Boomers, X-rs and O-thers

High school graduation day, June, 1970

Ed of Blork Blog generously linked recently to my post on the 1960s at the new blog, qarrtsiluni. A lot of Ed's readers are somewhat younger (than me, that is), and most are Canadian. I was astounded to read the comment thread, and witness the level of emotion some of the writers expressed about feeling totally dominated (and not in a good way) by Boomer culture - i.e., the culture of their parents. It really opened my eyes and made me want to find out more about this from my own readers. Do younger Americans feel the same way, for instance?

So - a few questions for you. How did you experience the 1960s and early 1970s? If you grew up then, do you feel like those years shaped you forever? Do you feel like people today have an accurate understanding of what it was like? If you're younger (not a Boomer, i.e. born after 1964, I guess), do you feel a generational identity today? How would you characterize that? How do you feel like your life has been affected by Boomer culture and values - whatever you may perceive those to be? How did your parents and their values affect how you feel about the 1960s today (that could go for everybody)?

I'm especially interested in seeing if we can get a discussion going that further illuminates some differences between various cultures - all of whom were affected by Vietnam and by the big social changes during those times - but apparently quite differently. Thanks to Ed for starting me thinking about this - and please readers, jump in, I'd really like to hear from you.

Comments

[Chris Clarke]

Great topic, but can I just be the first to comment on the hot babe in the photo?

You know. Just to get it out of the way.

[Frank]

My parents apparently are a year older than yourself (graduated in US '69). They had me soon after your graduation. By the way, I found aj's comment on blork blog quite illuminating. An interesting family story.. My grandfather was a chef at the Conrad Hilton Hotel during the '69 Democratic Convention. My father (in high school at the time) had to pick him up from work and my grandmother rode in the back seat so that he would be able to get through the baracades because of the riots. To address your questions:

I grew up in the seventies and early eighties in Chicago. Although my parents (as far as I know) did not participate in the late sixties culture, I do see a semblence of that in the way my mother brought me up. I can't say I was cognisant of the greater world around me at that time really until around '79. It was really all about the people around me. I thought everyone was Catholic.

As far as generational identity, due to my ancestry and looks, I never felt I fell into any particular stereotype. There were too many different identities to be pigeonhole into just one. So I can't express that I feel I have that 'generational identity'. I always felt on the fringe.

As far as the Boomer culture, currently I don't feel my life and livelyhood are affected directly by it. Again, I feel on the fringe, so I feel I'm making my own path regardless of any generational influence. I am more concerned with the powers that be than what generation they are from. As blork suggested, for me it is more about the individuals than a stereotype about the generation.

For the last question, I feel my parents were more open and relaxed than I understood other generations to be . They allowed me to learn through mistakes rather than through constant lecturing. Although every child is different as I find now as a parent and constant adjustments must be made.

[wolfangel]

I fall more or less between generations (78), which has never hugely bothered me: I got to avoid both sets of stereotypes.

I grew up on those books that described the aftermath of nuclear war, the doomsday clock in the paper every year, telling us how close we were to certain destruction. (No one younger than me read those books, pretty much: we read the news together a lot when I was a kid.) And of course I grew up in weird sorts of political uncertainty: countries rising or falling, including mine. Plus, all the Vietnam escapees to Canada who taught here.

The thing that most bothered me, always, about the boomer generation was being told we wouldn't have a defining moment (death of JFK), or, later, that it was sad that our defining moment was Diana's death. Of course it wasn't (if anything, 9/11).

I was nostalgic for Expo 67, for the Olympics. Maybe this is the non-Americanness of me, or my goody-two-shoesness, but the 60s as it is conceptualised now never made much impact on me. (Or: my parents talked a lot about Expo and the Olympics, more than the 60s in general.)

