Baby Boomers – The Generation of Narcissists
Posted by smarko1 on May 3, 2010
Tom Brokaw wrote a book titled The Greatest Generation referring to the exploits of the generation that survived the Great Depression, won World War II, and gave their children a country with many financially assets and few liabilities. They also raised the generation of what became known as the Baby Boomers, of which I am a member. Boy, have we blown it! Historians will write volumes as to how the Boomers squandered their parent’s legacy.
Below is another Boomer’s take on our generation. Written some time ago by Jim Mahoney who has been a guest author on this Blog, it offers great insight on how we traveled down the wrong path. It was written in response to an op-ed in our local newspaper by one of those narcissistic Boomers spouting Progressive dribble. I have posted the dribble after Jim’s response for any who feel the need to read it.
Hopefully our children will learn from our mistakes. They could start by reading Jim’s editorial.
The Baby Boomers, By Jim Mahoney
In a recent Another View column, David Vaida lamented the current state of voter apathy and lack of volunteerism. Using the lyrics of Cream as a backdrop, his solution was to bring back the activism of the 1960s. As a Baby Boomer myself I feel that this is the wrong approach since many of the problems we are experiencing today can be directly traced back to the 60s revolution.
We Baby Boomers were the product of our parents’ well meaning intentions. Having lived through the Great Depression and World War II, their greatest hope was to give us lives free from the struggles they had faced. The majority of 60s radicals came not from poverty, but from a level of middle class privilege provided by their parents’ hard work. We recklessly decided to reject everything about our parents’ generation without ever thinking they had something to teach us. Almost overnight, the Greatest Generation’s culture of optimism was replaced by the Boomer’s culture of cynicism. Let’s take another musical journey to examine the lasting impression the Baby Boomer generation has made on our society.
Our first selection is Pink Floyd’s “Money”. Baby Boomers saw the standard of living our parents spent a lifetime to achieve and decided we wanted the same thing without having to wait until we could afford it. Boomers used credit to acquire more and more possessions and racked up unprecedented levels of personal debt. To support our lavish lifestyles we have saved virtually nothing for our retirement, leaving a future burden for our children. The 60s radicals who rejected the materialism of their parents ended up becoming the most materialistic generation in history. Even an idealist like Mr. Vaida admits spending more for 2 concert tickets to the Cream reunion than I paid for my first car.
Our next hit comes from Crosby, Stills and Nash with “Teach Your Children”. Perhaps the biggest failure of the Baby Boomer generation is what we have done to our children. Ignoring thousands of years of accumulated parenting knowledge, we became the first generation of parents who wanted to be friends to our children instead of providing them with moral authority and boundaries of behavior. In the mistaken belief that giving children everything they want is synonymous with giving them everything they need; we have created a self indulgent generation of young people with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and little concern for anything beyond their immediate needs.
The Boomers’ contribution to education brings to mind Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out”. As Baby Boomers moved into positions of authority in our public schools and universities we decided that the basic curriculum was no longer relevant and threw out the traditional methods of teaching. Our schools now teach students about everything America did wrong while emphasizing none of the things that made us great. Every student knows that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, but none of them have learned about the brilliance of the Constitution our founding fathers created. Students receive little or no basic education in History, Civics or Economics. They have no historical context of what it means to be an American. If anything they have learned that Americans have no reason to be proud of anything about ourselves.
The Boomers promoted the idea of moral relativism with no absolutes of right and wrong, only differences of opinion. 
Anything that pokes a finger in the eye of American culture is celebrated while values-based organizations like the Boy Scouts are vilified. Our movies and television programs glorify the most negative aspects of our society and thanks to a Baby Boomer ex president; our young people now believe that oral sex isn’t really sex.
The Baby Boomers, one of the most self absorbed generations in history, have raised a generation of self absorbed children with little sense of history, civic responsibility or duty to others. Why is Mr. Vaida surprised that they aren’t voting or volunteering for non profit organizations? The problems of this country cannot be simplistically solved by the wisdom contained in Cream lyrics or some gassy counterculture rhetoric. I think The Eagles best express my advice to Mr. Vaida and other Baby Boomers who wistfully long for the resurrection of radical 60s activism – “Get over it.”
How nostalgia can foster passion and citizenship, by David Vaida
Nostalgia is my least favorite emotion. I think it’s because I have absorbed the American idea of always looking forward. As a child, my father told me that the good old days are right now, so I grew up in a household where the past barely existed. George Santayana’s dictum that ”those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it” was an irrelevant saying by a vaguely known philosopher.
