‘Willpower’ and the Suckiest Generation
But in the question period after the presentation, I asked Baumeister how else, aside from eating well, could willpower be strengthened. His response was this: Exercise strengthens willpower just as it strengthens muscles. Even a meaningless exercise of will — training yourself to use your left hand for a task instead of your right, for instance — can make the will stronger over time. He added — I quote from memory: “When I was a boy, I used to be baffled by the idea of profanity. I used to wonder why there should be all these words that everyone knew but nobody used. But now I understand: that strengthens willpower.”
Well, right. In other words, behaving well, behaving responsibly, learning the norms of politeness and refusing to abandon them without good reason tend to make you a more self-controlled, successful, and finally better person.
This is precisely the wisdom my generation threw away. Their promiscuity, adolescent foul-mouthedness, bad manners, and disregard for tradition — all of which they claimed were a new kind of freedom — were in fact the precursors to the very oldest kind of slavery: slavery to one’s own impulses and desires. This slavery, packaged in the Sixties as “identity” or “culture” or “the right to be yourself,” ultimately leads to enslavement by others as it makes you indolent and irresponsible and in need of protection and restraint by the powers that be. A poor black man’s journey from hip hop culture to prison is a perfect example. So is a middle class white man’s journey from moral license and unwarranted praise to his sniveling need for an all-providing — oh, and by the way, all-powerful — state.
A government that wants more power knows well it can acquire that power by stripping the citizenry of every need and opportunity to provide for and take control of themselves — every reason to exercise their will. Welfare, unending unemployment benefits, “free” health care, business bailouts, the “right” to live off your parents’ insurance until you’re 47 or whatever: these, not religion, are the true opiate of the people.
My generation, using the loftiest possible language, destroyed the loftiest possible image of man — his image as God-made creature endowed with the right to be left alone. Instead, they declared him a weak collection of needs with some mysterious right to have those needs paid for by other people’s earnings. They told us government had to provide the citizen’s material needs even if it hampered his ability to live free.
Instead they should have asked: ”What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he forfeits his own soul?”
Nicely said.
Indeed.
I was reminded of the regular cycle of fasting days and seasons in Orthodox Christianity. The purpose is not to punish anyone; it is not because there is anything wrong with the foods not being eaten; it is to gain control over the self and the passions.
The problem with that is that it was forced. If you don’t see that coercion as a problem, you are part of the problem.
Thank you for a very interesting take on the connection between freedom from instincts, desires, and habits; and freedom from the State. This is something worth thinking about.
How about, “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
I have long thought that children who are taught to honor their father and mother, as a byproduct, learn to honor their teachers, their boss, all those in authority, and also themselves. If they learn how to respect others, they also learn to respect themselves. It does seem to me that in this day and age, children who don’t respect others, don’t respect themselves either.
Thats the whole circle…..
You can only honor that which is honorable..
Why should an abused and neglected child honor his irresponsible drug addict parents?
Why should a good citizen honor a corrupted regime?
Who wants to be the outcast, the honest one, forever taken advantage of by The Den of Theives?
This is why it (was) so important to maintain standards for centuries….
Because our Fathers knew that Freedom and God could be so easily lost, within a single generation,
once we begin to stray.
Honoring your parents is not about honoring them personally. It is about honoring their culture and traditions. It is about living righteously, so as to not bring dishonor upon them. When you live a proper life, people see it and recognize it, and they respect the parents who made such a great person. You honor your parents by being virtuous.
Nonsense. The obligation is mutual, or doesn’t exist.
Who said that parents don’t have obligations to their children? (Not the Guy who wrote the 10 Commandments.)
Sounds like someone has some baggage.
You hit on an interesting point Mark and it leads into the final fallacy of Klavans piece.
He says, ” My generation, using the loftiest possible language, destroyed the loftiest possible image of man — his image as God-made creature endowed with the right to be left alone. ”
While it is certainly true Man has the right to be ” left alone ” that concept is exactly the opposite of Man as the ” image of G-d “. Mans highest purpose is engagement with the world around him, not to absent himself from the world. Helping a neighbor, planting a tree, building a family, doing good deeds all have involvement with the world as a prerequisite. Just as The Almighty engaged in Creation so must we.
As to your point about honoring ones parents it speaks directly to this point. The Sages ask the obvious question- ” Why is one commanded to honor ones parents not to love ones parents ? ” The answer is one may love another but not do anything about it and love is also subjective. One can love in an unhealthy way. Yet the act of honoring someone demands engagement with that individual. Whether it is making a telephone call, listening to advice, holding a chair, etc. these are all concrete acts that are part of honoring another. That is why deeds have higher moral status than emotions. In fact some parents may not deserve love but even so we are required to honor them. Even G-d is unwilling to demand that we love a specific individual. That is part of the free will we have as humans. We are not commended to love our neighbors. We are commanded to treat them as we ourselves wish to be treated.
Living alone in a cave does not make the world better. And being left alone is not Mankinds higher purpose.
Good and true points, all. Yet, I think you read into Klavan’s statement something not intended. By right to be let alone, I believe he meant by Government. Christ told us to care for the poor and the widows. He did not tell government to take from others by force of law the fruits of their labor and redistribute it. By doing what Christ commands us, we are know by the fruit we bear. Of course, I could be wrong about his intent, but that is the way I read it.
You make some very good points, especially with your reminder / explanation on “honoring” vs “loving” parents.
re “And being left alone is not Mankinds higher purpose.”
I believe you read Klavan’s comment out of context:
“My generation, using the loftiest possible language, destroyed the loftiest possible image of man — his image as God-made creature endowed with the right to be left alone.”
He follows that with his very next sentence / explanation, that he talking about being left alone BY THE GOVT.
“Instead, they declared him a weak collection of needs with some mysterious right to have those needs paid for by other people’s earnings. They told us government had to provide the citizen’s material needs even if it hampered his ability to live free.”
Shana Tova.
” When thou reapest thy harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go back to fetch it; it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thy hands. When thou beatest thine olive-tree, thou shalt not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. When thou gatherest the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean it after thee; it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. “
And those who transgress the commandments against tithing and gleanings shall answer to the Almighty for their transgression, but not to the government, for the Torah does not command any sentence be imposed by the courts on those who withhold tithes from the poor or prevent the poor from gleaning. Rather, the Torah warns that the Lord hears the cry of the poor, and they who abuse the poor, the widows and the orphans should fear that God will cut their lives short, leaving their own wives as widows and their own children as orphans.
That should be commandments “on” tithes and gleanings, not “against.”
Buster, There is much you do not understand. Hillel was trying to condense for a primitive mind the essence of being a good person. The treatment of other people very much depends upon circumstance. You must understand that we are a people who are supposed to dwell without foreign influences and amongst ourselves.
http://www.inner.org/responsa/leter1/resp22.htm
There are things you just don’t understand. This is not you fault. The Torah has been mistranslated and misunderstood by non Jews for two thousand years.
We are not commended to love our neighbors.
Well, we are actually. Our enemies as well.
No Bill, We are not commanded to love. That is a matter of choice of free will. We are commanded regarding treatment of others. Your comment is a common misconception.
Son of Jacob, why don’t you study Torah before lecturing us on it? “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” is the command of Torah, which the Rabbi held as second only to, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind, with all your strength and with all your heart,” which is also in Torah. He also said, “Love your enemies,” but I do not hold it against you that you have not studied the words of the Rabbi.
No Bill, We are not commanded to love.
We are. Lev. 19:18
As far as the “love thy enemy” that’s most clearly articulated in the New Testament, but it dovetails rather well with Proverbs 25:21-22.
And we are not commanded to love our enemies. Suicide is a sin.
You demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of Christianity – not unsurprisingly. Christ’s example of self-sacrifice is what Christians are called to. Witness the example of the other apostles – 8 of whom were martyred according the New Testament or reliable tradition.
G-d does not even command us to love our own parents. Do you think the Almighty considers a neighbor worthier of love than a parent?
God didn’t get to that part until the New Testament. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15.
There was a time when simply working hard, raising up children to be righteous and not doing evil was enough to encompass an individual life well spent. Now, in this modern era, we are told that that is not enough. The individual must strive to be more. We are told we must somehow work to save the world, change mankind; an impossibility which has lead to increased frustration, death and tyranny.
Not doing evil is not the same as actively doing good.
For a lot of us, simply working hard, raising up children to be righteous and not doing evil is still enough to encompass an individual life well spent.
“My generation, using the loftiest possible language, destroyed the loftiest possible image of man—his image as God-made creature endowed with the right to be left alone. Instead, they declared him a weak collection of needs with some mysterious right to have those needs paid for by other people’s earnings.”
Excellent point. I never thought of it that way.
Thank you again for all your wisdom.
I’ve lived 25 years in the shadow of modernistic social theories. And I can tell you that once who are sucked into them, its hard to get out of it! It affects your mind, your ability to work, to interact with and respect people and makes you less of a man.
I think willpower expresses itself the most in the ability to discipline oneself! The baby boomer teachers, even at an high level of university, never talk about this basic truth. Discipline your needs without abolishing them is essential to succeed in greater and nobler tasks. Discipline yourself to achieve your goals and you will become a great writer (like you), the best musician you can be,a great ingeneer, and so on…
I think being a conservative is something you earn and not only a set of values that you share. It’s not, “I am a conservative” but “I try my best everyday to be one, even though sometimes I don’t live up to it”.
