I wanted to move to this thread a post Susan made, before I commented on something:

Food for thought--yum. That goes along with my theory that Heroes become Heroic because as young adults, society notices the good (civic) but not the bad (rebelliousness), though both types of behavior exist; and that Prophets become Prophetic because as young aduls, society notices and rewards the bad (rebelliousness) but not the good (civic), though again, both exist. I think you're right on target about Nomads taking the all the blame and no credit, and Artists taking neither blame or credit.

On 2001-10-05 13:43, Brian Rush wrote:
Barbara, that 1952 article struck me as the best take, not just on the Beats, but on the whole Silent gen, and by extension on the Artist archetype, that I've ever seen. I was particularly struck by the comparison-plus-contrast with the Lost Generation, and by the disgruntlement expressed with the High's lack of faith and values. This was the first iteration of a theme that would be taken up by Boomers more loudly.


Do you think it's fair to say that the recessive archetypes, in addition to counterpointing the theme set by their next-elders, also foreshadow the theme set by their next-juniors? Can we find a similar foreshadowing done by Xers, a disgust with hypocrisy and dysfunctional societies, to which the Millennials are beginning to respond?

Yes, that article does do a great job of "explaining" my generation. I think we have often foreshadowed. It's not our job, rather, our afliction, our disease.

If I can re-state Susan's post on Page 35 of this thread, where she has posted:

Heroes: Constructive activity (building, establishing institutions and governments, etc.)
Prophets: Destructive activity (tearing down outmoded institutions, governments, etc.)
Nomads: Passively identify and call attention to the need for contructive action which is later taken up by Heroes (disillusionment with old institutions and regimes that don't work, etc.)
Artists: Passively identify and call attention to the need for destructive action which is later taken up by Prophets (disillusionment with old belief systems, cultural values, etc.)

Re-stated:
Civics: Build up
Artists: Re-direct by perception
Prophets: Break down
Nomads: Re-direct by reaction

The recessive gens are the Road Signs. The dominant gens are the Roads (or the SUVS on the roads, however you want to look at it).

I also agree with the blame/credit assignments to each gen. I agree, Silents do get neither. So, polite request: quit blaming us for the current situation, please.

Mike Alexander once remarked over on the Lib v. Cons thread that Artists are the most perceptive gen. Therefore, I perceive that Bush is calling his own shots and controls the whole direction he has chosen. Howard Fineman of Newsweek followed him during the campaign, and comments that Bush is very much a "plotter and a planner, not spontaneous". He's mapped his plan out in detail, and only leaving the details to his Silent administrators. Whatever frustrations may be felt about things, it should not be directed toward Powell, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. (Rice is a '54 Boomer): Silents are not being given that much power in this situation. He is using their expertise (advice and admin abilities), though.

I also copied another of Susan's post to here from the Millie thread (see top of page), because I do think that PERCEPTION and STEREOTYPING do play a part.

Brian, you suggest that perhaps the reason some Jonesers don't feel like Boomers is because we view iconic "Sixties" events differently, but nonetheless, in your opinion, still share a similar mindset to Boomers. I believe you are wrong. Those events were huge,and the age you were when they happened is part of what seperates us from Boomers. They were participants, we were witnesses. Their personalities were already largely formed by the mid-to-late 60's; we were young and impressionable. They were changing the world; our personality was being created by those changes.



You argue that the essence of Boomerdom is an idealistic...moralistic view of the world, which perhaps was more engendered in the 70's than the 60's. I, on the other hand, believe that events of the 70's (the economic downturn, staglation, Watergate, failure in Vietnam, the oil crisis, etc.) created a cynicism,sense of irony, etc. in Jonesers that never became a part of the ongoing personality of Boomers. Again, they were already formed by then (Boomers were in their 20's and 30's by the early-to-mid 70's), while the Joneser personality was still being developed (the youngest Jonesers were only 7 when Watergate broke). In fact, a major source of cynicism for us was watching the grown-ups (paricularly Boomers) sell out hypocritically and break the promises they had made to us children about building a utopian world of peace, love, equality, etc.