Until last week, I experienced nostalgia only once in my half century of life on this planet. It was Jan. 13, 1993, the day after Cream was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I was on the New Jersey Turnpike to see my in-laws when a 1968 bootleg version of Jimi Hendrix playing ”Sunshine of Your Love” at San Francisco’s Winterland came on the radio. For some reason, hearing Hendrix brought over me that terrible feeling that ultimately engulfed an entire generation — the loss of innocence.
It is true that the 1960s were doomed to failure if success was to be measured by total social revolution. It is also true that icons of the youth movement — John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. — were murdered, showing anyone who doubted it at the time that resistance to change would be violent. But the changes that ultimately came were breathtaking and have become part of the culture we live in today. The liberation of women, gays and minorities was based on equal treatment under the law, and this political argument was carried on by those politically involved.
By 1970, however, the Summer of Love had been replaced by the Summer of Rage, Altamont followed Woodstock, and peaceful change by violent protests. While disillusionment was understandable, it led to the political crisis we are in, where interest groups and zealots maneuver democracy because the electorate can’t be bothered to vote.
It is bad enough that in a hotly contested presidential race we can barely get 60 percent of voters to the polls, but what are we to make of what happens in local elections? Primaries, the key event to put forward new candidates, in Lehigh and Northampton counties average 15 percent of the registered voters. When we finally get to a head-to-head contest, if 40 percent of all eligible voters come out it is seen as stupendous.
The same problem exists with membership in civic organizations. Boards of non-profits are constantly looking for new members. Fundraising is a struggle and, even though charitable giving is up, there is a malaise in the entire system shown by the fact that a small group of people does all the work.
This public expression of a private desire to be left alone must be turned around; otherwise, others will run our lives and make decisions we will come to profoundly regret, as can be seen with the war in Iraq. We must go back to the days of activism, marches, protests and every other lawful engagement with our government to make change. It is a time for the ’60s generation to give another listen to the old Cream albums and recapture the energy that made them bold.
I finally did get to see Cream the last day of their reunion gig at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 26. It was a chance to experience the original supergroup — the fountainhead of a rock sound that dominated for almost 15 years. I took my 25-year-old son, who graciously agreed to come and share my enthusiasm for what I described to him as a once-in-a-lifetime event. I must confess that the average age at the concert was at least 50 and the snide remark by some critics that this was ”geezer rock” is not entirely unfounded. But what a show.
Just seeing Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker alive together was moving. Then, being regaled with two hours of electric blues, a musical form I predict will one day come back because, unlike rap and hip-hop it has the power to last, was like dipping into the fountain of youth. It was all there by a band that only lasted from 1966 to 1968: ”White Room,” ”Crossroads,” ”Badge” and the other great cuts.
For some reason, ”Strange Brew” was left out, but ”Tales of Brave Ulysses” alone was worth the price of admission, which, incidentally, was so high that American Express sent me an e-mail asking if someone had stolen my credit card.
It was a great and memorable evening. As I left with my son, who still says he wants to be a lawyer, enter politics and repair the world, all I could do was hum the one song Cream didn’t play but captured the spirit of their time — ”I Feel Free.”
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fungeezer said
Well now I just want to go slit my wrists! Sure we have done some things wrong; every generation does. Yes, we care for our own comfort, who doesn’t? I love how so many are willing to tear down whole groups of people because something is according to whomever is complaining plan.
Steve Markowitz said
This response helps prove the initial premise about the Baby Boomers. “Yes, we care for our own comfort” is an understatement! In fact that seems to be this generation’s primary theme in living. That could be an acceptable goal for one to choose. What is inexcusable is that we are stealing from future generations in search of this dream.
We are unique. Even much lower forms of animals will not steal food from their children. We Boomers have come a long way baby!
Chris said
Not only are the Boomers (aka the ME generation) stealing from their children and grandchildren to keep them in the lifestyle they’ve became accustomed to, they’re also stripping the greatest generation of their health benefits with Medicare cuts, and then after stripping the country of its wealth, and weakening our global influence, they will demand that Gen X, Gen Y and then Gen Z pay for their entitelments during their golden years. If the WWII generation was the greatest generation, isn’t it ironic that the children of the greatest generation will go down in the history books as the worst generation. But what can one expect from the flower children of the 60s. As Archie Bunker would have said – meatheads – ‘dead from the neck up’. The Boomers also have the honor of being the generation that ushered in the decline of the greatest economic engine in world history.
Steve Markowitz said
Chris,
You are so right. What a pathetic generation we have evolved into.
Steve
Elizabeth said
This is all so true,and very sad. But we HAVE spawned an even worse generation of narcissim & apathy. It seems now that there is no empathy either. All is greed. We boomers HAVE put the world in jeopardy. We are ruthlessly raping the environment as well. Have things become so undone that we are hopeless?