Keep up the good work, Its so enlightening
I will say the meanest, most self-righteous people I’ve ever met are conservatives who were “raised right” and rub it in other people’s faces. they don’t consider that other people were “raised right” according to other plans of growth, and maybe don’t know how the whole conservative, religious, buttoned up thing works. But then, that may be true of “raised liberals” who never considered another viewpoint, and could not explain the underpinnings of their beliefs and actions.
It’s a pretty cold place, trying to figure out how to live right, when your compass was set spinning fairly early.
I hope that your struggles to figure out a good path have made you a kinder, more thoughtful and gentle person, who can help the next guy along.
“I will say the meanest, most self-righteous people I’ve ever met are conservatives who were “raised right” and rub it in other people’s faces.”
Really?
My experience has been that the meanest, most self-righteous people I’ve met are lefties who cannot believe you simply won’t bow to their latest theory on how the world should work.
Well, I’m thinking of, say, my friends. I was raised in two or three households-thanks to a divorce I didn’t sign up for- and I’ve been told that I’m not marriage material, for one, for being a child of divorced parents. And two, I did go to church with my churchy relatives, in what I thought were my nicest clothes, since I was told to wear nice clothes. I wore my nicest doc martens, my nicest leggings, my only dress- black- and a clean, bleached tee-shirt. You know, the gothic teenage girl look? And I got called a satanist. I wasn’t. I was trying to dress according to what had been explained to me, which was nice, clean clothes. I ended up in borrowed clothes, so I could “look right” and my mother claimed I wasn’t her child. She didn’t raise me, so I don’t see how I reflected on her. She was mean and cold and judgmental out of some rulebook I hadn’t been introduced to.
But you know, jesus works in mysterious ways, and I still go to church, and I go to a church where at least one person has vivid purple hair, and wears black lace shawls, and there are a healthy number of tattoos on kids. And I explain how I want my kids to look, and why.
Or, say, ” My mama raised me right….you sluts….” Okay, well, other people have different value systems to impart to their children, and it’s not like you get a reset on virginity. Or drugs ” My daddy raised me right….” well, my parents’friends’ view was that kids taking drugs were amusing like the smoking monkey on The Big Bang Theory. I have respect for someone who has the drugs all over option, and chooses to not partake. I don’t know what a sheltered person will do on Candy Mountain.
A lot of the children from the seventies and eighties were raised by baby boomers who didn’t espouse conventional morality. These children had options- if they choose what is right and good and merciful and kind and self- disciplined, it might have taken a great deal of soul- searching, and growth, and painful renunciations for them to choose this less obvious path. It’s not easy, or obvious, by any means. Anyone who got handed that particular silver spoon of cultural capital doesn’t need to be too proud.
I can only conclude that you have a limited perspective.
Ever seen a strip mine? How about the cleared rainforest? That is the cultural effect of the 1968 generation on everything they have touched.
Excellent post!
I am familiar with Roy Baumeister who has had some interesting things to say about how cultures use men and women.
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
There is not a group to which I belong (by choice or not) that comes to mind that causes me more shame than being a Boomer.
The “me” generation, doing it “if it feels good”, “tell it like it is”, “tune in, turn on, drop out”. Blech.
An exercise in over the top hedonism, self-absorption, disloyalty, lack of pride in America, a constant smug and pedantic attitude, unearned arrogance, dependency/co-dependency, assault on “jocks”, faith-based folks, cops, military personnel, stay at home moms, Christians and Jews.
They made rancorous jokes about God being “the man in the sky”, laughing uproariously at the silly notion…but believed in aliens and pyramid power and tinker constantly with Buddha.
They despised war and “oppression”, but root openly for Che, Mao and Fidel.
They hate the “rich” and despise “capitalism”, then select as their leaders Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, John Edwards, Hollywood boozers, drug addicts and NYTImes Duranty wannabe’s, all living in mansions and driving $250,000 cars.
Bathed in hypocrisy and soaked in disdain for all that is America, this group now is in the Fourth Stage of societal cancer in our body politic. They are in control and want to “transform” us into them.
Against our will or with it…no matter. They ignore every rule, abandon even the pretext of abiding by the Constitution and they have seized the reins. They are the ones they have been waiting for.
Wandering around the globe apologizing for the rest of us. Let me take this moment to apologize to all my friends here, instead. I didn’t choose to be in this group and would never. They suck. And, I am ashamed to have been born among them.
CF,
Boomers suck, or the people who suck are boomers? Your posts here just goes to show not ALL of them suck. You are a Boomer, but youre not like “them”. I’m technically a tail-end boomer myself, “the baby” of the family, born last in ’63 to a WW-II vet who was 43 at the time.
Maybe its because I was a small child through the tumultuous late sixties they didnt get a chance to pollute my brain. By highschool “they” were the establishment…
Unkempt, out of shape, lazy, tenured pot smokers (with the students!)…full of inconsitant nonsense…forbiding us to fight bullies in the hallway, but praising rioters…condemning gun ownership as a “crime” while openly wishing in class Reagan was shot dead…. Anti-religion, anti western, anti capital punishment in ALL cases, but completely pro-abortion.
Quite a shock to kids who grew up watching endless re-runs of Audie Murphy in “To Hell and Back”, John Wayne in “the Longest Day” and Steve Mcqueen in “the Great Escape” on the 4:30 movie after school for a decade
So naturally, we rebelled against them by being Politcally Conservative, replacing “Time” and “Newsweek” in the school library with “Soldier of Fortune” magazine, and destroying however we could their inflated self-importance with open contempt and mockery.
The Ex-Marine Gym Teacher, the Football Coach with the buzz-cut, big chest and strange black-green swirls on his forearms…he hept us in line, kept us out of REAL trouble, but he knew what we were up to.
Its true “they” have ruined things, but “they” arent the majority, and never were. They were (and are) like their Commie heros, an active malcontent minority with a plan, while the rest of us just try to go through life as decent people.
Sometimes, decent people kick ass and take names.
it’s why I’m more concerned with my kids getting into the football program, than the gifted program. they’ll have coaches telling them they are made in the image of god, and they will be idolized and snarked on, and they will have to work harder than they’ve ever worked in their lives. and they’ll be different and better people at the end of the program. and acolyting, at church, so they know what serving a real god looks like.
after that, I’m just curious what they do with their lives. Their best friend is their dad, so it should be good.
I don’t get the baby boom. My dad is boomer, and he shifted raising his kids off on his parents. then he talks about what terrible, limited people they were. I’m not getting it. They were limited by spending two lifetimes of raising children? maybe, but I’m grateful. Last I checked, G*d works with all fields, including ones with rocks, stones, legos, barbies, braces, to bring forth all sorts of good harvests.
I think my grandfather is blessed in heaven, and in peace. He certainly sacrificed his whole life to take care of his family. My grandmother is now attending stroke patients four days a week for her church, limping using a cane and coughing from a lifetime of cigarette smoking. Someone ought to be visiting her. It’s eerie, watching someone being refined in holy fire, becoming a saint right before one’s eyes. One reads about it, but doesn’t exactly expect to see this sort of thing, right there in polyester pants and frosted oyster nail polish turning into glory.
I do think, however, that the culture of life and love and wonder is evergreen and growing. It just looks odd to people looking at headstones. it’s so green and young and unproved and unruly.
God bless you and keep you, Ari.
Beautiful description of your grandmother.
It is your father who is “limited” – to self-love.
This goes back to the Aristotelian and medieval definition of virtues as good habits – that is, actions reinforced by repetition. You become just by practicing justice. You become brave in the big things by practicing fortitude in the small things.
Excellent piece, K. I’m wondering if you think choice is a factor in how people exercise their will or practice self-discipline. Don’t take this the wrong way, but as a late-Boomer/privileged White man/social misfit, I learned in my 20s that a) I had the freedom to do or become almost whatever I wanted and b) nobody really gave a crap what I did or became. In other words, I had almost infinite choices and absolutely no guidance from family, society, or culture about what to choose. This made things…complicated.
I’m sure other people have had the same difficulty. I’m wondering if too many choices/not enough limits is a situation common or unique to Boomers – that uniquely prosperous and “free” generation. If I had had more self-discipline and more willpower, would that situation have been easier to deal with? Do Gen-X, the Millennials, etc., experience the same thing, or do they feel less free and more bound by necessity?
Only one quibble. I don’t remember inventing myself. So like all “victims”, this boomer is blaming someone else. Who’s idea was this anyway?
On this subject, I believe free government care is overrated — free health care encourages an unhealty life style and lack of personal research into alternatives. It is no secret that the FDA and the pharmeceuticals reject most promising drugs and treatments for reasons ranging from lack of profitability to unpatentability. People need an incentive to take science classes and research alternative nutrition.
#3-Mark and #8-Ari,
Perhaps we have failed to commmunicate why we should respect our parents, teachers, and bosses. It is not because they exist at the top of a feudal food chain. It is because they have taken responsibility and try to live up to it. One thing I will always value about my mother is that she always told me the whys of what she did. That set me on a path of studying conventions before trying to overthrow them and it got me thhrough the 60s and 70s with my head still screwed on.
I am sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but there is not such thing as the Golden Years in American History, as far as culture is concerned.