[Julia]

I was born in '56 in England. I must be a boomer. Memories of the sixties?
The song "San Francisco" and wearing orange sandals and frantically flowered clothes
Being told that if Russia dropped an A-bomb nearby we'd survive if we wore wellington boots and a raincoat to protect us from the fall-out (wonder who tested THAT advice?)
The Beatles, I was going to grow up and marry Ringo (wasn't ambitious enough to set my sights on Paul)
Gob-stoppers and having my teeth filled regularly by over-zealous dentists
When the price of a bar of Cadbury's chocolate hit 3p (deep shock)
My cousins who lived magical lives and shared their summers with me, the eldest cousin became a brilliant doctor and died of cancer aged 38, I am so glad we didn't know then...
Aged 7 I would go off on my bike clutching a jam sandwich and bottle of lemonade and not return until it got dark
The death of Churchill and Johnny Cash songs
Food was seasonal and loaded with chemicals
Monday was wash day, the house was steamy and stank of suds
Dr Who and the Daleks, I still tremble when I hear 'EXTERMINATE!'
Infrequent cars gave way to kids kicking footballs, often through neighbours windows

I was born just after rationning ended here. The UK was feeling politely pleased to have survived the war... there were still air-raid shelters on the green outside my grandparents' houses, everything was scarce and precious, my mother mended and saved and made-do... my parents felt that the 60's would be The Good Times but instead they succumbed to Cold War Paranoia. The "4 Minute Warning" became our mantra...

I was an IT whizz before it became The Thing To Be, I earned a small fortune, a rare female systems programmer in a world of men
I could "shoot" paper system dumps armed with the IBM System 360 reference card I still keep in my undies drawer
I shocked everyone when I abandoned it to spend 10 years raising my children

We had too much... now, aged almost 50, I spend my time shedding 'things' and emotional baggage and the people who hurt me, in preparation for a total downshift to a stone house in rural France

I never wanted to 'Have it all', I just wanted to feel safe at least once in my life and I never did

[Pica]

Oooh, good topic.

What strikes me as interesting about the children of boomers who have been entering college since about 2000 (hence the "Millennial Generation") is how much they seem to tolerate involvement by their parents in every aspect of their lives. They like the same music, they have been raised to think of their parents as buddies. They seem to vote the same way. It's weird.

It's also a little suffocating, I think. A new year has just started at UC Davis and there are actually workshops being given for "helicopter parent syndrome..."

[miguel]

I was born in 1960 in Germany after my father (who is a South Carolina-born, Staten-Island raised Black/ lived-for-his-formative-years-in-the-Philippines Filipino American) went to Germany to meet my German mother (whose parents were pacifist socialists before and during the war... my German grandfather refused to carry a weapon in the German army, as opposed to the Nazi army, and, even after being captured by the Americans in France and being cruely treated by the French and Americans, continued to uphold a pacifist and open-minded view of Americans that he and my grandmother passed on to my mother). Fifteen years after the war being a black-American in Germany was quite a brave and rare thing to do, but my parents were both unusual people.

After I was born the family headed back to New York, right at the start of all the race riots and anti-war protests. My parents were heavily involved with the anti-war movement (forbidding my brother and me from playing with any toy weapons or toys like G.I. Joe), J.F.K. election, listened to the Beatles, Buffy Saint-Marie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, the "Wartime Rag" ("Hello Mom, I'm off to drop the bomb, so don't wait up for me..." I can't recall the name of the singer... Steve Allen???), and we saw Tom Paxton, my father's favorite singer, in Central Park (where I met him from my father's shoulders), and joined in the desegregated school movement (for a year my brother and I attended an elementary school in Harlem during the teacher strikes). My parents' best friends were two Hippies who lived in a across the courtyard in Parkway Village, a UN sponsored multicultural neighborhood in Queens. All over the apartment my parents (my father was an aspiring artist) pasted collages of newspaper clippings of police dogs attacking black protesters and flower power images. At my father's job as an editor at the American Heritage Dictionary (yep, his name Amadio Arboleda is on the masthead as "Science Editor") he came home with reports about such exciting events as the meeting over whether they should include the word "fuck" in the definitions (the decision was made after one of the staff members returned with the news that Webster had decided against including it).