SS though…I worked hard for 40 yrs. as a nurse,and feel that I changed & helped many people. A big wad of my check went into SS,so after the gov’t uses it for 40 yrs,I shouldn’t get it back??? I went right to nursing school from HS.
A few children did turn out fine,but we HAVE created a mean ,violent and entitled legacy.
So very sad.
Steve Markowitz said
Elizabeth,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. We are of the same age and I have many if the same conclusions that you have. I have worked hard all of my life, paid lots of taxes including SS, and have taken nothing from the gov. I ask why should I not get what was promised all these years? Unfortunately I am part to blame for the problems we now have. I saw so much around me that I knew was not sustainable, yet I continued on my merry way without protest or activism. Now the fix will be painful. Had all of us that knew better said “no” decades ago, this mess would not have occurred. So now through this Blog in a small way I have become an activist. We can still make a difference.
Steve
Jim Mahoney said
The biggest problem with Social Security in its current form is that it is unsustainable. Social Security has never been an “insurance program”; it is an intergenerational Ponzi Scheme, transferring resources from people who are working to those in retirement. When Social Security first began there were about 30 people working for every person collecting. Now we are down to four to one, and in a few years it will be a little over two to one. If we are to avoid bankrupting our children and grandchildren in order to pay for our retirement benefits we have to take a serious look at capping the Social Security benefits our generation will receive. We also have to provide a way for younger workers to establish private accounts to fund their retirement.
Steve Markowitz said
Yes, SS is the biggest Ponzi Scheme ever developed. But unlike when Wall Street or a private citizen steals we have redress, when it is the government, nobody is taken to task. We’ve been had again!
Steve
Carolyn said
Wow. Glad to see that some of you actually DO get it. I’m a Gen Xer in boomer-speak
I started working when I was 15 – 25 years ago, and have 27 more to go. However, even after I’ve PAID IN for over FIFTY years, I’ll not see a dime of it if the boomers don’t fix it. I’ll be relying probably whatever I can cram into my 401k plan. Gotta remember that you all weren’t/aren’t the only ones paying in – everyone younger than you is paying also, probably more than any of you did, because we’re going to HAVE to in order to support all of you. The Problem: You all have been the voting majority for decades. My generation can sit here for the rest of our lives and NEVER be the majority – not enough of us. YOUR generation could vote these morons out, but you won’t, because they are boomers also and they’ll make sure you all “get yours” at the expense of the rest of us. Sorry if I sound a bit T’d off at the boomers – I am. But like I said, glad that at least some of you get it.
Steve Markowitz said
Hi Carolyn.
Great to hear from one of you “youngins”.
I agree with your major thesis. However, most of us Boomers do “get it”. The problem is that many do not care. They allow their own personal needs and greed to trump the greater good. This is, unfortunately, part of human nature. It is a major reason why government programs that have good intent always lead to unintended consequences.
Where I disagree your dependence on us Boomers to fix the mess we created. It is unrealistic to ask people to give up what they believe they are due. No, change will be up to your generation to emphatically say “no more”. While a voting minority, you guys have the power to accomplish the change, but it would take years and a lot of effort. I’m not sure that your generation is up to the challenge. It seems mollified (bribed?) by its own subset of government handouts, such as subsidized school loans, etc.
You might want to read of the history of the ‘60s when the same Boomers controlled the narrative on the Viet Nam War. They too were a minority, but they forced a sitting President (Johnson) to not run for re-election after one term and ultimately the Country to abandon the Viet Nam War. They accomplished this with rage and protest that took years and the myopic focus of that generation. While I did not agree with my generation on this issue, they ultimately got the older generation to buy in with their demands.
Here is where I must scold your generation. Instead of understanding and addressing the issues of the Nanny-state that we Boomers implemented since the ‘60s, your generation has backed an ideology that wants even more of the same.
Your generation was a key reason why Barack Obama, the most Liberal/Progressive president, was elected. It seemed to care not about substance or issues, but focused on “change” without definition. The result, the economic and political philosophy of these Progressives in the past two years has taken the failed social policies that the Boomers implemented and place them on steroids. For example, Obama pushed through the Healthcare reform promising to add 30 million people to medical coverage without raising the overall healthcare costs. This Ponzi scheme smells of the same stench that was and is Social Security, the issue that now concerns you.
OK, so the choice for your generation is to keep complaining and leave the problems of the entitlement programs to others or it can start a movement that will define your generation. As President John Kennedy once so famously said “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
Steve
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Mary Katherine said
I am a Millenial. Here is my take on the whole thing.