It may feel good to declare a particular generation as damaging, but anyone with minor interest in History can read how this occurs with every successive generation, the current just does not live up to the previous, or how can anyone trust the current generation, they “just dont get it” and will ruin the nation.
all it takes is a few minutes on google to search editorials from the 18th century to today and read how the world would end with the invention of the steam engine, giving women the right to vote, ending slavery, or any other social movement that upset the status Quo, or any dozens of examples why the USA would cease to exist because the writer yearns for yesteryear.
Cursing and swearing are nothing new, and goes back to the written word. It is the context and environment that profanity is used that will decide.
BTW, profanity literally translates into “outside the temple”, basically keep these thoughts and expressions in the secular world and not the spiritual. So again, it is the context being used and environment that determine permissible or not.
in the end, i prefer a mildly foul mouthed society that does not drop bombs and invade sovereign nations as opposed to a polite society that does.
So, sovereignty is a big deal for you. I guess you are a big advocate of securing America’s borders to keep illegal immigrants out.
Your pinpoint analysis is a fair example of how we can rationalize poor behavior.
So there should be no standards?
“they “just dont get it” and will ruin the nation”
And so they have ruined the nation, in case you hadn’t noticed.
We now have:
Crushing debt;
A President who regularly violates the laws and the Constitution;
A Congress which does not even pretend to pass a budget;
4 places with legalized gay marriage, with none of the people having had a vote on it;
Endless wars;
Abortion mills;
A shattered economy, with far worse on the way;
The list goes on and on.
So, yeah, it looks like those who kvetch against the Baby Boomers have been proven to be right.
You engage in sophistry.
Mr. Klavan, The Baby-Boomers had nothing to do with the civil rights movement. When the signature legislation was finally signed in 1964 and 1965, not a single Baby-Boomer was old enough to vote let alone hold office. The credit goes to their parents and grandparents. However, you are absolutely correct that they did ruin the movement.
Right, except it was up to the Boomers to make it work. Or not. As the first generation entering their adult years after the 1964 act made discrimination illegal, they were the test case for how it would work. Of course, instead of living up to the dreamm of a color-blind society, they went whole-hog for Affirmative Action and race-based testing. They rejected the integrationist civil rights leaders and signed on to march with the race-hustlers. Which is how they ruined the movement.
Y’know, for being called the “me” generation, the Boomers have always had a pretty pathetic herd mentality. But that’s not really a surprise. In order to get people to look at you, you have to be in the same place they are, so you follow the crowd. And really, narcissists don’t just want people to look at them, they want people to approve of them, so conformity is king.
A question for Mr Klavan, whose work I greatly enjoy. As a boomer who attended one antiwar rally, but refused to say Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh…
And did resent his parents for a few years, thereafter dug hanging and traveling with them, had the pleasure of working with dad on some jobs, paid and pays his bills, voted for McGovern , but would have voted for Nixon if he thought, McG had the slightest chance, and stayed GOP, but one who DOES enjoy some fallout from 60s, such as less formality and the occasional quasi legal doobie when inSF, and who remains an atheist and impartial secularist after leaving his parents’ faith, my question is, Is there room for people like me in conservative circles?
Are we going to worry about family values, or purge the left from power?
“Are we going to worry about family values, or purge the left from power?”
Do both, because it is the same thing. In the end, a more traditional culture, with traditional values of right and wrong will always reject the vile Leftists and their corrupted ideas of what is virtue.
Atheistic, occasional “semi-legal” doobie-smoker, secular, life-long Republican. Hmm, sounds like a RINO to me, one of those who have so greatly helped get us to this point. I suspect you also do not care about gay marriage or abortion. On second thought, perhaps that makes you a Liebrtarian.
Is there room for you? Yes, in the former Republican Party. If you want to be in the new one, you’d better develop a better moral compass, because it is the only thing that will save us. People get the kind of government they deserve. Freedom is for moral people, because immoral people will always abuse their freedom, and thus, have it taken from them.
The fight between the Left and Right is a moral, cultural war. There is no getting around it. In the end, it is all about what is considered virtuous. They have their value system, and we have ours. Everything else springs from there.
Here’s something to think about: wasn’t the doobie and the protesting and all the rebellion a whole lot more fun and meaningful when you could be the anti-establishment sub-culture. I mean really wasn’t it a whole lot more thrilling? Being bohemian or anti-establishment by definition means not being the establishment group with the power. Think about it, right now, the Tea Party is the anti-establishment force. Wouldn’t it be more fulfilling to be OUT of power? To rebel you must have something to push against.
Although I think Alex 13 has a good point – I can remember denunciations of Elvis – there does seem to be some thing singularly thin about the cultural legacy of the 60s. Ginsburg et al may not be Shelley and Keats, but they are, I would posit, worthy of Norton and Oxford Anthologies. Read Kerouac, and you know he loved Twain and Wolfe. Drunk and indisciplined as he was, Jack loved America. And he hated hippies.
So where is the great 60s novel?
In a moment of youthful hubris, i gave it a try myself around the end of 69, I opened with friends gathered some years in the future for the funeral of a major figure in the “movement.”(sound familiar? I swear this is true. Why shouldn’t it be: small minds think alike too.)
After one chapter, I saw it for the fatuous narcissism it was.
So, for literature, zilch.
Film might fare better, but much of the 60s stuff is just belly button viewing. I can’t watch ” The Graduate” with a straight face. In any case, these directors were of an earlier generation.
Art? What art?
Music of the time is the longest lasting bit of culture. I know young guitarists who adore Zeppelin and Hendrix. Still even here, the psychedelic excrescence has faded away, and what remains is rooted in the blues, and thus black A
American idiom, an old and worthy musical culture the boomers had nothing to do with. Lennon and Mcartney, fine song writers, who, with the rock beat stripped away, are major contributors to a canon that began generations before.
There just is something missing.
I’ve often thought that the apex of Western Civ was during the 17th and 18th century’s. The music, the art, the architecture, the literature and the thought behind it all. We are a crass and rude people compared to them even with their warts.
I don’t know. It’s hard to read something like “Moll Flanders” or “The Newgate Bible” and come away thinking those people were more civilized than we are.
I don’t know. If we were teleported back into our ancestors’ shoes, we probably would not share in or even be aware of the glories of civilization. We’d probably be peasants, with lives as nasty, brutish and short as our medieval forebears.
The problem with this thinking is that the only things still valued from the 17th and 18th century are the things that are actually good. There was just as much crap back then as today. The primary difference is that all the crap from earlier periods faded away and no one knows about them anymore.
By all objective measures, today is the apex of Western Civilization.
Regards,
Ken
“They (We) ruined the culture of this country, threw away the untold riches bequeathed to them, betrayed and undermined centuries of wisdom, spread the use of drugs, legitimized divorce and abortion, and even managed to screw up the civil rights movement that might otherwise have been their signal achievement.”
Yeah- I was born in ’54 and the older I get the more strongly I have to resist the impulse to walk around with a bag over my head. I’ve been ashamed of the Boomers for a long time, and it’s not getting any better.
Love that last line from Mark 8. I use it a lot.
“In other words, behaving well, behaving responsibly, learning the norms of politeness and refusing to abandon them without good reason tend to make you a more self-controlled, successful, and finally better person.”
Also living through a depression, fighting and winning a World War, fighting and winning a Cold War, being on the brink of extermination during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and having to endure the Vietnam War and everything that went with it here in the United States, certainly does build A LOT of character. To have to endure all of that you HAD to have a lot of character, fortitude, and faith in your country as well as your upbringing.
What do we have faith in today? iPods? Video Games? More stuff that we don’t need? When the call went out to fight for this country in Iraq and Afghanistan, thankfully there were enough men and women who answered the call. But, trust me gang, that was only a small percentage of the overall population. Those were “somebody else’s wars,” and unless you had somebody who actually was fighting in those wars, they seemed like a distant “thing,” being fought by somebody else. And that sums up this generation very well. Whenever there is some very heavy lifting to be done for this country, can’t we just hire somebody else to do it?
THAT is this generation.
Why not be glad young people don’t need to live through the hell their grandparents knew? Even if they don’t fully appreciate it, that’s how gifts work.
The answer to your question/statement is this: because our young people are now going to have to live through a Depression and heaven knows what else, only this time they are going to have to do it without the cultural norms and faith and structures that their grandparents had. This younger generation’s parents threw away all the guideposts and guardrails; this both caused the present crisis and will leave our young people clueless as to how to get out of it.
Some gift!
Ione: truer words were never spoken!
yeah, b/c my high school class with rotc kids didn’t have to think about skipping homecoming or prom to invade Grenada, or spend a few years hunting communists in the phillippines, or live on their tanks in iraq. that didn’t just happen. nobody I know lived through long rotations in Bosnia. I don’t know any housewives sending letters and care packs to soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Korea. Does it happen if you don’t get lots of press, and all the concerned voices on the nightly news and radio?
there are a lot of unpleasant, self- centered and unattached people in different cities who are pretty happy talking loud, and not asking what everyone else is up to. Everyone else is building stuff.
> there is not such thing as the Golden Years in American History, as far as culture is concerned.
Absolutely! And, as far as I am concerned, those people who continually repeat the nonsense about the “Greatest Generation” don’t really know anything about history.
A few thoughts regarding WW2Gen (a more accurate label) vs “Baby Boomers” :
1. WW2Gen created the Ponzy scheme called “Social Security”… and they are the ONLY GENERATION WHO WILL FULLY PROFIT FROM IT!!! This is true about any Ponzy scheme, which are all based on the personal greed and selfishness of the ones who create the scam. And this, by itself blows the whole meme of WW2Gen’s unselfishness right out of the water.