The mindset of a generation is in part created by big events like those you describe. Jonesers had a remarkable roller coaster as our mindset was being forged, from the extremely idealistic-inducing events of the 60's to the extremely cynicism-inducing events of the 70's. All of this happening during those critical formative years. Boomers, by contrast, were formed during the hopeful 50's and the idealistic 60's; they never experienced anything like our rollercoaster. That gave the two generations very different personalities. Had we not been lumped in by mistake with the Boomers simply because their parents and ours happened to have a lot of children, we wouldn't even be having this discussion--so different are the two generations.



I am surprised to hear you say you feel more in common with someone born in '43 than in '61. You are certainly in the minority from what I've seen and heard from fellow Jonesers; I think most of us, by far, relate more to X'ers than Boomers, and for good historical reasons.



On another front- The Beats- I think that the name came from a junkie named Herbert Hunkie (sp?) who used to hang out at all night diners around Times Square where people like Kerouac, Ginsberg and others also hung out. One night, Hunkie came into one of the diners and commented "Man, I'm beat..." (meaning he was tired/worn out) and someone jumped up out of his stool ( I think it was Kerouac ) and said "That's it! We're the Beat Generation!" because the word's connotations fit so well the mindset of he and his contemporaries. The word "beatnick" was I believe coined by long-time San Francisco columnist Herb Caen (sp?).

I'm glad some of you read the Clellan Holmes article I posted called "This is the Beat Generation". You ask if I'd been hiding this for 50 years. No, well, only in my mind. When the topic went to the Beats, I started thinking back and remembered this article I'd read back then. You're not the only one who wishes I'd remembered it sooner, because I've pitifully wasted many postings here trying to convey the same message <g>.

Dave Krein, yes, you are the perfect age to have been a Beat apostle. Mary T also, born same year, I believe, IF that's the direction she chose. Dave, one other thing: your 12th grade reading list is a sad commentary on how much lower our educational standards have evolved to. <gallows humor>

Jessie, you asked about Brando and Dean. They were trailblazers of Method Acting, a natural, less stylized, way to portray a character on screen. Looks like you aren't even acting, it was a dramatic change from the status quo in the fifties. They weren't representing Beats through Method Acting(although they may have been apostles or fans).

It was all part of the same, though, these different ways of filling what Xrs call The Void. Now you know Silents had that, too, in our young adulthoods. How could you not, in the face of such dominant, controlling Missionary and GI gens, and after such a devestating Crisis, that permanently made many Losts, the gen we related to, glue-factory elders.

I think Silents worked on filling The Void (or Beat-enness) through frenetic searching for perception of "new", whereas Xrs worked on filling it by reacting to let it fill them, sometimes hopelessly, sometimes angrily, sometimes numbly, denyingly.

See, I wasn't a Beat on the outside. I was the other Silent the article talked about, The Young Republican. But I lived vicariously and admiringly, wishing, wanting to be a Beat.

You may look back and see all the fifties housewives, suits & ties, and Leave-it-to-Beaverness as old, uninspiring, so NOT radical. BUT, back then, the scientific kitchen with all the gadgets of efficiency, the suburban assembly line neighborhoods, the Corporate work ethic, Television, America as a Superpower -- all this was new and radical. We freneticly searched for this perception of "new". In culture and arts, the various groups like Beats and Method Actors and Teenyboppers, RocknRollers, Hoods, Rebels, and Juvenile Delinquents; in politics, the beginning of the independent, southern and western voter, John Birchers, all sprouted up.

More later, I have a granddaughter to dress for Homecoming.....

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Barbara on 2001-10-06 17:02 ]</font>

Jessie, you asked about Brando and Dean. They were trailblazers of Method Acting, a natural, less stylized, way to portray a character on screen. Looks like you aren't even acting, it was a dramatic change from the status quo in the fifties. They weren't representing Beats through Method Acting(although they may have been apostles or fans).

That's interesting. I have always noticed that actors in films made before the late 1950s and early 1960s, especially male actors, sound very stilted and speak in a clipped, fast, style that doesn't seem that natural. Occasionally you could still hear this clipped style in movies made in the 1970s featuring older stars. I always wondered why people sound so much more natural in more recent movies. So Method Acting is responsible for this. Come to think of it, you are right. The young Silent actors Marlon Brando and James Dean were revolutionary for their time, sounding very natural, expressing emotion, and even (gasp!) shedding tears--lots of them. After they became stars (no doubt due to their great looks as well as their wonderful and revolutionary acting), this new style of Method Acting became the norm, and all young film actors learned it. It doesn't seem so revolutionary anymore, until you hear the strangely expressionless speech of old-time film stars.