I see a lot of very good qualities in my parents’ generation: rugged individuality is beyond compare. Great self awareness. Rock and Roll.
That being said, I also have borne witness to many of the truly horrible things the Boomers have done, all my life:
-An abject and utter obsession with the moral argument and with personalities. I remember being about twelve years old and I remember the O.J. Simpson case. My elders were more interested in what kind of man O.J. was rather than if he murdered his wife and her boyfriend. I watched as reporters practically fell all over themselves to get a single word out of any of the prosecution, defense, or anyone remotely connected to O.J.; it was more soap opera than trial. I remember it dominating the news for the whole year, and learning that, to my elders, this was infinitely more newsworthy than Yugoslavia falling apart or most anything happening in Congress. I remember the blaring about race and how ugly it got and thinking I, at TWELVE, was acting more grown up than they were. (They didn’t even care that there were two mixed race children caught in the middle of the whole thing and that their rehashing of a fight that started on college campuses in the 60s would scar those two for life.)
-A blatant refusal to understand greed is not good…and that money is not infinite. I was five years old when Gordon Gekko hit the big screen. By the time I was in 8th grade, stock markets were riding high, it was a miracle-the Xers, with all their tech savvy, were creating something literally out of nothing. Only my grandparents and their neighbors complained because they noticed a lot of old factories closing and seemed overwhelmed by the size of the houses, the cars, the MORE, MORE, MORE (I can even remember that exact phrase from a song they played at my high school prom, ironically a remake of LaBelle.) I remember them laughing at the stupidity of their kids competing with each other to buy a better more expensive bike when the same were out back playing in the yard with the box it came in. I remember the Xers trying to drive home social messages, real issues of HERE and NOW like gay rights, and not getting heard…because they were drowned out by OJ, by Clinton getting impeached for sex, by crapload upon crapload.
-Don’t do as I do, do as I say. By the time I was nineteen, the towers had been hit and I ran for my life. I was in Washington DC that day. I thought that if they could highjack a plane they could highjack a bomb, not the small homemade contraptions the KKK used to make but nuclear warheads…..so I fled the city before they could lock it down completely, ignoring the words of my immediate elders to “stay put.” Within two years I watched as my elders would brim with pride when telling me about their actions during the Flower Power movement…and then sign the Patriot Act. I watched as a politician used fear to control the public and prayed that one of his own generation would take him down, remember Nixon and push the button to open the booby hatch…but it never came. In fact, when a real Vietnam hero stood for candidacy in ’04, the spin doctors and cult of personality worked their magic to destroy him, in hindsight for good. I remember watching in this timeframe Hilary Clinton get elected to the seat of New York and knew it had resonance with Boomers because “Bobby Kennedy held this seat.” And I discovered in her a politician with barely a fraction of RFK’s talent: she had zero interest in representing the state of New York as a Senator and had every interest in the seat for its prestige and potential as a springboard.
CONTINUED
Steve Markowitz said
Mary Katherine,
Thank you for the time you took to share with us your very insightful comments. You are unfortunately right on about us Boomers. I will be up-fronting your comments on the Blog and also respond in more detail.
Thank you again and I hope you will keep on writing. We need to implement change in our society and it will only come about by the Boomers who get it (and have some power) working together with you “young-ins” to start righting the wrongs we have inflicted on America.
Steve
Mary Katherine said
Wait, Steve, I am not done!! More below. I am sorry, but I have a lot to say!!
—————————————————————————
-So long as it makes you happy and you’re doing your thing, then that is important.
My generation is not happy. And we have every reason to be very, very unhappy. The Boomers often rail at me for being a lazy slob, and that I should be out fixing cars, mowing lawns, just like they did starting from whatever ridiculous early age. I am sorry, the slacker label doesn’t work here-I watched you already try that chestnut with Gen X 20 years ago and I still see them suffering for it. The fact remains that up to the 70s such jobs could pay rent and buy food; there were even factories cranking out American products for the guy who wasn’t going to be a doctor someday. Today that isn’t true. People are squabbling over the McJobs, hundreds at a time, people with advanced degrees (including the sciences) and unlike the early 90s there aren’t enough of them to go around. There aren’t even factories anymore, and the poor have been suffering for years in spite of working, some in ghettoes. Rather than show any sign of loyalty to their country, greedy Boomer executives are serving up entry level jobs on a silver platter to Asia; the Gordon Gekko clones want MORE, MORE, MORE and the government does nothing to stop them. I am as qualified as that guy in Asia, my degree is in a technology field…but unfortunately he lives in a country without labor laws and I have the audacity to want to be paid a fair wage. Still, I am on that unemployment line every damned day. I refuse to give the bastards the satisfaction. At least let me have that, God.