2. WW2Gen may have produced some great leaders, as every generation does. However, it also produced some of the worst leaders in history. Sorry, but if we are talking about one generation vs another, then you can’t just pick and choose who you are talking about. If Baby Boomers did not produce any Churchill’s, they also did not produce any Hitlers, Stalins, Hirohitos or Mussolinis.
3. The main basis for claiming WW2Gen (meaning actually, of course AMERICAN WW2Gen) as the “greatest” is based on involvement in WW2. I am not going to knock any of the fighting men who waged that war against evil, but the fact was that the U.S. took its own sweet time before entering the war. There were many WW2Gens who did NOT want us to be involved (isolationists) and even some (including in the State Dept) who thought we were fighting for the wrong side. Our government was aware of the Nazi death camps and the destruction of the Jewish people in Europe, and basically kept it quiet. We know as historical FACT that the U.S. government turned away boatloads of Jewish children, who were sent back to their deaths in Nazi camps.
4. If one were to choose a “Greatest” generation, at least in terms of U.S. history, one would do better to choose either the generation that founded this country via the American Revolution (e.g. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson) or those who fought for national unity in the Civil War (e.g. Abraham Lincoln). The idea that any other generation was even remotely greater than either of these generations is patently absurd!
5. Baby Boomers are given the blame for the proliferation of illicit drugs. But that ignores the historical context they were born into. The fact is that drug abuse was already at a high point in Western society when Baby Boomers were starting to come of age. 1960s Baby Boomers followed the examples of their WW2Gen parents, and only changed the nature of the abuse towards pot and psychedelics. But, the abuse of alcohol, as well as “uppers” and “downers” and other drugs was already a part of culture. (Does the song “Mother’s Little Helper” come to mind?) .
6. Baby Boomers are also blamed for the “sexual revolution.” I would recommend that anyone who thinks that the sexual revolution came out of nowhere and is totally “Boomer” handiwork, should read the book “Virtue Under Fire” by John Costello. He discusses alienation from traditional roots and values created by modern global warfare had more to do with the sexual revolution. Again, Baby Boomers were just following the examples of their WW2Gen parents.
And, we could go on.
I have no desire to knock the WW2Gens, nor to exonerate Boomers from all blame. But I am sick and tired of reading this drivel, especially the mia culpa pablum from Boomers themselves, about how terrible the Baby Boomers are/were and how wonderful the “Greatest Generation” was.
From a totally Christian standpoint, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”. And it is patently false to pretend any generation rises up without any historical context and is totally to blame for all the faults in the world.
I am not any kind of “liberal/progressive”… in fact I am Biblically conservative. But truth is truth. And I am sick of the constant blather one reads on conservative and evangelical websites repeating this false dichotomy.
I tend to agree with you regarding the greatest generations (both Revolution and Civil War). My biggest beef with the boomers is they are basically spoiled brats. It’s really easy to rail against the machine when you KNOW you have a cosy home to go to. Now they are in charge of everything and have gone full-on commie on us. I really hate them.
Psychiatrists gave us the very social theories they are now admitting failed. And this guy is still reducing morality to biochemistry and therefore (to the degree that metabolism matters) genetics.
Whatever keeps their profession slightly relevant… “experts” will say anything to keep their cushy jobs.
Drew -
‘Drew -
We Baby Boomers actually had an Excess of Willpower. It was/is “Won’tpower that we are short of.
Dr. Shalit
Indeed you can train and strengthen it. Force yourself to eat food, listen to music, do whatever you dislike until you develop a taste for it. A way to expand your horizons. But it takes effort. Or keep listening to the same music you listened to as a teenager for the rest of your boring life.
As a Boomer, I would like to protest this notion that the Baby Boom generation is a bunch of spoiled, self-centered, worthless, crybabies who damaged American culture.
I would like to do that, but can’t because unfortunately that notion is largely true.
I will say that many of us never fell into that whole sex/drugs/and rock & roll scene. But, too many did and they dragged the rest of us down with them.
Like Andrew, I’ll be glad when the Boomers finally leave the stage(kicking and screaming).
Great article and so true! We definitely took a wrong turn then that has cost us.
Speak for yourself, Mr. Klaven. I’m a “baby boomer” who has spent my life fighting against all those things you listed that you seem to see as a given that we all participated in. I’m not alone, by any means, since there were many more responsible, patriotic–young men who fought, bled and died for their country in Viet Nam–Americans who never stopped believing in God or their Country. There are actually more of us than the “hippies” and left-wing revolutionaries who have brought this Nation to it’s knees. Unfortunately, our mistake was working, minding our own business, raising our families and not being able to believe that Evil would take the place that it has in our Nation and our World.
Well, it seems to me there are a lot of baby boomers decrying baby boomers. Which might mean that the most despicable aspects of my generation aren’t shared by the majority. I read a while ago “The Politically Incorrect Guide To The Sixties”. It reminded me of so many good things that I had forgotten, all the “uncool” small pleasures that the majority of the people embraced, just not the media, or the elite. I know this may sound abrupt, but I think Communist activist and sympathizers had more to do with despoiling this country during the baby boomers formative years, than the boomers themselves. There just might have been more opportunity to make useful idiots of us then in previous generations, but Communism has been around for awhile. Its ideology is so insidious, and footprint so deceptive, that in the name of tolerance, openness, and yes, dare I say love, it has infiltrated our most cherished institutions and become so pervasive that we don’t even recognize its influence. I’m now reading “Witness” by Whitaker Chambers, and if you want a clearer picture of Communism in America, there’s a good place to start.
Besides battling ideological conflict, we are always having to grasp and make sense of technology. We are in a technological revolution as well. No previous generation had to deal with the bombardment of the media as much as the boomers. Technology moves at such a rapid pace that before its benefits and detriments can be determined it is in use. The great thing for me in studying history is the recognition of human nature. We are all subject to our human nature and there isn’t anything new there. The only thing that does change is ideology, knowledge, and scientific advancements, in other words our understanding of the world around us. Ultimately that’s a good thing. It’s just an awful lot to absorb.
I’d like to agree with ari. It’s nice to recognize the value in everyday life that doesn’t measure up to 15 minutes of fame, but leaves a lasting imprint. It’s also nice to be grateful for all we do have.
Read “Willing Accomplices” by Kent Clizbe, for a well researched account of how Communist operations of influence planted the PC seed that is destroying America.
Thanks, kjatexas, I just ordered the book online.
Agreed. And like I said in an earlier comment, it appears to me that it was older people who really invented all the nonsense that the Boomers latched onto during the 60s. As you said, these adult radicals and, let’s face it, weirdos found a willing audience in those teens and twenty-somethings and led many of them down a very dark path.
Why? They thought they were leading a revolution that would actualize their beliefs. The idea of being another Gandhi or another Maharishi or another Castro or Che – very flattering to the ego. And notice how many “gurus” there were back in the 60s. It seemed like so many people either wanted to follow one or be one. John Lennon wanted to follow one THEN to be one.
So you ended up with freaks like Abbie Hoffman and Timothy Leary and Charles Manson puffing up their egos at the expense of young people whom they should have been looking out for, guiding, and protecting. Who else but a malicious parasite could have come up with “Never trust anyone over 30?”
Also check out “Destructive Generation.” Goes into much detail how the New Left went after and replaced Old Liberalism.
Mr. Klavan, your article is concise and I liked it. However, I think that there is a missing thought which involves “conformity”. It often takes maximum willpower to resist the paradoxical notion that you can express your individuality by conforming to the “movement”. I grew up at a time when the youth were in full rebel mode away from “The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit” era and headed toward the hippie generation. Those who were making that transition always talked the “indivuality” nonsense as they looked and behaved one like another. I hated the previous conformist generation and saw the so-called non-conformists equally depressing. So, now here we are. We have entered a “new and transformational (not to mention historic) era” by electing a movement conformist who never had an original thought in his life (he brags about his association with those who have shaped his thinking but never brags up individual achievers….only system conforming “victims”) as America’s president. Our loss of the willpower to resist conformity is our greatest loss.
“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he forfeits his own soul?”
That’s what Mom and Dad used to say. And if I’m glad of anything in this world it’s that they had me before WW2. Means that time grows short but it also means I’m not one of those mealymouthed, foulmouthed, trainwreck kids, multiple wives, Baby Boomers.
Isn’t this the main precept behind alcoholics anonymous and the whole 12-step program? Everything old will be new again…
A major problem for the “baby-boomers,” those born after World War II, say 1945-55, was their sheer numbers. The schools which had suited the much smaller group of Depression children, were not large enough for the boomers, and so it went on.
Drugs became a problem because they were pushed by Harvard professor Timothy Leary. On the 1950s, Alan Ginsberg pontificated that the generation of the soldiers in World War II were a “lost generation,” Jack Kerouac romanced about being “on the road, etc.
I see your trying to make up for your earlier Obama is not evil write up.
I notice you do not mention good or evil here though. Are you unable to figure out the difference between good and evil? Moral and immoral? Have you been politically correct bashed into just letting these ideas disappear from your writing?
The line about profanity REALLY strikes me! I remember when Danny DeVito made the jump to the big screen, (he was still short, however) and I marveled at how unfunny I found him. Then it hit me: he was funnier on “Taxi” because profanity wasn’t allowed on TV. The writers were tasked with creating the rudest man in NY, but they couldn’t use profanity! They were forced to be clever!