Barbara:

I agree, Silents do get neither. So, polite request: quit blaming us for the current situation, please.

Don't think I ever did that, Barbara. As a rule, those who think Bush's Silent advisers are calling the shots have an unerlying agenda that the 4T has not yet begun, and are using this supposed Silent dominance to argue for that position. Of course, I think the 4T has begun, so don't share that motivation.


What I do share is your perception that Bush, not Cheney or Powell, is setting the direction of his administration at this time. Powell is doing a bang-up job of putting the coalition together, but the broad-ranging, no-compromise tone of the entire operation has "Boomer" written all over it.


(Now, on the other hand, I am not prepared to let the Silent get off completely scott-free. Much of the paralysis and public inaction of the Unraveling belongs at their collective doorstep.)


Linda:

Brian, you suggest that perhaps the reason some Jonesers don't feel like Boomers is because we view iconic "Sixties" events differently, but nonetheless, in your opinion, still share a similar mindset to Boomers. I believe you are wrong. Those events were huge,and the age you were when they happened is part of what seperates us from Boomers.

You're pretty much making my point for me here. Clearly, you are defining the Boom generation in terms of those events -- which I don't believe is a good way to do it. More on that in a moment.

I, on the other hand, believe that events of the 70's (the economic downturn, staglation, Watergate, failure in Vietnam, the oil crisis, etc.) created a cynicism,sense of irony, etc. in Jonesers that never became a part of the ongoing personality of Boomers.

Let me explain here that, for the dominant archetypes particularly, what happens in the outside world is of less important in shaping and defining their personality than what they do. In the case of the Prophet archetype, it's the High-era childhood followed by the shock of discovery of moral imperfection, and the behavior that follows, which defines us.


Thus, the early-wave Boomers were not recognizable because antiwar protests or Woodstock happened to them but because they did those things. And so, with respect to late-cohort Boomers like you and me, what we should look for in determining whether that is in fact what we are, is a set of actions, not events -- things we did, not ways we reacted to what our more senior cohorts did.


What I did, and what my peers were doing, at the time I went to college (beginning 1976), was very Prophet-like. It included experimenting with alternate lifestyles, exploring dimensions of religion (including through drugs), dabbling in the real-world aspects of life without much in the way of commitment, and thinking and arguing about basic values. No, we didn't protest against the war; the war was over. But that kind of thing is really more typical of the Hero than the Prophet anyway.


You are mistaken when you suggest that the early-cohort Boomers did not develop cynicism or a sense of irony. Sure they did -- at the same time that we did, not at like ages. The last half of the Unraveling saw some of the early euphoria cloud up, in view of the fact that maybe we weren't going to be able to create Utopia overnight. That clouding affected all of us, not just the younger cohorts.

I am surprised to hear you say you feel more in common with someone born in '43 than in '61. You are certainly in the minority from what I've seen and heard from fellow Jonesers

Then you and I associate with entirely different sets of like-aged peers, because in my experience most younger Boomers do consider themselves Boomers and do identify with the older Boom cohorts, not the older Gen-X cohorts. Perhaps we are self-selecting, choosing to associate with people personally compatible to ourselves -- that's common. Towards the end of a generation's birthyears one does see some bleedover into the next archetype, so possibly you are one of those cusp types who is more Xer than Boomer.


But let me ask you some simple questions. This will help sort out matters.


Is it possible to achieve positive results from collective action?


Can things ever change for the better, or do all such attempts more likely end in failure?


Does life have a meaning that a person can discover?


Should government, business, and other institutions be held up to high moral standards, or are they hopelessly corrupt so that one shouldn't even bother?


It's my belief that most late-cohort Boomers, like most early-cohort ones, would answer those questions, respectively, Yes; yes things can change for the better; life does have a meaning and its discovery is what that meaning is all about; and yes, these institutions should be held up to high moral standards even though at present they are corrupt. Whereas most Xers would answer differently.

