Blame it on the Sixties
I am a child of the sixties. Pure and simply that means; I am now old. I am so old that I just received my Medicare card. I am so old that I was 13 when the sixties began. I am so old that I am what is known as a "Baby Boomer". Being this old, however, allows me to have a comparative perspective between those days of yore and the present.
I remember the British invasion. I remember the summer of Love. I remember burning draft cards. I remember bras being burned. I remember when cigarettes were good. I remember when gas was below 30 cents a gallon. I remember when you could buy a loaf of bread for a quarter. I remember when America made the best automobiles in the world. I remember when there was no security needed in airports. I remember when you could smoke cigarettes on airplanes. I remember pay phones. I remember drive-in movies. I remember black and white TV. I remember cruising.
I remember when it was expected that you would graduate high school. I remember when it was expected that you would get married before you had children. I remember when it was expected that you would get married before you would live together. I remember when it was expected that you would obey authority. I remember "My country right or wrong". I remember the anti Vietnam war movement. I remember Kent State. I remember a Republican president who ended the Vietnam war. I remember the draft. I remember when a girl would be "in trouble" if she got pregnant before she was married. I remember when abortion was illegal. I remember shame. There were rules, and a lot of the rules seemed unfair. But fairness wasn't the issue. The rules kept it all going in an inexorable boring march to sameness and conformity.
The injustices and hypocrisy of the time were unbearable, especially to the baby boomers. In the background the drumbeat of "we want the world and we want it now", hypnotically propelled the passion for change. And that passion coupled with the overwhelming numbers of the boomers and their exponentially increasing economic power set the stage for the tsunami that over the next generations changed everything.
When you compare high school graduation pictures from the late fifties and early sixties to those of the mid to later sixties the difference is stark and says it all. The former showed young people who were old before they got started whereas the latter showed young people who were resisting maturity and would continue to do so at any cost for as long a they could.
So, here sits the old boomer, who fortunately has been able to navigate the changes that have occurred over the decades. To a great extent this is because I have followed many of the values that were imprinted deep in my psyche before the turbulent sixties. And, as is always the case, you need some luck. But I do see a lot of human wreckage who have not been able benefit by the promise of the sixties. As you know, the promises made were many and the promises kept were few. While the freedom to act without penalty increased, many unintended consequences arose to fill the void.
The biggest casualty of the sixties is the Family unit. While we were all bolstered by the empowerment of the individual to "do our own thing", "to let our freak flag fly", the implication was that the family was unnecessary. This new paradigm has lead to a weakening of society by normalizing the single parent unit. In some demographics this is now actually the norm. As the old African proverb famously and wrongly states; "It takes a village to raise a child". This kind of thinking has caused an abdication of responsibility from the single parent with an expectation that society (the village) will step in and provide the missing ingredient of the absent parent. It is the child who ultimately shoulders the burden of poor decisions made by the parents.
There are norms that have served society well for thousands of years and just because you wish you lived in a world where these norms didn't apply, that just don't make it so.
I remember the British invasion. I remember the summer of Love. I remember burning draft cards. I remember bras being burned. I remember when cigarettes were good. I remember when gas was below 30 cents a gallon. I remember when you could buy a loaf of bread for a quarter. I remember when America made the best automobiles in the world. I remember when there was no security needed in airports. I remember when you could smoke cigarettes on airplanes. I remember pay phones. I remember drive-in movies. I remember black and white TV. I remember cruising.
I remember when it was expected that you would graduate high school. I remember when it was expected that you would get married before you had children. I remember when it was expected that you would get married before you would live together. I remember when it was expected that you would obey authority. I remember "My country right or wrong". I remember the anti Vietnam war movement. I remember Kent State. I remember a Republican president who ended the Vietnam war. I remember the draft. I remember when a girl would be "in trouble" if she got pregnant before she was married. I remember when abortion was illegal. I remember shame. There were rules, and a lot of the rules seemed unfair. But fairness wasn't the issue. The rules kept it all going in an inexorable boring march to sameness and conformity.
The injustices and hypocrisy of the time were unbearable, especially to the baby boomers. In the background the drumbeat of "we want the world and we want it now", hypnotically propelled the passion for change. And that passion coupled with the overwhelming numbers of the boomers and their exponentially increasing economic power set the stage for the tsunami that over the next generations changed everything.
When you compare high school graduation pictures from the late fifties and early sixties to those of the mid to later sixties the difference is stark and says it all. The former showed young people who were old before they got started whereas the latter showed young people who were resisting maturity and would continue to do so at any cost for as long a they could.
So, here sits the old boomer, who fortunately has been able to navigate the changes that have occurred over the decades. To a great extent this is because I have followed many of the values that were imprinted deep in my psyche before the turbulent sixties. And, as is always the case, you need some luck. But I do see a lot of human wreckage who have not been able benefit by the promise of the sixties. As you know, the promises made were many and the promises kept were few. While the freedom to act without penalty increased, many unintended consequences arose to fill the void.
The biggest casualty of the sixties is the Family unit. While we were all bolstered by the empowerment of the individual to "do our own thing", "to let our freak flag fly", the implication was that the family was unnecessary. This new paradigm has lead to a weakening of society by normalizing the single parent unit. In some demographics this is now actually the norm. As the old African proverb famously and wrongly states; "It takes a village to raise a child". This kind of thinking has caused an abdication of responsibility from the single parent with an expectation that society (the village) will step in and provide the missing ingredient of the absent parent. It is the child who ultimately shoulders the burden of poor decisions made by the parents.
There are norms that have served society well for thousands of years and just because you wish you lived in a world where these norms didn't apply, that just don't make it so.
posted by Spider at 1:11 PM
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