I’ve often found that having forced limitations made me a better writer. Writing for the stage is an exercise with limitations at every turn.
Every limitation makes me cleverer; makes me grow. I often impose limitations on my writing (forbidding certain overused words, etc.) just to keep me thinking.
That’s why guys like Richard Pryor are so much funnier on broadcast TV than they are on cable.
And thanks for nailing the Boomers motive for shows like Mad Men. What it really is however is an admission of generational failure.
Leftism is, fundamentally, an infantile — and infantilizing — project.
This poor man, who wrote this article, is one of the dinosaurs let behind by the progression of time and bemoans a return to the 50′s to right all the wrongs of progress, of which he takes currently advantage.
You really believe that, or just trying to make yourself feel better?
Mr. Klavan,
I agree wholeheartedly with your articles, but you repeat a common error–that the boomer generation was responsible for the civil rights movement and its triumphs. How could that be? The oldest boomer, born in 1946, was 9 years old when the Montgomery bus boycott began, and 19 when the civil rights legislation was passed and for all intents and purposes, the fight was over. The civil rights movement was fought and won by men and women much older, as old as A. Phillip Randolph, most from the “greatest generation” of WWII era, and those born between the “greatest generation” and the boomers. What the boomers gave us was a whole series of smug attitudes about race and America before they came of age.
Yes, it’s a fair response and, in fact, I hesitated about this but decided to give the Boomers the benefit of the doubt because of the youth of many of the freedom riders, people like Schwerner, Cheney and Goodman, who come right on the BB cusp. There’s no doubt the youth of the time participated strongly in the grass roots movement… and that their generation then scuttled the gains with politically correct bushwa and endless race baiting… which was my point.
This is sad of me to say about my own family, but I truly do hate the Baby Boomers because of my dad. I do not hate the generation, mind you, just the ones who decided that being narcissistic and -always- right was the way of life.
My dad is one of those people. He hated his father and mother for always being cautious with their money so that they could handle a “what if” scenario. He hated that his father and mother seemed to always be miserable because they didn’t indulge in every single whim they had. He hated that they planned things years into the future and hedged their spending to abide by that plan.
His response to their “horrible nature” was to:
1) Smoke weed at any given opportunity (still does to this day at the age of 48)
2) Grow his hair ridiculously long and obsess over it
3) Blame “the system” for him not being able to get a job because of drug screenings
4) Blame his family for his inability to enjoy life, even now at the age of 48
5) Have sex with anything on two legs that was mildly attractive, whether he was married or not
Basically, his father (my grandfather) shoved him into the military to learn some discipline at age 18. The discipline he learned was that he missed having his long hair, he had to be extra careful to not get caught with drugs, and he had to make sure that he left no evidence of sneaking into the women’s barracks for “fun” at night. He only stayed in for one enlistment.
Fast forward to present day. He has no retirement plan because he has never maintained a legit, corporate style job for more than 6 months during his entire life. He runs a newspaper, which I had the capital for and bought, and now is barely able to make it every two weeks due to a lack of advertising. Every bit of suggestions I have given him have been thrown back in my face, and I even had a large scale newspaper interested in purchasing the paper as an investment for both parties.
After finishing my six years in the military, I came home to go to college and to see what exactly it is that I want to do with myself. Instead of saving my VA GI Bill money for a rainy day, I have to use it for expenses because he doesn’t make enough to cover half of them. I have two half-sisters who live with us, and I am the one who takes care of them as well.
So in other words, here’s the breakdown comparison between my dad (Boomer) and me:
1) Savings – He has none at all. Not even a savings account. I have 3 and struggle to keep money in them.
2) Existential identity – He’s an artist / jack of all trades yet he constantly spends what little he has for a good time, wherever it is. I’m discovering what I’m really good at, yet I conserve and practically hoard every dime I have.
3) Parenting – His version of parenting is to follow exactly what he tells you to do and to think exactly like he thinks. If you don’t, **** off. (His words, by the way.) My version is to have rules in place, find out the reason behind rule breaking and solve the real issues. Most importantly, I actually *listen* before putting out my viewpoint.
4) Family bonds – My grandfather and grandmother have severed all communications with him. My uncles and aunts have done the same. Even my cousins have severed ties with him. On my side though I still communicate with all of my family, even the ones who put me through major trauma at a young age. I made peace with them and now I have a complete family again.
Realizing how long this post has run, I think you all get the idea of what I’m trying to say. Mr. Klavan, you are, as always, brilliant and spot on.
Zamir
Your dad’s 48?
He’s not a boomer. Gen X maybe, but too young to be a Boomer. Cut-off for genuine “Boomerdom” would be a birth date of 1955. Your dad would have been born in 1963.
Sorry he’s such a yutz, though. You seem to have had the will power to NOT be like him. Good on you.
Nope, the cutoff is 1964 according to most definitions.
That’s something I’ve never understood: why the seemingly late cutoff point of 1964? Is that just where the line on the birth rate graph landed? I myself am a Boomer. I wore colorful pants, had collar-length hair, wore a leather peace symbol pendant in the 60s, listened to The Beatles. But I was in elementary school at the time!
Good for you for overcoming such hurdles. there’s nothing like some adversity in life to make you a better person.
This isn’t an exact quote, but pretty close. Edmund Burke said over 200 years ago: He who cannot control himself from within must be controlled from without. His passions forge his fetters.
I really enjoy your writing, both novels and articles. This is no exception. Although you paint with a broad brush I think you point truly at broad trends. I’m especially grateful to be reminded of willpower right now, as I’m struggling to free myself of a long reliance on pornograpy.
Coming to a theater near you, “Baby-Boomer Bashing!”!
You should see how popular it is on the sites that attract a younger population. The X & Y generations hate the Baby Boomers with the heat of a thousand suns. What they’re really doing, of course, is readying us for the Death Panels. But of course we deserve it, right?
Well that all depends on how you were as a baby boomer. If you treated your family properly and showed care and respect where it was needed, odds are that you’ll have a lot of people who think of you fondly and wouldn’t want to see you go. However, if you were a narcissistic boomer who thought of nothing beyond himself/herself, then odds are you don’t have many good supporters, right? That’s life for you. If all you want is to take, take, and take without giving anything back, then all future generations will want to do is…take, take, take from you.
Call it karma for not keeping proper societal rules in place.
Reminds me of a Red Green skit, where he talks about the importance of taking good care of your aging parents while your kids are young. Because your kids are watching!
By squandering our prosperity and annoying the you-know-what out of the younger generations (or perhaps just by being such obnoxious and ineffective role models), Boomers have set themselves up to have zero community-wide safety nets. It’ll all be family.
Three things are going to happen soon:
1) The last of the WWII generation will be gone and the admirable grandparents that Gen X and Y loved will be off the Social Security and Medicare roles, leaving the Boomers as 99% of the cost of those programs.
2) Gen Y will have more voters than the Boomers.
3) Social Security and Medicare will need massive tax increases to continue functioning.
Gen X + Gen Y will be a super-majority of voters. Both, as Jeanne C Patterson
noted, hate the Boomers with a passion. Gen Y needs lower taxes to salvage it’s future, and Gen X wrote off it’s own future already, so neither has a stake in the old Welfare society. Doesn’t take much guesswork to figure out what’s going to happen. I’m predicting the last Social Security payment goes out sometime before 2020. Same with Medicare.
And given the fiscal idiocy we have right now, all those Boomer retirement portfolios (which on average aren’t all that big to begin with) are going to be massively devalued by the inevitable inflation. So, no retirement savings, no federal transfer payments, no government health insurance, no younger bosses who are willing to hire them…
Better have kids and grand kits that love you and are willing (and able) to take care of you in your dottage.
I sure hope you are right about everything here. I am willing to suffer to see the boomers get what they truly deserve.
Well, kid, you’re still gonna’ have to work for us for a few more years, so you can keep dreaming about the pretty secretary, the corner office, and all that power. Of course, all that stuff takes a lot of work; something you young’uns haven’t demonstrated much willingness or ability at.
Aaaaand Art Chance checks in to demonstrate why Boomers are so despised.
Pretty secretary? Corner office? Corporate power? So Boomer.
Pretty wife, home office, owning your own business. Takes a lot more work to make that happen than I’ve seen from any of the aging corporate climbers.
We’ll see.
molon labe
But since you’re likely illiterate: come and take it.
“2) Gen Y will have more voters than the Boomers.”
It’s gonna take awhile for enough of them to die off to reach that point–Boomers aborted about a fourth (I’ve seen estimates as high as a third) of Gen Y. Really short-sighted from a “funding Social Security” perspective, but good for maintaining political power.
One of the great joys of my perverted, degenerate ‘Boomer life is the fact that I’m well enough fixed that I don’t have to depend on the productive capacity of slack-jawed boys in baggy pants for my sustenance in old age. Slutty Gen X and Y girls were fun in my single days, but so ignorant and shallow that they were only a place to visit. And anyway, thanks to AIDS, sport screwing became a blood sport by the mid- ’80s and that combined with age and ennui took a toll on the sporting life.