All these events heavily influenced the way I see the world today, in part because my parents were passionate about what they were doing and were so happy and alive with being so deeply invloved with others who believed the same things.

When things began to get crazy in 1968, though, when my father was offered a Chief Editor position at Tokyo University Press, my parents jumped at the chance. So it was off again and into a totally different world from what I had known until then. Things were pretty wild in Japan at that time, too. The streets were in chaos with tens of thousands of helmeted and scarved student protesters (protesting against the conservative governent and the Viet Nam War... against America. Unlike in America, however, the protests in Japan died in the water) marching, with such public figures as Yukio Mishima, the author, publically committing ritual suicide, with the involvement of the terrorist group the Japanese Red Army in the 1972 Lod Airport hijacking, and with social upheavals from food and oil shortages and a burgeoning megapolis population. This is the period that probably affected me the most. Whereas in the 70's things seemed pretty calm in the States, I went to an international high school where we had monthly bomb threats from Israeli and Egyptian sympathizers and where all the people around me strongly opposed the American involvement in Viet Nam (meaning that there wasn't a single person I knew, except some Americans in my school, who supported any American presence in Viet Nam). At the same time the Japanese were "America-crazy". It seemed all things American were the Golden Mean. Everyone wanted to visit America, buy American goods, listen to American music, eat American food, wear American clothing. It contrasted very starkly with my own experience of most of the bullies in my school being American and their acting as if they owned Japan when they were in public, treating the Japanese, even the adults, as if they were servants or inferior, brazenly snubbing their noses at all things Japanese, even publically shouting at train station masters or store clerks when the Japanese couldn't respond in English. In my school only the white Americans and British and Australians could get lead parts in school plays and all our sports were American games like American football, basketball, and baseball, none of which most of my school mates played or were interested in. Japanese being what they are few Japanese protested openly. All this very heavily influenced my own feelings about America and Americans, and even after moving to Oregon to study at university and getting to know quite different Americans, I still have a very hard time opening my mind at times, when I feel that I will always remain invisible to Americans unless I act like and look like and think like an American. Even the tendency to claim the Sixties as a definitive American event in world history affects how I feel about the time... it is as if nothing else was happening in the world at the time.

Since then the focus on America here has softened and there is much more of a tendency to find value in things Japanese or in other cultures, especially Italy and Viet Nam and, unheard of twenty years ago, Korea, these days.

My own accumulated time in Germany, America, and Japan and close friendships with people from all over the world has rendered my sense of identity into a mishmash of experiences and views. Nowadays I tend to see much more of the balance of outlooks in every culture. America seems as rich and flawed and confused and human as everyone else now. And the influence of the Sixties has merged into the influence of the Seventies and Eighties and Nineties. The Sixties seems to me to have been a heady period with much questioning of what was happening in the world, but at the same time not very productive or realistic. I think it's taken until now for people to begin to see that the values of the Sixties were important, but that the practical and everyday part of life values are important, too. It remains to be seen if we can truly understand and implement the visions of the Sixties. Hopefully we can do what needs to be done without violence and hate.

[AJ Kandy]

Being a Montrealer born 1971, I have to second the impression of Expo 67, the Olympics and the then-new Metro being "big." Although I didn't see the fair itself, the pavilions were open for years afterwards: I remember the spooky Man and his World one with the Mothman statue...the cool playground atmosphere of the Czech pavilion...the still-running 360 Cinema that showed you a welter of images about Canada...and of course La Ronde, with its monorail, gondolas, roller coasters, carnival rides, midway attractions, and the smell of french fry grease.

