", it most certainly had to have been that generation of Russians who
lost one-third of their country to Nazi invasion, fell back to Stalingrad, and
worked with extraordinary unified resolve to rebuild their lost manufacturing
capacities anew, which they accomplished in a matter of months, with every man,
woman and child dedicated to the effort. Soldiers on the front were executed if
they failed to fight the Germans, signifying the desperate nature of the
struggle in which the Russian people were engaged. They stopped Germany and
rolled it back, racing into the Berlin to claim the ultimate victory of the war
before the U.S. Army could arrive. The U.S. lost 416,800 soldiers in World War
II. Soviet Russian losses are estimated to have been between 8.7 million and 13
million.
Given the hyperbole of America's
self-aggrandizement, through such as Tom Brokaw, perhaps it makes sense that the
next generation was called "the Silent Generation". These people knew the Great
Depression, grew up in the war years, experienced an unprecedented and
un-repeated positive spike in America's well-being, and they opted for silent
conformity. These were the folks who went off to fight the Korean War, because
we as a nation remained fearful of the spread of Soviet-style communism. They
benefited from the massive expansion of the American middle class, which allowed
them to give birth the Baby Boomer generation; a huge population of Americans
who grew up well-to-do, with little experience of the economic despair that had
contributed to the formulation of their parents' world views. The Baby Boomer
generation felt that they were different and didn't want to surrender to bland
conformity as their parents had. They embraced the very nebulous Age of Aquarius
as if it were the real thing.
When life's realities settled in
and the Baby Boomers sold out on their ideals, they were already beginning to
experience something new to them: an economic in decline. Buffeted by inflation
and a steady erosion in their purchasing power, they panicked and green-lighted
deregulation of key industries pursuant to some idealistic notion that
unleashing America's competitive zeal would be good for everyone, except our
competitors abroad. But then a weird thing happened: our key U.S. corporations
began moving their investments and their banking abroad, depriving the U.S. of
the benefits of their corporate licensing. Soon there was no fealty in corporate
circles to American needs or interests, and into this new world of globalized
corporations were born Generation X, the Millennials (Generation Y), and
Generation Z.
For much of their lives, they
have experienced an America going downhill, backwards from what it was in those
super-hyphy post-WWII years. Locked into a zombie state moved only by the
delivery dates of new smart phone technologies, video games, and tent pole
Hollywood blockbusters, they are generations getting used to a new normal, which
is a fear being voiced these days by many prominent economists. They don't
really believe that America will ever come out of its present five-year long
recession or near-depression.
Like Great Britain after WWI,
the U.S. is presently people by its own Lost Generation, who kinda-sorta get
that America's future sailed away long ago on the wings of corporate
deregulation and a loosening of any compulsion any U.S. citizen might feel to
strive in a game so rigged against progressive initiatives. Our dreams of what
we can accomplish now extend no further than apps that allow us to play games,
find locations on a map, do online banking and shopping, a tweet inane thoughts.
The greatest thing that can happen to an American today is that he or she can
come up with some niche computer application that can be sold for big bucks to
Google or Facebook. Both of those organizations, which exist to mine data about
their users for sale to those same anti-American corporations whose greed and
self-interests cost us these lost American generations in the first place, are
inherently blood-sucking. This is a far cry from a nation rallying together in
unified commitment to stand their ground for something worth fighting for;
something greater than the right to tweet what you had for lunch or to accept a
friend request on Facebook.
So there we have it, a march
through the generations come full circle, from Lost Generation to three
generations so lost they aren't even aware of their situation.
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