Only in the homelands of the Coastal Elite are the general notions of what ‘Boomers are about expressed by many here at all generally true. If you went straight to a job in government, entertainment, media, or the academy, you could keep the same stupid ideas you had smoking dope in a college dorm in ’69, and most who went that way did keep those stupid ideas. The rest of the ‘Boomers got very quickly mugged by the reality of 18% mortgages when we were first starting our families and wanting a home and by the miracle of “stagflation” which brought both spiraling inflation and high unemployment. Throw in the fact that most of us who came up in small town America either chose or were forced to go to the cities for decent job opportunities and that fact thrust us straight into the violence, crime, and racial tensions of the late ’60s, early ’70s. And the first time you lost a promotion to the latest affirmative action hire sure made you examine any support you had for those egalitarian notions.
The OP and many of the commenters here, most of whom think themselves conservatives or libertarians, are basically parroting the NYC and LA line about the culture of America in the late ’60s, early ’70s. Trouble is, the only place America was like that was in very small areas of the big cities and some, only some, college campuses. Sorry, folks, but The Archies sold a lot more records than The Jefferson Airplane. Neither “White Rabbit” nor “Somebody to Love,” considered anthyms of The Sixties ever made it to No. 1 on the Billboard Top 40 chart. The Airplane never had a big hit until they became The Starship and started doing horny disco. A small group of stoners loved the Grateful Dead, but how many Top 40 albums did The Dead have? And one Helluva lot more people have heard The Who as theme music on CSI than ever saw them or bought their records. I did see them once; they were late, stoned, and they stunk. Unfortunately, that was true of most of the “legendary” bands of the era. I saw most of them and only Led Zeppelin could be relied upon to give a decent performance. I was a musician in the late ’60s, early ’70s and I can tell you with certainty that if you wanted to never get hired again, you could play “hippie music.” I played around the Southeast and there were maybe two or three places in each of the BIG cities that you could hear and play psychedelia and you’d get payed at most a couple hundred bucks a night – and hippies didn’t tip. You could play after-game dances at high schools and fraternity dances at ACC and SEC schools for $1000 or more a night but you’d best be good at doing The Swinging Medallion’s “Double Shot,” have some really dirty words for “Louie, Louie” and “Money,” and be able to convincingly do The Tams, The Temps, the Miracles, and the Beach Music version of “The Harlem Shuffle,” not The Stones’ version. Do any of you even know what “The Shag” is? The sound track of The Sixties was a lot more like “The Big Chill” than “Woodstock.” Seriously, folks, Sgt. Barry Sadlers “The Ballad of the Green Berets” spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 40 Chart in 1966 and was the number 21 song of the entire decade of The Sixties.
There’s a probably apocryphal story about a woman on the West Side of NYC who simply couldn’t accept that Nixon had won in ’68 because nobody she knew voted for him. Well, everybody the “journalists” in NYC and the entertainers and celebrities in LA knew was a college radical or a hippie (they were very different and didn’t much like each other), so in their minds everybody in the whole Country was either a college radical or a hippie. In reality, most of the ’60s generation got a job and got married, not always in that order, had kids and got a house, not always in that order, and lived pretty productive, very normal lives that wouldn’t even have brought them any notice in the gray, repressive ’50s. Some of them even became Republicans – and Republican Congresspeople and even a President, and there still might be another Republican ‘Boomer President; you never know.
I cannot help to believe the ‘boomer’ class needs to be divided into, perhaps pre/early 50′s births, and later. I have always seen a difference between my friends, pre 1950, and later births. When I graduated high school, it was run like a small military academy, and two years later, it looked like Haight-Ashbury.
Another f**kup, was raising kids. The offspring of most of my boomer employees, were worthless sponges. Content to live at home, and with a preference to play ‘grab ass’ with their friends at McDonalds, than spend 3-5 years learning the skilled trade of their fathers.
Personally, I believe if Joe McCarthy had prevailed, this may not have happened with such severity. They really did invade our culture, with the intent to destroy America.
Beginning in the mid to late ’70s or early ’80s, depending on what part of the Country and whether urban or rural, parents began to lose all authority over their children. By the ’70s the schools had abandoned all notions of in loco parentis and discipline just evaporated. Some of that had to do with integration of schools and allegations of discriminatory discipline, some of it had to do with groovy notions of how to educate kids. Don’t think many ‘Boomers were Principals or Superintendents of schools when this began, though some might have been very junior teachers. By the ’80s schools and state social welfare agencies had become the outright enemy of responsible parents who wanted structured, disciplined, well-behaved children. Anything the kid complained about was reported as child abuse by the kids. Crazily excessive, somebody must go to jail, “domestic violence” laws allowed children to have parents driven from their house because the rotten kid asserted that the parent “made them afraid.” Of course, usually the parent driven away was the father who usually, not always, but usually, was the disciplinarian.
By the time of my younger step-kids reaching their teenage years in the ’90s I wouldn’t have been too upset at all if the lesbian social workers had just come and gotten them and took them to the government kiddie ranch to raise them; Hell, they wouldn’t let me. I guess you can blame all that on ‘Boomers too, but I don’t recall any of the psychology or sociology professors being my age when I went to school.
Willpower or self-control, or rather the lack of it, is why we have so many kids on ADD drugs these days. My stepson would have been deemed ADD or ADHD in a heartbeat, but this fad hadn’t quite taken hold then. What a crock. He hadn’t been taught self-control by his mother (“I can’t do a thing with him,”) so his Dad and I had to. Self-control is taught by parents just like anything else.
Willpower or self-control, rather the lack of it, is at the root of the popular ADD designation, I believe. Our son (my stepson) would have been labeled ADD or ADHD in a heartbeat, but this ‘diagnosis’ hadn’t been invented yet. His mother said that “she couldn’t do a thing with him,” something I hear from parents who are too lazy to care. We taught him self-control like we taught him other civilized behavior. It’s not rocket science, but you have to start early. IMHO.
Sorry, double post.
You make the mistake of crediting the Baby Boomer generation with the civil rights movement. Just all signifcant civil rights laws were passed before even the first Baby Boomer could vote. the Babby Boomer generation is often considered starting with those born in 1946. That means the first Baby Boomers didn’t cast their first vote until 1967. But you are right, the Baby Boomers did screw it up!
OK, I know this is fun for both you young’uns and a some self-flagellating ‘Boomers, but it only works if you ignore the facts. The first election that ANY ‘Boomer (born 46 and later) could vote in was ’64 and in that election only those both born in ’46 and in a state (Georgia and Kentucky) that allowed 18 yr. olds to vote participated. That would be a miniscule portion of the ‘Boomer cohort generally considered to be those born between ’46 and ’64. The first election that any significant number could participate in was ’72. That election was Nixon’s thrashing of McGovern. So, either ‘Boomers weren’t all communists and hippies or some assumptions are wrong here. ‘Boomers were probably the majority of Carter’s vote in ’76, but, you know, the Rs had a lot of liabilities going into that election. Then, I guess you have to assume that no ‘Boomers voted for Reagan – twice, or GHWB. Clinton was the first ‘Boomer elected to the Presidency and most of the bad things you like to say about ‘Boomers can be said of him, it’s true. But then, GWB is a ‘Boomer, too, and I think it likely that some ‘Boomers voted for him – twice. I guess technically even Comrade Obama is a ‘Boomer, b. ’61, but at the very tail end, a Red Diaper baby, and didn’t really even come up in American culture.
So, all that ‘dependency’ stuff and government power stuff was mostly enacted in the New Deal, when no ‘Boomers were alive, so the New Deal is on the “Greatest Generation, and in the Great Society when few ‘Boomers could vote. Now Nixon, who some ‘Boomers might have voted for, did give us the EPA, but somehow I don’t think ‘Boomers voting for Nixon fits into this meme. OK, you can probably blame us for Carter and the Dept. of Education, but if we’re really all the radical leftists and degenerates you want us to be, most of us must have voted for somebody other than a, at the time, conservative Southern Baptist. After that, are you willing to give us credit for Reagan’s two elections, 12 years of the Bushes, the return of Republican control of the Congress for the first time since the New Deal. We didn’t invent “no-fault” divorce, but our generation was the first to feel the effects of it. We didn’t invent the pill, abortion, pornography, or promiscuity, but we were the first generation to be massively exposed to it, and it wasn’t ‘Boomers who who were the purveyors, we were the consumers no doubt, but, you know, nobody was much telling us no; they were too busy making money off us.
You know, when I went to public school in rural Georgia in the ’50s and ’60s, my teachers were already teaching a fairly liberal History and Literature canon. When I started college, also in Georgia, most of the professors were already pretty liberal and in the “liberal arts” courses mostly Marxists, though not all of them avowed Marxists, some didn’t really know they were.
By the ’30s, Progressive was code for communist in the US and the Comintern, the GRU, and KGB/NKVD were very active in this Country. As early as the ’20s the Left had dominance in the electronic media and entertainment as well as in the “elite” educational institutions. By the ’50s the Left, much of it taking direction directly from the Comintern, dominated media, government employment, entertainment, and education. And as to the Civil Rights Movement, go look into where and how Rosa Parks and “Dr.” King were educated. The organized Left fed the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-War movement. Hell, even admission of my current home,Alaska, and Hawaii was in response to Soviet Bloc pressure about US colonialism. And, you know, it wasn’t ‘Boomers that let them do that. It wasn’t ‘Boomers who refused to accept that there was a powerful pro-communist element in this Country and which excoriated anyone who tried to attack the communist efforts in this Country, see, e.g., Sen. McCarthy.