The CBC, and PBS, were pretty influential on me growing up - PBS for its experimental kids shows, the CBC because it was so...institutional and iconic. Sesame Street (with French segments, instead of spanish.) Pencil Box, where kids could send in stories that would be dramatized by real actors. Witness to Yesterday, with Patrick Watson. Front Page Challenge, stuck in a time warp from 1952, and Wayne and Shuster. The Nature of Things. Tommy Hunter. Hockey Night in Canada (in the classic years of Da Canadiens.) A lot of British programming for some reason, too - The Famous Five, The Two Ronnies, The Goodies. Quebec School Telecasts on those days sick at home, blocks of edutainment in the morning. At school, we seemed to see a new NFB animated educational film every week, and on the holidays, Canadian-made specials - always sponsored by Kraft, I thought they were Canadian! - dominated the set at home. Nelvana's animated treat 'A Cosmic Christmas,' and their later magnum opus Rock and Rule (now out on DVD...)

What struck me about the CBC, well into the 1980s, was how sort of home-made it all seemed. In the literal sense - back in those days there were still budgets for locally produced programming, so CBC Montreal would be very different from CBC Halifax or Toronto. Everything was shot on Super 8, or on that early grainy in-studio video. There would be big gaps where the ads would go, sometimes, and local stations would fill these with 'interludes' - where they would send some luckless intern out to film the streets of Montreal or the airport or something and then marry it to some weird track by the Swingle Singers doing a capella Bach, or a synthesizer rendition of 'Leaving On A Jet Plane'.

The Scottish electronic band Boards of Canada (yes, named after the NFB) have a song called "Roygbiv" that sounds like EVERY one of those CBC soundtracks; it instantly makes me think it's 1975.

[language hat]

1964? Nobody who can't remember the Kennedy assassination or the advent of the Beatles is a Boomer, as far as I'm concerned. How can you be a Boomer if you have only vague childhood memories of the Sixties? And to get one other minor matter out of the way, I'm surprised you're surprised about the resenting-Boomers thing; if you spend any time at sites dominated by people in their 20s and 30s, like MetaFilter, you get very accustomed to that. And it's perfectly natural -- I'm sure people born in the 1770s and later got mightily sick of hearing their parents rant about the American Revolution and how thrilling it all was, and the same of course goes for the French one a few years later ("Oh, knock off that 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive' crap, Wordy!"). But the fact is that it was bliss to be alive in the Sixties, and to be young was very heaven.

I was a Foreign Service brat, and we were stationed in Tokyo in the early '60s, so the news about Kennedy came in the early morning -- I remember being awakened by my very somber father, and going to school churning with emotions, and being given condolences by all the Japanese I passed on the way (anti-Americanism fell away for the moment, just as after 9/11). But living abroad is more or less being a decade behind the times, so I didn't really encounter the '60s personally until I went off to college from Argentina in 1968: talk about culture shock! I'd literally never heard a woman curse until I sat on the quad my first day and heard coeds walk by using language I couldn't believe people said in public. That first year I kept my head down and studied, but by sophomore year I was in full fight-the-power mode, skipping class to drive around to other LA-area campuses and try to coordinate protests, going to anti-war marches and trying to avoid getting nabbed by cops, the whole bit. Discovering pacifism, anarchism, and feminism (pretty much in that order) was like having my brain opened to the light and all the cobwebs swept out. But the main thing is that it really did seem that it was all going to make a difference. We were all sure that by, say, 1975 pot would be legal, women would be equal, and the US would no longer be throwing its weight around like a crazed cowboy. I think that's the big difference between now and then; there were huge protests against the Iraq war (I was at one in NYC that might have had a million people), but I don't think anybody expected anything to change -- people felt the imperative to register their opinion, but they knew the war was going to happen anyway and that the world would go on the way it was already. That's doubtless wiser, but it's not inspirational.