I hear Congresswomen and N.O.W. chorusing shrilly from behind their wrinkles about the glass ceiling, yet none of them care to hear my voice on the subject of women serving in the military and totally ignore me when I say better laws covering maternity and parental leave from work is the answer for BOTH sexes and will break the ceiling; they don’t even want to hear me say shut the hell up when they yammer on about a female POTUS (considering we’ve had two very strong contenders for the past five years I would say we’re okay, and for that matter, GEN Y elected the first black man to office, not the Boomers, so you had your chance on both counts and blew it, ladies.)
I am faced with an elder generation that is too busy screaming at each other to notice how corrosive the constant bickering is…or how it plays right into the hands of corporations and other nations that would see America crash and burn without a second thought because it profit$ them. Congress is likely to become paralyzed and remain so, not fixing anything, and be marked by men and women who are more interested in getting re-elected and raising ever more piles of cash for their party when the men and women they are supposed to serve increasingly don’t have two nickels to rub together. When the Boomer led 111th Congress has compromised it usually is in a zero sum game where one party wins and another loses, but what is achieved is not necessarily with the greater good in mind, and I have a feeling this tax cut nonsense is just the beginning. Many of these people in Congress will tell you exactly where they were and how they felt during Vietnam, smiling for the cameras…but don’t look twice at men with missing limbs and broken futures because of Afghanistan unless it is an election cycle, cameras on.
On top of it all, if I ever do get a job, if trends continue, I will be expected to work longer hours for much less pay and do twice the workload Boomers ever did at their first job….while they sit around foisting it off on me bluntly because they can. I will never be able to retire; my older Generation X counterpart, even if he has paid into the system for almost twenty years now, will never be recognized for what his toil has purchased, no promotions. I will be very lucky if I can manage to scrape together enough money to rent and fix up an old, small house while, if trends continue, my parents’ generation will expect to move in to a gated community filled with expensive homes and amenities they are too old for. After all, they “deserve” it.
I will be expected to pay for Social Security and Medicare, a broken system that in the first case is over 70 years old and outdated. I will still be expected to pay in spite of this fact, and in spite of the fact that while I was still an adolescent there was time to make reforms….but my parents chose O.J. They made no sacrifices and did a peach of a job of running roughshod over poor Gen X, telling them to wait their turn when they knew full well that no turn was ever coming. The Millenials have done nothing wrong as far as I know to deserve this: In spite of massive debt, we STILL are working are asses off to go to college and we’re earning advanced degrees at a greater percentage than our parents. We study very hard; there is an occasional goofy moment involving an Xbox, but back to work after that. We have rarely raised our voices to anyone and rarely complained. I don’t really care about being happy as being the most important thing, because happiness for me is just the simple pleasure of knowing that someday I will finally be able to get married, raise a family of my own in security, and have a country I can be proud of …the last I have waited my whole life for. The latest rumor from Hollywood is that they are thinking of remaking The Wizard of Oz…I wonder how many Boomers know their children cry late at night when they hear Over the Rainbow because they know they have the troubles of their grandparents’ era and the ones of Baum’s era rolled into one, without any promise of their own parents doing the right thing.
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Rochelle said
Interesting article. I am a Gen-X member, and have seen a lot of good that the baby boomer generation has accomplished, but I think those folks are in the minority. Most members of that generation somehow believe that they deserve to be part of the wealth elite without having worked for those rewards. Currently I am in a leadership class that is teaching the philosophy of leadership through service. Maybe the narcissist boomers will learn the joys of servitude and will come around to how wonderful it feels to lift others up.
smarko1 said
Rochelle,
I am the member of the Baby Boomers. I am therefore sad to have to agree with your conclusion about my generation. Somewhere in history my generation became corrupted. While we created benefits that were supposedly good for society as a whole, they instead morphed into retirement and health perks for my generation at the expense of future generations. This will likely turn what has been started by Pres. Obama as class warfare into a battle between the generations. How sad.
There is a lesson here for you younger folks. As has been said,there is no such thing as a free lunch. What is given by government to one special interest group must come at the expense of another group’s interest.
Sooner or later your generation will be forced to take us Boomers to task on the related issues. Ultimately this will mean addressing the entitlement issues. However, this will not occur in until your generation focuses on and obtains political power. In the meantime, Progressives like President Obama will attempt to mollify your generation with handouts. Should you be taken off task by such governmental action, the financial burdens left on your generation will only be made greater.
Good luck to you as you travel down the road.
Steve