Oh, and, young’uns, Comrade Obama is on you because it was your cohort, minorities, and single/divorce and never married women who elected him. History is cruel, so try to get it right.
Wow! Neo-whatever festival of self hate again. Ho-Hum!
Get a real job Klavan. Go build something.
Just narcissistic blather.
Klavan writes entertainginly, yet pretty much all he says is dead-wrong on-the-facts!
Most folks would say that Thomas Jefferson’s advice upon morality and religion holds up pretty well from a will-power point-of-view. And yet from a religious point-of-view, Jefferson’s advocacy of freethinking stands dead-opposed to (what I take to be) Klavan’s values. Well worth reading (link below).
As for 1960s literary culture, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) has proved to be an enduring classic.
With respect to music, my fifth grade music teacher taught her class that rock-and-roll music contained rhythms that damaged the young brain. On no account were we young kids ever to listen to it. Then a cousin played for me the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band, some early Bob Dylan, and some Rolling Stones. All I could say was, “C’mon, brain damage!”
At that same school, our science teachers taught us that life was a mysterious spark that science could never understand, much less create. Then I read James Watson’s The Double Helix (1968), and I understood that those ideology-first “science” teachers were dead-wrong on-the-facts.
It was in 1960 that a young non-degree scientist named Jane Goodall went into the forests of Gombe and began studying chimpanzees, publishing the results in My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees (1969). Jane followed the traditional path to scientific fame: “She saw what everyone had seen, and thought what no-one had thought.”
And meanwhile, a few renegade physics professors were starting companies like Fairchild (which shipped the first computer chip in 1960) and its successor Intel (1968) … companies that were powerful engines of America prosperity and security throughout the 20th century.
So there’s plenty of reason to regard the 1960s as an absolutely *terrific* decade for art and science! A decade that America’s radical founders like Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, and Priestley all would have enjoyed immensely!
—————————————-
Thomas Jefferson’s Advice Upon Morality and Religion
URL: http://books.google.com/books?id=Qjw-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA216
“…our science teachers taught us that life was a mysterious spark that science could never understand,
much less create…I understood that those ideology-first “science” teachers were dead-wrong on-the-facts”
Sooooo…If it was the 1960′s when YOU, in your infinite wisdom, “understood” the spark of life,
thus proving wrong those all who, from time imortal, claimed it imossible to duplicate,
how is it that YOU are not (a) “God” by now, but remain a mere “physicist”?
If you were (a) God, you’d know Heller’s book sucked, and that as a “soldier”,
he was an unremarkable nobody among his REAL squadron mates.
“Yosarian’s” heroic legacy becoming the permanent mask to his actual comportment during crisis.
The “evil system” excuse to prop up the non-performance of a self declared anti-hero,
so popular among the weak and undisciplined, it is cliche’
The American Library Association (ALA) maintains a list of “Frequently Challenged Books” … a list that makes mighty interesting reading in itself.
How many of these books would Andrew Klavan like to see removed from school libraries?
My reading is simple: Klavan’s feeling snippy `cuz his books ain’t made ALA’s ban-list!
————————————–
ALA: Frequently challenged books of the 21st century
URL: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/21stcenturychallenged/index.cfm
Having been born near the end of 1945 I have lived through all the boomer stuff and will throw my one and a half cents into the pot.
In sheer size, the boomers overwhelmed the institutions who were supposed to contain and shape them. I don’t think that one can over-estimate the effect of Vietnam as a shaping experience in which the “establishment” had gotten us into a situation, where the reasonable limitations of avoiding the use of nuclear weapons, the ability of the North Vietnamese to resist us, etc. created a perfect storm of dissent and defeat, the OPPOSITE of the consensus and victory that finally came over us after Pearl Harbor. Korea foretold what would happen, but misread the tea leaves, or the appeasement lessons of Munich.
One could oppose the Vietnam war, believing either that it was immoral, unwinnable, or simply not worth the cost and risk of what it would take to win. Watergate did in Nixon’s pragmatism, and pushed us all another click to the left. The drugs and the music became how much of “my g-g-g-generation defined themselves when they were young, BUT there have been plenty of wake-up calls, growing up moments and bad trips along the way with Altamont, Lennon getting shot, stagflation the Iranian hostages, the Reagan Revolution, the Bushes etc. The majority of the boomers have grown up and have the scar tissue and wrinkles to prove it. Of course, if they happen to be remain liberal, they are going to be considered traitorous, evil, or narcissistic, possibly all three, by x% of the PJM responders.
Klavan’s rant shows that it is more dramatic ergo attention-getting to define an evil, or almost evil bogey-man/demon (something he resisted doing in the Obama piece)and go on and on. One thinks of the millions of sermons delivered over the years by ministers and priests looking for new and creative ways to fire up their congregations, week in week out, year in, year out. Occasionally, they may have actually been correct, and certainly various awakenings have washed over us. They never last, but they always return.
It is interesting to see the Revolutionary War generation get held up as an example of greatness (which I believe they were) but the Revolution did have a significant radicalizing and secularizing effect on the country for a generation, which lasted until the next “awakening.”
It will take many more years before one can do much more than “preach” about the effect of the boomers. We are still figuring it out because we are still in the midst of it.
Good points. Still, we have enough distance from those days to perceive some of the silliness abroad then. Like, Boomers informing the veterans of Tarawa, Normandy and Inchon that War Is Not Good For Children And Other Living Things.
Great D-White. Just great! Get loose!
The use of free association juxtaposed with aimless Pick It Fence But meandering sums it up. One wouldn’t think that such a well trained and disciplined Ping Pong Tongue could come forth with such non-clarity mixed with subterranean angst, such as –
“Of course, if they happen to be remain liberal, they are going to be considered traitorous, evil, or narcissistic, possibly all three, by x% of the PJM responders.”
Who will play Alice B. Toklas to your Gertrude Stein?
And the ever expanding numerology, now including “x%”. Is there such a formula as x% = 4-4-4/5-10 * n – Pick It But? Wow, Noble Peace Prize on the way?
Damn, D-White pass that joint thought you’ve been bogartin’ on to the New Generation, and maybe that very special home bound 25% will turn on their Silent Majority Moms and Dads who really did/do have their shit together enough to take care of failed junior at 45. What a lesson plan! Is that Humbolt Tweed?
Hey D-White, roll another one and expound on Alexander Hamilton’s sixth toe. Or maybe Mr. President’s wardrobe.
Johnny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
Ah, there is life in you yet, but no more substance than usual.
First, for the Sanitary Inspector, I agree that “War is bad for children and other living things” is a goofy motto, but there were Quakers a long time before the boomers and a pacifist tradition, which found an expanded base among boomers and “empowered women.” I have always known that there were people in the world who needed a good killing, (just like I knew that one always had to work to survive) but I would also pick and choose if I were going to be the one doing the killing and dying. Some people say that you don’t get to pick and choose, you just obey orders, but I pick and choose.
Which leads us back to Mr Lucky. You might be a good buddy in a foxhole if one needed music or sarcasm, but if we needed someone to point their gun in the right direction and shoot it, you’d be looking for your guitar pick.
And your stories (we love stories) about whomever, living off their parents, is just so counterfactual in my case, both with my parents and my children. Of course, I actually have children, whereas you have a guitar pick (not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Dear Mr Fantasy, play us a tune, something to pick on the picket fence…and make it snappy.
“…to pick on the picket fence…”
Why D-White, you sound positively hurt. No, the 25% at home was not intended for your family unit, it was just some numerology and then contrast as to the Baby Boom Assault.
And oh for gosh sake D-White, must you pigeon hole all musicians as effeminate guitar players who use picks and can’t point and kill? What was your experience with music? Hmmm, after all, having one good high school English teacher in one’s past does not make all high school English teachers good.
Look D-White, if you’re going to be mean to the “x% of PJM posters”, then you must be prepared for some push back, like Mr. President bringing his knife to a fight. Does he have razors in his hair too?
Would you take Rosie O’Donnell as Toklas? She does have street cred, and your “foxhole” can be remodeled to make her fit. I know, Sarah P….
Look out kid
It’s somethin’ you did
Did I use the word “effeminate?”
Hurt? More like bitter (although hardly surprised) about the fact that you don’t respond to the Vietnam issue, Nixon, the Revolutionary War generation or ANY of the examples I cite. You just go into the D-White, Picket fence, Tweed rhetorical schtick, with a little Gertrude Stein thrown in. As usual you seek to completely change or ignore the subject.
Your comment on the Rev. War generation…Alexander Hamilton’s sixth toe. At least you didn’t bring up Ted Nugent. You relate your experience with guns and I’ll give mine with music. Better still, contribute something on Vietnam etc.
At least you will never have to be sad about having a straight line.
Listen to the CRACKER song “I Hate my Generation” to refuel your willpower. Empowerment through focused anger and disgust CAN help you rise above the idiots.
Mr. Klavan before you throw my generation under the bus let’s look at a fraction of the boomers that have made their mark already and that have changed this nation for the better.
Steve Jobs 1955
General David Petraeus 1952
Bill Gates 1955
Carly Fiorina 1954
Meg Whitman 1956
Hermain Cain 12/13/45 Close enough
Denzel Washington 1954
Chuck Palahniuk 1962
Oprah Winfrey 1954
Oswaldo José Guillén Barrios (Ozzie Guillen) 1964
Steve Ballmer 1956
Ron Howard 1954
Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger 1951
Michael Jordan 1963
Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi 1955
Christine O’Grady “Chris” Gregoire 1947
These are all fine people from the boomer generation that I am proud to be included. And this only barely scratches the surface of people who are making the world a better place. Most boomers get up and go to work that add value and wealth to their company, community, nation and family.
