10. Boomer's Fault

Let’s take a trip to the past. Our ancestors faced hardships that we cannot imagine today. We are all soft, squishy, spoiled and entitled in any fair comparison. In the Hunter-Gatherer era food was scarce and was only obtained by grueling effort or great risk. Clawing in the dirt or risking getting gored by a wild pig or other animal deciding it didn’t want to be dinner. They had their own problems.

In early civilizations life was regimented and upward mobility practically non-existent. You were born into a caste and damn well stayed there. Any transgression was met with punishments that were swift, merciless, draconian and harsh to an extreme. I will spare you the details. All so-called civilized societies had this system in common. The rich and powerful were untouchable. Thousands of years could pass before the next one took over. As The Who so eloquently pointed it out in their song Won’t Get Fooled Again.

Slavery was rampant. Conscription into war the norm. War was brutal beyond belief. If you were injured you stayed that way. Women were chattel. Medical care was for the rich and ineffective. There was no CVS down the street. Like today in San Francisco.

Religion was compulsory and heretics… well you don’t want to be one. Virtually every culture embraced slavery. They considered it part of the game and economically advantageous. There were no morality plays. Slaves stayed that way.

Opportunity to learn was the sole province of the wealthy and their sycophants. There were no books for commoners and serfs. No schools. No Internet!

Industrialization was great for the landed gentry and factory owners. It was not nice for the workers. Conditions were dreary, dirty and dangerous. Life was hellish and short. You would be a disposable part of the machine replaced without a thought. Like putting a new alternator in a car.

People flocked to the New World to escape poverty and oppression. It was not a cake-walk. It was survival of the fittest. No social net to catch you if you fell. No government freebies. War and after war for conquest. Wealth was centralized. Early movers had the advantage. Laggards came and the land was all owned. Or they could keep moving the West to try farming the desert or digging in the mines. Many died before they got there and most died later anyway.

The Civil War, World War I and others were good times for the elite, not so good for the conscripts sent to die for causes they didn’t understand and were lied to about. The Great Depression in the 1930’s was not a trip to Disney Land. People had no choice but to blame and depend on themselves. World War II drove the economy using debt and ended unemployment. The United States came out on top with a huge infrastructure that was left untouched. It reimagined itself as a consumer goods cornucopia. Let the Good Times Roll. Cheap houses and cars, the GI Bill for free college. Fast easy matches to get married. Limitless optimism. Constrained and acclimated by hierarchical organizations the returning soldiers soldiered on, marching in straight lines without complaint, making money and babies.

Thus the Baby Boomers entered in to a lucky prosperous period. What they did next is precisely what you would have did too. They danced stoned in the mud at Woodstock. Surfed free in Southern California. They built hot rods, played in garage bands, rode Honda motorcycles and watched the moon landings. It was not all roses… constant threat of nuclear holocaust, Vietnam, civil rights riots, assassinations, disco and other hardships.

The generations that followed expected the same idealized life they imagined existed. They didn’t get it. They also did not fight knee-deep in the rice paddies of Vietnam. They arrived late to the party to find passed out drunks, empty beer bottles and full ash trays. Let this be a lesson to you. Next time be born earlier. When you blame the boomers you are saying that all 70 Million or so are complicit in some conspiracy against you. Recognize that each is an individual first, with their own unique history and life, before being categorized into some hypothetical group called a generation.

There have been approximately 10,000 or so generations of Homo sapiens over the last 250,000 years. Where do you draw the line to blame your problems on them?

In the meantime you have your shot at life as it is. As everybody born before had too. Put your life in perspective. You can whine and moan or find ways to move forward. Nobody is coming to your rescue. Know this… You are not Special, you are merely next.

It’s not that your problems aren’t real. Of course they’re real. But then so are everybody else’s problems. They don’t care about your problems anymore than you care about theirs. How many sleepless nights do you have commiserating about the hardships of the downtrodden untouchables in India? Or about the struggles of other generations? Admit it. Expect the same. You are on your own.