Had we not been lumped in by mistake with the Boomers simply because their parents and ours happened to have a lot of children, we wouldn't even be having this discussion

The demographic baby boom goes all the way to 1964, and nobody here is suggesting that those last three years are Boomer birthyears. So with respect to discussions on this forum, you are mistaken. Here, the Boom is defined by the possession of a common collective mindset, and that is why its birthyears both precede the baby boom's beginning (1943 rather than 1946) and stop short of its end (1960 rather than 1964).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Brian Rush on 2001-10-06 20:42 ]</font>

Actually, I just thought of the ultimate dividing-line questions for Boom vs. X.


Which is more important, love or money?


Which is more important, money or freedom?

One final suggestion, Linda. Go over to the Prophets vs. Heroes thread on this forum, and check out the post I did describing my own childhood and coming of age. That may explain why I consider myself a Boomer, not an Xer or a "Joneser."

On 2001-10-06 20:37, Brian Rush wrote:
Barbara:

I agree, Silents do get neither. So, polite request: quit blaming us for the current situation, please.

Don't think I ever did that, Barbara. As a rule, those who think Bush's Silent advisers are calling the shots have an unerlying agenda that the 4T has not yet begun, and are using this supposed Silent dominance to argue for that position. Of course, I think the 4T has begun, so don't share that motivation.


What I do share is your perception that Bush, not Cheney or Powell, is setting the direction of his administration at this time. Powell is doing a bang-up job of putting the coalition together, but the broad-ranging, no-compromise tone of the entire operation has "Boomer" written all over it.


(Now, on the other hand, I am not prepared to let the Silent get off completely scott-free. Much of the paralysis and public inaction of the Unraveling belongs at their collective doorstep.)

No, Brian, you haven't done that. Sorry my lack of clarity in addressing my audience led you to think that. I agree that Silent blame is on the mind of some who want to delay the 4T's onset. However, I have noticed it here more often in the posts of some who believe we are in 4T and also frustrated with Bush's caution towards response, and attribute its delay in part to the Silent administrators. I assume you, Brian, agree with neither, but trust you agree with both observations.

My personal survey of like-aged friends and family shows a dichotomy: some who are p.o.'d this is upsetting their or their friends' travel plans abroad, some who want to go there today and nuke Afganistan in toto, some who are not happy to be in another "Pearl Harbor", and others, like me, resigned to the inevitable and just hoping to survive well enough. Among my cohort, I am least likely to find real Bush supporters, even post-911. Bill Strauss mentions this as a Silent demographic poll result in his newly-opened thread about poll data, and I think it's generally correct, or at least pegs a material Silent segment.

As for Silent Unravelling crimes, I might like to counter you on that. Tis true, the perception is that. But I also think a deadlock of Boomers on one side or another (and a Silent one, too) lends NO ONE an upper hand to break the deadlock. Deadlocks and headlocks. Remember the chaotic uproar out of the House during the nineties? That isn't a Silent-led response, to be sure. Very Boomer. One can instigate, but if the effected party is as fiery as a Transcendentalist, one wonders if this is mind control or self-combustion.

My time frame to lay the old Portnoyed guilt on us Silents is during the Awakening (and perhaps also the High, somewhat). I'll quickly take generational responsibility for that, as I have posted before. I just think that by the Unravelling, Boomers were in command of their situations and their mindsets. You may be speaking of Silent choices in presidential admins (Reagan?), in which case I'd agree. Reagan DID leave things up to people. Let me know in more detail what you mean more clearly about Silent paralysis and public inaction during the Unravelling. We still vote like rabbits do that other thing.

Barbara, I don't just mean Reagan, who polled so highly among voters that there isn't any clear generational center of gravity. He was an end-the-Awakening phenomenon, an expression of the collective will that we'd had enough. (I hadn't, myself, which is why I didn't vote for him, but that puts me very much in the minority.)


What I mean is this. During the Unraveling, as the Silent assumed Congressional majorities that only passed to Boomers in the 3T's last years, the government's priorities became much less doing things than tying everything up in endless procedural knots to make sure nothing was done that would step on anyone's toes. And that was a big part of the reason why, from the early 1980s until last month, no significant attempts were made to address the problems of unsustainable resource consumption, growing imbalances in the global economy, or the steady fraying of international order and steady rise of terrorism -- or even simpler problems like the increasing corruption in politics, the decay of the nation's schools, or the years of ballooning federal deficits.


