Hold My Bier: It's Boomer Time!
“Generational theory” fascinates me. Think of it as sociological analysis that attempts to interpret America’s story by understanding the subplots interwoven over time by various age groups. These segments range from the “Greatest Generation” (the World War II victors born between approximately 1900 and 1925) to “Gen Z” (born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s).
The segment I call to mind, with mixed feelings, is the “Baby Boomers,” who burst forth in the 1946-1964 range. That’s my group, so I know something about the story we have written for ourselves and others. But we all need to understand it better.
See Bill Schmitt’s new article about Jesuits in the Diocese of Brooklyn, past and present. Published in The Tablet, July 22, 2023, by DeSales Media.
I realize that every generation’s story, including its birth-date ranges, grossly oversimplifies.
Nevertheless, generational theory offers a context for reviewing key events and conditions that influenced us all in the public square. Such context can also help to assess how groups interact productively in the present day—and to seek wisdom about future contributions.
What’s the Diagnosis?
I have become restless about the road Boomers are traveling as years go by. What lessons have we learned and taught? What legacies are we leaving? What shall we make of our “retirement”?
Just like the Social Security Trust Fund promised by top officials, much of the zeal and hope for constructive change our generation anticipated generating has proven transient.
Obviously, the blame for dreams that became too big or small must be spread across multiple generations, time spans, and social conditions. Only the endpoint of earthly life will clarify the moral of each individual’s story.
We can acknowledge that Boomers have undertaken many noble endeavors.
Hey, we also gave the world a lot of great music, including countless songs celebrating love, freedom, and peace.
But turn to Jackson Browne for a sobering song about us: “The Pretender,” from a 1976 album.
He mused about the carefree “laughter of the lovers … leaving nothing for the others/but to choose off and fight/And tear at the world with all their might/while the ships bearing their dreams/sail out of sight.”
A prototypical (or stereotypical) Boomer, idealistic but spoiled, was “caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender.”
Browne called me and my gang happy idiots. We surrendered to greed, even though we aspired to spread “true love” and even though a great generation before us pursued nobility during cataclysmic travails.
Are we Boomers the “Pretender Generation”? Did we glimpse a 1960s-1970s trajectory which, despite its many flaws, pointed toward greater compassion and community, only to drop the ball by staking out turf in suburban cul-de-sacs?
We gravitated toward class divides and got pretty good at virtue-signaling before that term was invented. No doubt, some of our signals spotlighted actual virtue. But many of us opted for “another Pleasant Valley Sunday … here in status-symbol land”—quoting now from a Monkees tune.
Our timeline proceeded from the hippies to the yuppies to the elite Establishment—from a “summer of love” to “the me generation,” prompting Saturday Night Live to mock the 1980s as “the Al Franken Decade.”
Perhaps we set a tragic stage for our successors, Generation X, as previewed by a troubled talent named Freddie Mercury, born in 1946. His masterpiece, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” debuted in 1975. One might say this became a theme song for nihilistic disenchantment that has grown with each decade.
If so, we provoked a spirit summed up by a grand, albeit uncommon, word: disestablishmentarianism. Loosely defined, akin to relativism and deconstruction, this has become a driving force on campuses and in politics, popular culture, and religion.
Please forgive my Boomer blues, but they have been nurtured by many recent books employing generational theory. I haven’t read them, but I suspect the authors don’t like us. My favorite title is Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster (2021).
Numerous Boomers who have made it into the Establishment have held on for dear life, and for their children’s lives—frequently because our hopes are no longer anchored in the joy of an eternal afterlife or the responsibilities of a pilgrimage to that Kingdom. We feel threatened and guilty, and we’ve forgotten that God forgives.
It's almost embarrassing how tightly the Pretender Generation has clung to power—and perhaps to pretension.
We cannot judge people’s souls, and we know plenty of folks of all ages, across the political spectrum, who care deeply about other persons and the common good. They readily sacrifice time, talent, and treasure to make society better.
But we don’t hand over the reins, or the reigns. America had twenty-eight consecutive years of Boomer presidents—Bill Clinton (born 1946), George Bush (1946), Barack Obama (1961), and Donald Trump (yep, 1946). Then we voted for greater maturity—Joe Biden (born 1942), from the cohort theorists label the “Silent Generation.”
Furthermore, George Soros is 92. Charles Koch of the activist Koch Brothers is 87. Pope Francis is 86. Klaus Schwab is 85.
The rising age-groups of influentials include many women who did not make the Boomer cut-off. 'Tis the season for women and men of younger cohorts to bring their own experiences and insights into varied positions of leadership.
What’s the Cure?
How shall the Baby Boom, especially those with resources for a comfortable “retirement,” contribute in ways that resemble neither Ebenezer Scrooge nor Mao Zedong, the former octogenarian Chinese Communist Party chairman?
How might we escape the quotable critique of Napoleon—that “he was as great as one could be without being good”?
First, we must celebrate the fact that people today are living longer, or at least staying active longer in the public square—in the job market and/or the marketplace of ideas.
We should shape this activity with purpose and meaning, so the next step is clear. The Pretender Generation is due for another examination of conscience.
We can enjoy countless “Pleasant Valley Sundays” of wealth preservation, golf games, and plastic surgery, but there is no better moment to get busy enriching our legacy, as a group and as individuals.
Up-and-coming leaders will be immersed in, and hopefully determined to heal, a divided society with a plethora of needs, complex issues, and debts coming due.
Some will think the answer is to hastily “fix” what’s broken—by limiting freedoms, forcing consensus, downsizing aspirations, silencing deplorable troublemakers, pandering to emotions and appearances, and breaking a few more things so a more powerful, but more appealing, elite can take charge.
I hope more imaginative leaders will opt to inform and encourage all segments of the population, asking them to pitch in, echoing JFK’s inaugural address.
We Boomers in particular should demand leaders who know accurate history, emulating the good ideas and not merely condemning the bad. We have learned from both, so let’s remind them: Canceling the past cancels us.
Meanwhile, since our whopping population has allowed us always to play with an abundance of friends our own age, we must open our Overton window wider to appreciate those born after us, and before us.
As philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel put it, “The wise man knows himself as debtor, and his actions will be inspired by a deep sense of obligation.”
Boomers can help to revive, and to model, the principle of subsidiarity, where a hearty mix of “locals” identify problems, participate in solutions, and contribute an authentic diversity of abilities and perspectives.
Digital natives hold blurred notions of place, of identity rooted in relationship. Whether or not our cul-de-sacs were idyllic, we can be champions for the “neighborhoods” we grew up in—or at least for the idea of neighbor.
More bits of advice: To encourage an all-in attitude, we must make people of all sorts less fearful of speaking up and getting involved. Call out any rhetoric of disenchantment and distrust.
Many former anti-Establishment types now are well-Established. Keep planting our heirloom seeds of “love, freedom, and peace” within centers of power, promoting “power to the people.”
Do not applaud schemes to disestablish the institutions and traditions which sustain continuity amid chaos, but acknowledge from personal experience how “the system” needs repairs and maintenance.
One primary structure to re-establish is the family. Boomers should be suns around which nuclear, extended, intergenerational, and welcoming families orbit.
Reconnect our loved ones to the Church, civil society, and communities as sources of support. Those structures will also support us when we eventually have to press the “Life Alert” button.
The concept of “senior citizen” as a separate demographic category deserves an extra dimension—the role of “elder.” Actively educate, guide, and listen to children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Exhibit cultural literacy and emotional intelligence.
Admit our mistakes so others can avoid them. Point out examples of coarsened or dumbed-down conversations, not by stopping them but by upping the game. Help younger people experience face-to-face fun, injecting humor, finding common ground.
Advise against artificial realities, fantasy lives, and manipulative lies—while boasting that “my pretending days are over.”
Before our “Life Alert” days arrive, we can hone our skills as storytellers, making isolated minds more alert to life.
It helps if we were well-educated. Emulate teachers who got us excited about new knowledge. Say repeatedly, “That’s a good question.”
If we studied philosophy, we learned to love thinking, reasoning, and seeking the good, the true, and the beautiful. Rebuke those “Bohemian” lyrics, “Nothing really matters.” Affirm that, looking back now, even little things matter a lot.
Everyone will be asked to sacrifice more in the America of the future, and Boomers with resources must join in. Ponder an in-extremis example we can identify with. An inspiring squadron loosely known as the Fukushima Fifty, although they actually totaled hundreds, ventured into a radioactive hellscape to help control the 2011 meltdown in Japan. They included 250 senior volunteers with special skills.
Such emergencies are fortunately rare. But there are many ways to keep going when the going gets rough.
Consider tackling difficult, unglamorous tasks or positions where “elders” can provide qualities related less to age than to a wealth of ability, maturity, humility, sympathy, and familiarity with suffering.
This is where my head is during my semi-retired Boomerhood—enjoying some rest but seeing the value in restlessness.
All this stuff about generations is largely theory. But it recalls memories (and music) which can liberate and activate us. Recognizing the truth about where we have been, how we have changed, and how we can spark further growth is a habit which ages well.
Image from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Creative Commons designs.
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