[zuleme]

I was born in 1951 so I hit it right on. I saw the Beatles on their first tour in Boston. I spent my early teens at the Club 47 listening to every folk singer performing live, Muddy Waters ( in my photo album) , Joni MItchell ( whom I remember as a thin girl with a high sweet voice) Trini Lopez, the Chad Mitchell Trio, The Lovin' Spoonful. ( also in photo album)Peter, Paul and Mary, Ian and Sylvia, Richard and Mim Farina, you name them, I saw them Saw Bob Dylan get booed at Newport for going electric, saw the Stones, Joan Baez of course, Pete Seeger, some I don't ever remember. My mother took me to every concert and coffee house she could find. My sister went to Woodstock. I was in Canada ( see below)

The War saw me in Canada with my boyfriend. We lived in Montreal for a while, then I went to the Nova Scotia College of Art, taught by other refugees from Parsons in NY. Then I spent time back on Cape Cod running a natural foods store, living with friends, having wonderful, strange costumes parties. Next I took off for Ireland where I joined the great migration of young people. It was like a river, you could just hop in anywhere and find like minded souls to drift along with and help each other out. Kids I knew went to France, Greece, Bali, India, as the whim took them.

I'd say that growing up in the 60's shaped my life. I wrote one musical about it a few years ago and it was produced by a high school here. The kids thought it was great fun and also, it showed them that it wasn't all about flower power. Someday I intend to write a book about my experiences but there were some tough ones I'm not sure I want to deal with yet. It was a hard time and a great time to be young. What I most remember is the non-materialism. We really thought life could be different, that people could share their lives, that you could build communities that worked where people would be happy. That you could end war.

A while ago my mother said, " If a door opened up back to the sixties, I'd be the first one in line." So yeah, it was great and the younger generations do have something to be pissed off about. They missed it.

[Rachel]

I was born to young hip boomer parents, in Montreal of 1970, at the dead center of what Canada now calls "The October Crisis". It was a time when Qubecois separatists (now called "terrorists") kidnapped key Canadian political figures in order to activate separatist solidarity within French-speaking Qubec. The then Prime Minister Trudeau (friend of John Lennon and famous "progressive" boomers alike) declared martial law, temporarily suspended the rights and freedoms of all Canadians, rolled tanks and armed soldiers into downtown Montreal, and immediately jailed thousands of people without cause.

My boomer parents were born in 1949 to poor blue-collar families. As a teen my father worked as a full-time computer programmer for a publishing company and remains employed in the industry to this day. He has never known adulthood without work, benefits and generous salary. My mother was a part-time model and an aspiring artist who worked in retail. She was chosen to represent the "youth" of Qubec society as an employee for Expo 67. She is today a well-known painter who is frequently accused of plagiarizing the work of younger artists. Both my parents were at Woodstock and my mother also attended The Atlantic City Pop Festival. They were idealistic, highly intelligent, ambitious, politically informed, socially connected, fashionable and attractive. They were well acquainted with many famous Canadian and American musicians, artists, writers, activists and young politicians of their time. By all accounts, my parents were prototypical North American boomers - two poor kids who made good and could be held up as prime examples of their generation.

I belong to that first wave of children born to those young hip "ideal" boomers. We are the nameless and un-interesting generation between X (their younger brothers and sisters) and Y (their grandchildren). Most of us are here today because of malfunctioning contraceptive methods or because our parents decided to "risk it" and not use birth control at all. Though, when I was a "mouthy" child my mother always proudly declared that abortion was indeed available to her at the time, and that I should be grateful that she did not avail herself of it. Coincidentally my father officially holds the record for being the youngest Canadian to ever be granted a vasectomy and as you can see, it's a point of pride for me.

My brother on the other hand was adopted out of Vietnam shortly after "Operation Babylift" in a rushed international adoption process that is considered by some to have been both immoral and un-necessary. (See. Statement on the Immorality of Bringing South Vietnamese Orphans to the United States, April 4, 1975, Viola W. Bernard Papers, Box 62, Folder 8, Archives and Special Collections, Augustus C. Long Library, Columbia University.) Together we were raised with idealistic boomer parenting methods, and for the first few years of our lives we had an ideal childhood. My parents transitioned from their downtown "hipster" scene to their nurturing and progressive rural communal "hippie family" phase. That is, until fashions changed once again and our boomer parents changed with them.