So stop the navel-gazing and woe is me attitude and look at the value you and the boomer generation have created for the good mankind.
As for great books written by boomers, where does one put Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Sometimes a Great Notion?” The latter is a book that PJMers and Tea Partiers would probably beleeeve in, but it could not duplicate the success of Cuckoo’s Nest (probably for that reason.) Most of the books the boomers read like Catch 22 and Slaughter House 5 were written by pre-boomer WWII Vets. I believe that Updike may be just too old to be a boomer.
Is it possible that the rise of television actually choked off the possibility of writing a classic? Tom Wolf and John McPhee are possibles mostly in non-fiction and there are certainly people I am missing; but who are they? Larry McMurtry? The guy who wrote “The Road,” whose name currently escapes me? Who else?
How about Atlas Shrugged D-White? Not a Boomer. Oh gee, oh shucks. Much of that wild “x%” on PJM relates to Rand on some level. And you have never read Rand and pretend to be a “centrist” who is in touch with conservative ideas? You probably know more about licking Romney Boot than who the Hell John Galt Is.
As an example, Austan Goolsbee, what a name, Rand nailed it. Read his gibberish and be enlightened D-White! Why he is one of you! Ted Nugent? No… Too Palin like for Tweed sensibilities.
If you can bring yourself to even page through Atlas, you may find that some has been there and done that long before Rosie O made her debut in your “foxhole”.
Look Red Pencil Neck, the gun imaging means much to you. Why? The constant ad campaign to let someone, anyone know that you have that Steely Dan readied for deployment is touching. But using them as a Modern Liberal prop for manhood “foxhole” authenticity? Goolsbee!
Better jump down a manhole,
light yourself a candle
Well, I know who Howard Rourke is, or I did forty plus years ago.
Maybe you forget to mention your favorite boomers Sean Hannity and Ann Colter books: “Deliver Us From Nastiness.”
Steely Dan is ready to be deployed for the animals drawn on the wall before the fall. Ask Palin and Nugent to comment on their Steely Dans. Oops, you don’t have to ASK them to, but it doesn’t seem to bother you from them. You don’t have any? That’s ok, we are a diverse country.
You see some of us can transcend tweed in our lives, because the world IS bigger than any one political vision of it, which at least a few other people around here also realize. I’d like to think that it is x+1; it is on at least some threads. Not to brag (I’m just lucky I guess) but my broader vision trumps your narrow partisan nastiness and you know it; all you have to come back with is (oh so hurtful) name-calling, eclectic lyrical allusions, and snippets on/of a fantasy tweed person.
Hey, check the collected sayings of Chairman D-white and stop me if I have said this before.
Oh D-White, the re-education has hit a rough spot, unexpectedly.
Roark was in the Fountainhead.
Steely Dan – a strap-on dildo referred to in the William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch
“You see some of us can transcend tweed in our lives”, therefore Tweed is bad?
Sean Hannity and Ann Colter? Did they get married and beget Bill O’Reilly? Must be some kinda Right Wing Conspiracy. The John Birch Society and Hillary are behind it. That is what the Modern Liberal street is talking. After all, She did run against Mr. President.
Like most Modern Liberals, you’ve got the If You Don’t Agree With Me You Are A Republican (Whatever) Nazi Syndrome. There are nuances in life.
Name calling? Has stupid, ignorant, dumb, ever been used? Well, unless High School English Teacher is name calling. Oh, yeah, Pick It Fence But, Ping Pong Tongue and Red Pencil Neck? Terms of endearment. Simple terms to encapsulate the Corrective Let Me Tell You Self Centrist. Somewhat of a tautology.
I’ll raise you! Here. Let’s get into snippiness! There is a loaded S&W .38 laying around… somewhere, handy and ready. But that’s not safe! Go to Hell. The Lady of the House is well versed and it does travel occasionally. Too many gun laws. Best to check before you move it. Don’t drop in at 1:00am with malice aforethought.
Chug down some more Haffenreffer, and become One with Mr. President in the Rose Garden. Or is that the Rosie O garden “foxhole”?
Look out kid,
don’t matter what you did
Yes, Roark was in the Fountainhead. Was that in question? I think I also read “For the New Intellectual” at some point in the sixties, years after I read “The Politician.” All of the righty stuff had some appeal, but did not take over as much as the tweed (denim, actually) as I lived through the boomer stuff about which Klavan is ranting. And no, Tweed is not necessarily bad, just limiting, especially the way you want to characterize it, which was the point.
Becoming one with the President is less and less an issue; nuances remember? Because you guys despise him does not make me love him, although it often makes me defend him.
Yes, there probably are too many gun laws, but there are also children in a lot of houses, which preclude loaded weapons lying around. Accidents in that area are usually their own punishment, but I understand the need for some laws. One has to jump through a lot of hoops to carry in this state, and I care more about owning than carrying, but the permits here essentially amount to the same thing. One OUI or even a simple UI can cost you your permits. To my wife’s chagrin, I’m working on one. The required class was about one third female.
I won’t tell anyone about your sawed-off .410.
Cuckoos Nest is a great book. Atlas Shrugged is an offense against humanity, along with every piece of fiction Ayn Rand wrote.
Her novels stink.
“War is bad for children and other living things” is a great slogan. Kids are always getting killed every time we fight some idiotic war. Something to consider before you start tossing bombs around.
Ted Nugent rocks. So do the Grateful Dead, my all time favorite band.
Of course, I’m a baby boomer, so my opinions are probably worse than useless and detrimental to national morale in the bargain, and all that just because I happened to be born in 1953. At least that appears to be the opinion of the author of the initial tirade.
I don’t think I’m going to rush off and die just to please Klavan, though.
Oy. and I’m not even jewish. 1/3 of all pregnancies were aborted during Jimmy Carter’s administration. That number started going down under Reagan. This means that everyone in their forties and thirties are living in a functional ghost story. It’s like the college admissions speech- look to your left, look to your right, one of you is not going to graduate. 1974 is the absolute nadir- lowest live birth rate, highest abortion rate, probably highest divorce rate, as well.
Right now, abortion is mostly chosen by single women. It’s mostly sold to minority women, by some huge margin. The numbers for New York City alone make my head spin. I think the best thing about the Obama administration is that all the cockroaches crawled out of the corners and opened their mouths and started talking loud. Ruth Bader- Ginsburg on supporting abortion to get rid of undesirables is still my personal favorite. That someone might consider her an undesirable didn’t quite make it into her view of the golden rule.
There are more children raised in religious households, in conservative counties. They don’t look like the very angry and reactionary conservatives of teh 1970′s. They look goofy, and happy and young and carefree. They join the military, they get married and have kids, and then go on diets. In my town, they get tattoos, which make some of the old people nervous, but how do you object to a Kairos, in greek, on a cute vacation bible school volunteer’s ankle? They write books about aprons. They join facebook groups supporting the troops. they read twilight, or watch the movies ( btw- there are fans of that sending care-packs to soldiers) they read andrew klavan books. they rent “american carol” or “the eagle of the ninth” …..but, mostly, rather than define themselves by what they consume, they define themselves by what they produce, create, care for, make and preserve. look at knitting blogs, or sewing websites, or parenting websites, or church websites.
I have been a fan of Roy Baumeister and his lab partner at FSU, Diane Tice, for over 12 years. What they call “willpower” here is what shrinks know as “self-regulation.”
I just ordered the book, and am salivating at the prospect of reading it.
I have exchanged emails with Baumeister. The man is one of the most prescient researchers alive.
Here’s what I posted at the PJTV Instavision interview of the book’s author.
Put yourself in situations where you won’t have to exercise your willpower? Religions for centuries have said to avoid temptations, such as bad companions and so forth. Thomas Aquinas said a virtue is a good habit and a vice is a bad habit.
And even Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act 3 scene 4): “Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either master the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.”
And I’d bet the Stoic philosophers said the same things.
I’m tiring of reading Andrew’s articles, not because of their inherent worthlessness, but because they are so articulate, so full of Aha! moments, that they make me feel worthless for not having seen so clearly what is and what isn’t.
Andrew, please stop. You’re making me feel like a surpassing idiot.
while I’m at it, it’s really clever to condemn today’s students for not having conventional morality, or any sense of right and wrong. Well, there are all sorts of books on the bookshelf encouraging ” build your own virtue” kits. Having lived through all of them- it’s hard work. One learns to appreciate a skillful builder. After all that effort, running into a catholic or lutheran catechism- one can marvel at the skill, and subtlety of thought, of those builders. You have to admit, major league baseball is more fun if you played baseball when you were young. You can admire their skill, when otherwise, it’s just grownups flicking a bitty little ball around to no purpose. I don’t think people who grew up memorizing their catechism can appreciate the strangeness of it in the same way, or get excited by it, in the same way.
I know that my friends who grew up secular, feral, from divorce, anarchist, and so on- find the catholic catechism really FUN. LIke an obstacle course for our brains, like a wrestling gym with a good coach. It’s fizzy. I know we get more excited, online, than the pastoral staff at the various churches we attend.