Not the only reason, true. Boomers and Xers also contributed to the mix, the one by showing more interest in arguing over basic principles than in doing anything practical in service to them, the other by pure cynicism toward public solutions of any kind and consequent political apathy. But as the generation entering elderhood and holding the lion's share of political power through most of the Unraveling, it is the Silent who ought to bear most of the blame.


Yet they won't, because Reagan, Bush, and Clinton are not Silent, and so as usual the Silent are veiled by a blanket of camouflage into near-invisibility -- this time through the simple, if unplanned, expedient of allowing their elders and juniors to hog the presidency and deny them their turn in the White House.


None of which really matters now. It's just interesting to me that your generation never seems to get blamed for its faults or credited with its achievements, either one. The civil rights movement, the feminist revolution, those are not small accomplishments. And the hamstringing of our government, and the neglect of Gen-X in childhood, are not small sins, either. But how often are these things properly credited? Your next-elders fought the Big One, and your next-juniors made all the noise, and you yourselves mostly get ignored and gently ridiculed, as if nothing you did really mattered a damn, for good or ill.


Which just ain't so.

Linda,
I think what makes you Boomers is that you actually remember these events.
Half of GenX doesnt have any recollection of Watergate, 2/3 of GenX dont remember the 60s.
and no one in GenX remembers the Kennedy Assasination.
Similarly, no Millies remember the Challenger explosion.
The Awakening was our pupa stage.
We werent old enough to really put these events together.
I do remember that Watergate and Vietnam made me cynical from birth.
How could you trust the government when these were still deeply ingrained in the public mind so much as they didnt want to speak about it.
My parents did tell me one thing.
They threw a party when Nixon resigned.

On 2001-10-06 23:36, Brian Rush wrote:
Barbara, I don't just mean Reagan, who polled so highly among voters that there isn't any clear generational center of gravity. He was an end-the-Awakening phenomenon, an expression of the collective will that we'd had enough. (I hadn't, myself, which is why I didn't vote for him, but that puts me very much in the minority.)


What I mean is this. During the Unraveling, as the Silent assumed Congressional majorities that only passed to Boomers in the 3T's last years, the government's priorities became much less doing things than tying everything up in endless procedural knots to make sure nothing was done that would step on anyone's toes. And that was a big part of the reason why, from the early 1980s until last month, no significant attempts were made to address the problems of unsustainable resource consumption, growing imbalances in the global economy, or the steady fraying of international order and steady rise of terrorism -- or even simpler problems like the increasing corruption in politics, the decay of the nation's schools, or the years of ballooning federal deficits.


Not the only reason, true. Boomers and Xers also contributed to the mix, the one by showing more interest in arguing over basic principles than in doing anything practical in service to them, the other by pure cynicism toward public solutions of any kind and consequent political apathy. But as the generation entering elderhood and holding the lion's share of political power through most of the Unraveling, it is the Silent who ought to bear most of the blame.


Yet they won't, because Reagan, Bush, and Clinton are not Silent, and so as usual the Silent are veiled by a blanket of camouflage into near-invisibility -- this time through the simple, if unplanned, expedient of allowing their elders and juniors to hog the presidency and deny them their turn in the White House.


None of which really matters now. It's just interesting to me that your generation never seems to get blamed for its faults or credited with its achievements, either one. The civil rights movement, the feminist revolution, those are not small accomplishments. And the hamstringing of our government, and the neglect of Gen-X in childhood, are not small sins, either. But how often are these things properly credited? Your next-elders fought the Big One, and your next-juniors made all the noise, and you yourselves mostly get ignored and gently ridiculed, as if nothing you did really mattered a damn, for good or ill.


Which just ain't so.

Brian, I am moving this particular discussion of ours to the Generations and Politics thread, as I feel it now better belongs there. I have posted a long reply over on that thread. I do beg to differ with you on some key points.

Brian said: "You [Linda]are mistaken when you suggest that the early-cohort Boomers did not develop cynicism or a sense of irony. Sure they did -- at the same time that we did, not at like ages."