When their "Me Generation" phase arrived it marked the end of the idealized "hippie" family life my parents had constructed. I (along with the "pet cause" fashion accessory child that was my brother) then no longer amused them. Clearly, disco, drugs and sexual freedom were far more appealing than parenthood in the late 70's. We weathered this phase as best we could and often relied on the less "hip" boomer parents of our schoolmates to stand-in for our own. When the disco era was over and their "Greedy 80's" phase set in, my parents found they could no longer tolerate us as financial "dependents" and we were expelled from our home altogether. Bank accounts that were once started by our frugal depression-era grandparents to pay for our university tuition now went to paying for two successive lavish European vacations which helped my parents "cope" with their impending "middle age".

My brother and I grew up largely neglected, ignored and even resented by my parents who seemed jealous and resentful of even our most minor achievements. By the time we were only sixteen they had grown bored of parenting and disposed of us completely. My brother, was homeless for a while but then joined the army. With the military's assistance he finished high school and now works as a part-time cook. How sad it was to see him turn to the military for help, when the military had played such a key role in his life's fate since infancy. He is today embittered, resentful and understandably estranged from my parents. He also struggles to re-connect with his culture and hopes to travel to Vietnam one day, if he can ever afford it. I personally struggled as a homeless teen for years and eventually put myself through university. I am also admittedly embittered and estranged from my parents.

While I recognize all the incredible achievements that were accomplished by their boomer generation, I also have a somewhat different perspective on what it was like for those of us who struggled to grow up as the first big mistake of their generation's "elite".

[beth]

Wow. Thank you so much for all the comments so far, and I hope others readers will contribute their own memories to this thread. Frank, Rachel, AJ - it's great to have your voices here. Pica, that's something that's amazing to me too. Everything about the sixties was "question authority"- with parental authority at the top of the list. The "helicopter parent" syndrome was not only unknown to us, but would have been as un-cool as it gets. What Rachel talks about is the very sad side of this, though. I knew a few other people who never grew up, never accepted the responsibility that came with parenthood, and caused a great deal of suffering as a result.

But don't let me interrupt you.

And, by the way, thanks, Chris! That was before this semi-hippie got hips.

[ruth]

if I was born in 1964 I suppose I count. Firstly I feel, above all, proud to be of the disco generation but perhaps every generation feels that proud of their music. It taught me about bass line playing and I would be the bass line playes I am today without 'Don't Blame it on the Boogie' and anything by Stevie Wonder...!
More seriously, I am aware of what my mother faught for in terms of in women's rights and what I experience as a result . I hardly ever experience sexism and most of the orchestras I play in are 70% women and now it is not uncommon to find a woman conductor. However the great pain is that she did not benefit from what she fought for directly. She only watched me benfeit from it. Some mothers would find joy in this and others -many I presume, like mine? - are cripplingly jealous and even angry.

Thanks for stopping by mine. It's never too late to find a blog friend!

[Julia]

Yes, I forgot the rebellion... weren't we the first generation to kick back? I was brought up to be so-British and restrained but even I had my "moment" when I ran away to Paris with an unsuitable boy!
Kids these days don't seem to rebel, or am I missing something?

[Julia]

BTW What's a 'helicopter parent'?

[language hat]

"Kids these days don't seem to rebel"

What's there to rebel against? Anything goes.

[dale]

Oh, I think there'd be plenty to rebel against. But kids these days are raised scared. Scared of strangers, scared of diseases we had never heard of, scared of national financial ruin.

To me the hallmark of the boomers was that we were raised to believe that no ill would ever come to us. Hence the brazenness of our rebellion, the swagger of our radicalism. The world was our oyster. And hence the shock of the Cold War. Surely no one could want to hurt *us*?

[zhoen]

I always felt disconnect from my parents culture and my (9 & 12 year older) brothers culture. Born in 1962, I was sometimes classed with the boomers, and sometimes not. I felt I missed the sexual revolutions and the activist surges, to fall in the cracks and also escape the most strident ranting.

I do not remember the Kennedy assassination, being a baby at the time. But I do remember Nixon's resignation speech -sort of. I soaked up the feminism, and took the goals as a given. Despite my parents horror at the practice of "shaking up", I saw nothing wrong in it, and did not agonize over my sexuality despite Catholic school. In many ways I avoided the scrutiny of the boomers, and those who sold to them. I spent my childhood and youth being too young, or too old, for many fads and movements. Too young for Howdy Doody, too old for Sesame Street.

My parents were both born in Windsor Ontario, moved to Detroit in the 50's. I grew up American. So I fell between the national cultures as well.

[Julia]

What's there to rebel against today?

1. Climate change, global warming, habitat destruction, ozone holes, failing eco-systems, wholesale plundering of the planet's resources for short-term gain

2. Terrorism, not just the perceived threat by faceless foreigners but the loss of civil liberties our govt's feel obliged to inflict on us 'for our safety' - stinks of 1984 to me "if there isn't a real enemy - invent one"

3. Financial insecurity, jobs going to Asia and South Africa... not just manufacturing but also high-tech jobs, added to the rising numbers of us boomers retiring earlier and living longer that the kids have to work to keep in blue rinses, cruises and bowling bags...

4. Aids, SARs and all the other health threats that could wipe out 1/4 of the population... the Black Death killed 1/3 of Europe and led to social unrest and insecurity that changes the politics ot the continent

5. GM crops and "Frankinstein Foods.. I don't want to buy strawberries that can, single-stalkedly, kill insects, I don't want my soya beans to have in-bred Agent Orange and I certainly don't want fish-genes in my oats, thank you very much!

6. and I'd add, the fact that We refuse to act our age and make way for the kids... crikey, when your Mom takes up snowboarding and buys w/e tickets for rock festivals, drives a convertible and has her hair streaked with purple, I mean!
How gross is that!

PS we Europeans have been having an absolutely super time protesting against your president and the war in Iraq...

[language hat]

Julia, I didn't mean there was nothing to *protest* -- obviously, there's an abundance of things! I meant there was nothing to *rebel* against: nothing that makes kids feel like rebels, flouting conventions, defying authority, and most important, pissing off their parents. Sure, you can wear black t-shirts emblazoned with anarchist slogans... which you can buy at a fancy clothing store near you. You can listen to punk rock... brought to you by corporate sponsors on corporate radio. Those things you mention that are worth protesting? The parents are (or could be) right there marching alongside their kids; they're protests approved by Blue Staters of all ages. There's just nothing today (as far as I can tell) that feels the way marching against the war did in the '60s. Which is good, in a way; it's good that there's not that kind of "generation gap." But I hope you get what I mean.

[Byron]

I read your writing and responses on the 60's. Recolection is different than fact, but, just as important to each individual. It is what the essence of an event is seen through their temperment. When I paint from memory most of the facts are gone leaving me with only the recoloection of what was important to me.

[Julia]

Yes, I realised as soon as I spouted forth from my middle-aged, middle-class soap box that I had been talking of protesting rather than rebelling...
But I am British and we are not bred to rebel. Besides, what did we have to rebel against?
It was America that had Civil Rights and Vietnam, Watergate and ???
Interesting thought though, what IS there to rebel against now?
Rebellion itself?

[susurra]

I doubt its a conscious rebellion, but when I see kids numb themselves and drop out of things where they are engaged... I wonder what drove them to numb themselves.

I wonder if what changed is the feeling that anyone can make a difference. Didn't that belief seem tangible in earlier decades? And now?

[panasianbiz]

I stumbled across your blog while I was doing some online research. I was really quite impressed with your discussion and your insights. It's so funny to me how we've nicknamed the different generations, but the people who lived in those various eras never thought of themselves as anything but modern and normal.