But Brian, age here is the critical factor. I think this quote of yours highlights what is perhaps the key area of disagreement between us. How old we were when these events happened is crucial in determining their effect on our mindset. Boomers, already in their twenties and thirties, adopted the cynical mood of the country, as did adults of all ages at that time. But young and impressionable Jonesers, still being formed, developed a cynicism that became part of their ongoing, "permanent", collective personality. Similarily, Boomers, Jonesers, and other adults of all ages generally became very money-oriented in the 80's. That doesn't mean that materialism became a part of our ongoing collective personality. By the time people are, say, around 18 years old or so, their personalities are more or less formed. This is why Boomers are still generally idealistic, notwithstanding the effects of the cynical 70's, and the life-cycle tendency to become more cynical as one ages. And it is why Jonesers generally are much more cynical than Boomers.



You also propose a series of questions to help clarify this issue, questions which boil down to a choice between idealism and cynicism; and you suggest that Boomers and X'ers would answer those questions differently. I agree, but Jonesers would answer those questions in yet a third and different way. Your post reminded me of a chart I saw on the Generation Jones website which addresses exactly this issue. I went back to their site and found the chart which refers to a massive annual national poll(conducted by UCLA since the 60's) which asks 350,000 (!) college freshmen each year a series of questions including "life-goal-type" questions. The two key questions reflecting idealism and cynicism are presented as goals in life : "How important is it to you to develop a meaningful philosophy of life?" and "How important is it to you to be very well off financially?" The chart shows the answers given by the freshmen in 1966, 1977, and 1990 (given as the median years of Boomers, Jonesers, and X'ers). The percentage of Boomers who said 'meaningful philosophy' was "essential" or "very important" was 85%, while only 44% of Boomers said the same of 'well off financially'; 61% of Jonesers answered 'philosophy', while 60% of Jonesers said 'financial; and only 42% of X'ers answered 'philosophy' while 76% of X'ers said 'financial'. Jonesers have a different sensibility than Boomers and X'ers which is a reflection of the country's extreme idealism which then turned into extreme cynicism all during the years when Jonesers' personalities were being formed.

I think something that goes along with what you are saying, Linda: remember (on what thread I long ago forgot, sorry) this summer when I asked if you Jonesers remembered JFK or MLK/RFK more traumatically? (Am I hallucinating, or didn't you respond to that one, Linda?)

By far, the Joneser-aged posters picked the latter (MLK/RFK - 1968) as their defining gen moment. I think it means something, particularly because even though Jonesers might have been slightly aware there was something sad and jolting going on after 11-22-63, they all got ANOTHER devestating jolt in May & June of 1968.

I also think that kids back then who had to watch the Vietnam War daily on TV news, often at suppertime, got cynical that way, too. Grows on ya over time....

On 2001-10-08 08:03, Justin'79 wrote:
Half of GenX doesnt have any recollection of Watergate, 2/3 of GenX dont remember the 60s.
and no one in GenX remembers the Kennedy Assasination.
Similarly, no Millies remember the Challenger explosion.
The Awakening was our pupa stage.
We werent old enough to really put these events together.
I do remember that Watergate and Vietnam made me cynical from birth.
How could you trust the government when these were still deeply ingrained in the public mind so much as they didnt want to speak about it.
My parents did tell me one thing.
They threw a party when Nixon resigned.

Geez, Justin, did you know there were a few parties thrown the night JFK was killed, too? Really.

I forgot to tell you that I have begun to realize just how traumatic for your age group the Challenger explosion was.

Along the same lines, not nearly as huge, but this illustrates how a grown up event can disillusion a child so (and reduce the idealism down to a harshly distilled reality): on Malcolm in the Middle, ret. Col. Ollie North is coming to the military school that Malcolm's brother is "incarcerated" in. The Headmaster C/O proudly and excitedly announces this, and the boys, unimpressed, reply, "Isn't he a convicted felon?"

Hey, it was just Muppets, John denver, and Gorbys birthmark until that shuttle blew up.

Brian, I found some questions you posed to a "Joneser" (I think?) interesting. Let me try to answer them:

Is it possible to achieve positive results from collective action?

Yes. Witness the American Revolution.

Can things ever change for the better, or do all such attempts more likely end in failure?

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But even when you win, all good things do seem to come to end. And it is often impossible to restore them, at least in the short term. Things can change for the better but the improvement is always fleeting.

Does life have a meaning that a person can discover?

Yes, but only if one bothers to look for it in the first place. I suspect a lot of people never even think to look and do not care anyway.

Should government, business, and other institutions be held up to high moral standards, or are they hopelessly corrupt so that one shouldn't even bother?

Government certainly should be because it is your servant even if it pretends to be your ruler. Business is not your servant and thus is not held to the same standards though certainly it should be held to the same standards as your fellow man. I guess the difference I see is that government should be required by us, the owners, to operate openly and transparently, always avoiding the appearance of impropriety, i.e. all politicians who like to protect themselves politically by withholding information need to take a hike. Business cannot operate this way due to competition so it is held to the same standards as you and your neighbor. In fact business is you and your neighbor. If it violates someone's rights, then it should be penalized with any applicable restitution made, same as any individual.

It's my belief that most late-cohort Boomers, like most early-cohort ones, would answer those questions, respectively, Yes; yes things can change for the better; life does have a meaning and its discovery is what that meaning is all about; and yes, these institutions should be held up to high moral standards even though at present they are corrupt. Whereas most Xers would answer differently.

Brian, I am a first-wave 13er/Xer who does not identity with Boomers at all. Yet, on the surface, I answered these questions in the very same way you did as a Boomer. Our differences pertain only to context and qualifiers. I'd be interested to see if you can expand this beyond the general questions so as to capture those differences.

On 2001-10-06 21:01, Brian Rush wrote:
Actually, I just thought of the ultimate dividing-line questions for Boom vs. X.

Which is more important, love or money?

Which is more important, money or freedom?

Love and freedom with the emphasis on freedom. I suspect you are tying money to the 13er/Xer and love and freedom to the Boomer in which case I as an Xer am not "staying with the program." The love/money one might be a tougher call for some Xers, but I am guessing that few would trade their freedom for money.

Actually, off the top of my head, I see the Hero generations as being more likely to trade freedom for money followed perhaps by Artists. It is that crisis experience in their formative years. Prophets and nomads both seem to place more emphasis on freedom, but on different types of freedom and to different degrees. Prophets ultimately end up imposing order while nomads desire the maximal degree of freedom.

Perhaps there is a different ordering of these three items among each generation and that better defines the differences? I am not certain I can sort them accurately though.

On 2001-10-06 21:01, Brian Rush wrote:
Actually, I just thought of the ultimate dividing-line questions for Boom vs. X.

Which is more important, love or money?

Which is more important, money or freedom?

The problem with these questions is that they ask you to compare two uncomparables: money is tangible and love and freedom are abstract. Abstractions always sound better to all, but to each individual person they are manifest in different ways according to taste and belief.

Love is more important than money. However love, with a little luck, can yield wealth. Especially if you love what you do, love is more likely to make you a success, which is commonly rewarded with money.

Money or freedom? The two are not necessarily polar opposites. Obviously freedom is better. But to a certain extent the well-off have more freedom and choices than the poor.

I am not saying that money is the way to happiness, far from it. For example the people I know with the most money have the least amount of time to enjoy it...and by the time they do have the time, they have lost their youthful sense of adventure and spontaneity.

hey,
last night on 60 minutes they talked to the new rising generation in the military.
they said "these kids were nine when the berlin wall fell, 11, when the soviet union came down. When we talk about a New world Order, its an old world to them"
That kind of singled out the 1980 cohort as being the first of the Millennial generation.
There was one kid here in Denmark who I thought justified my thinking that the 1980 cohort were still Xers.
But then I found out he was also born in 1979.
I think I actually feel closer to those born in 1969, than those born in 1981 or 82.
Hmm. Thats really weird.
Anyway, SnH can save face, if they had to push the boundary back to 1980.
after all, Millennials Rising is dedicated to those born "in the 80s and 90s"

I was actually joking (and being a Boomer smartass) with that love/freedom/money stuff. Should have used a smiley face.


I am reminded, though, of an Xer friend who was having all kinds of trouble with her mother, who was helping pay for her fancy apartment and using that as leverage to extract all kinds of power. I posed her the question of which was more important, freedom or money. She said, "Money, because money makes you free." Which is sometimes true, although in her case the opposite was true.


There are differences between late and early cohort Boomers, certainly. And yes, they do pertain to the age at which certain events occurred. There are also differences between early and late cohort GIs, Silent, and Xers, and no doubt the same will be true of Millennials. But if the concept of a "generation" is to have any meaning, at some point we have to say that these differences are not sufficient to define a whole new generation. The cultural and political issues that defined late-cohort Boomers' coming of age were not the same as those of early Boomers, but they all fall into the same general category of moral absolutes in conflict. Most of the hard-line environmental ideologues in Earth First! and Greenpeace are late-cohort Boomers (though the more pragmatic troops on the front lines were until recently more commonly Xers and today they are increasingly becoming Millennials), and the same is true of the leaders of the Christian right and the anti-abortion movement. What's more, it's the late-cohort Boomers, not early ones, who have had the greater influence on the New Age, Neopagan, and evangelical Christian religious revivals.


All of this looks to me like a variation on the same theme, not a new theme. And frankly, so does the rather self-absorbed attempt of late-cohort Boomers to redefine a new generation and keep themselves from being lumped in with a group whose most famous members are a decade older than we are. Only Boomers would be motivated to create the concept of Generation Jones in the first place.

On 2001-10-11 10:44, Brian Rush wrote:
Only Boomers would be motivated to create the concept of Generation Jones in the first place.

I don't know about that, I think some of it is due to the marketing of Generation X and the fact that early cohort X-ers like myself can't identify with most of it. Guess where I was when Challenger blew up...no, not fifth grade, not high school...work! In '92 when everyone was talking about this "newly discovered" Generation X, I wasn't wearing flannel and hanging out, I had a great job, big hair and a 30th birthday party!

Just my two cents, which, with $1.48 more could get me on the subway!

I've never seen the Police Academy movies. As for Three Men and a Baby...typical Millennial baby movie, the family just rented it for one day and put it inside the VCR then rewound it...I didn't so much as look at the cast.

Steve was Mahoney? Who or what is Mahoney...or are you thinking of the seattle grunge band Mudhoney? Hmmmm. -Craig

Re: Generation Jones

I found an interesting article in the October 2000 issue of American Demographics about Jonathan Pontell. It mentioned that he had a book coming out that month. However, I can't find it on Amazon or anywhere else.

Does anyone know if it was actually published? If so, under what title?

Thanks,

Kiff '61

laugh at this one


Anthrax on Anthrax

Metal men will not change name in light of scare


ARTICLES
Anthrax on Anthrax


Anthrax never wanted this kind of publicity. The seminal New York metal band's name is all over the press these days for all the wrong reasons -- a small outbreak of the bio-terrorist disease of choice in Florida has an already understandably edgy America in panic mode. Set to launch their Operation Enduring Metal tour with Judas Priest in early 2002 ("the tour the terrorists tried to stop"), the group has let it be known they have no immediate designs on a name change.
A statement from the band jokingly begins, "In light of current events, we are changing the name of the band to something more friendly, Basket Full of Puppies," and continues, "We don't want to change the name of the band. Not because it would be a pain in the ass, but because we hope that it won't be necessary, because no further negative events will happen. We hope and pray that this problem goes away quietly and we all grow old and fat together."

"In the twenty years we've been known as Anthrax," the statement continues. "We never thought the day would come that our name would actually mean what it really means. Before the tragedy of September 11th the only thing scary about Anthrax was our bad hair in the Eighties and the Fistful of Metal album cover [in which a spiked fist plunges through a man's face]. Most people associated the name 'Anthrax' with the band, not the germ. Now in the wake of those events, our name symbolizes fear, paranoia and death. Suddenly our name is not so cool."

The group, whose 1985 album title, Spreading the Disease, seems all too eerie in retrospect, has also been contacted by makers of the anti-biotic Cipro, a drug used to combat the deadly agent. The company, Bayer, inquired about possibly placing banner ads for their suddenly-in-demand pill at Anthrax's homepage (www.anthax.com). The band -- John Bush, Frank Bello, Charlie Benante and Scott Ian -- will likely refuse and instead post links to various government agencies and charitable funds connected to relief efforts for the anthrax scare and the terrorist attacks of September 11th.

No venues for the Operation Enduring Metal tour -- pushed to 2002 because of the tragedies of September 11 -- have cancelled because of the present Florida scare. The tour, now slated to kick of January 18th in Los Angeles, will swing through Florida with stops in Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando and St. Petersburg. The tour's finale is set for February 17th in Washington D.C.

Anthrax are presently in a New York studio self-producing an album for a 2002 release. Inquiries to the band for further comment on this matter were declined.

Anthrax and Judas Priest's Operation Enduring Metal tour dates: