People try to put us down
Just because we get around
The Who
My generation has been much dissected, psychoanalyzed, talked, and written about. Some say we did great things, not much at all, or singularly ruined the whole world. The truth is probably somewhere in between, as it is with any generation. You think you are making great changes with your youth, energy and impetuosity, but only a little of it sticks. If numbers, (we were the largest generation), organizing, youth and energy counted for much, of course the changes we envisioned would have been greater. Maybe there would have been no war ever again, and we all would be driving electric cars, eating vegetarian, refusing to worship in churches, using solar to power our houses, and marijuana would be legal. Maybe, these things will happen eventually, but I have decided it will be after I am dead.
After five decades, I have come to realize that most of my generation were only in it for the sex, drugs and rock and roll, which of course was totally worth it by itself, and to end the war. There were very few in the long run that did it out of idealism and a true desire for change. Idealism is really a very rare quality. Most of them participated for the pursuit of pleasure, which is heightened in youth, and a desire to end what they considered an immoral, illegal war, they did not want to fight or die in. And, however much we like to congratulate ourselves for ending it, we didn’t. A nine year war (actually longer, but this is combat troops) ended of its own lack of steam, not from anything we did. War can’t seem to last longer than a decade without people getting bored with it.
Phil Ochs, I believe, realized the truth of this. Friends at his “end of the war party” described him as depressed, not jubilant, at the end of the war. I believe it was the dawn in his mind, the beginning of the realization, of the futility of most efforts to change the world. When Salvador Allende in Chile, a democratically elected, openly Marxist president who Ochs admired and had met, was assassinated and folk singer and friend Víctor Jara was publicly tortured and killed, I believe his soul was mortally wounded.
He began to suspect the involvement of the CIA and openly talking about it, his drinking and depression grew worse. I believe the accumulation of these events, and others through the 60’s and 70’s, drove him crazy and made him take his own life. It is hard to be an idealist. When all you believe in, put your heart and soul into, dies, there doesn’t seem much left to live for. Although the blame is put on alcoholism and bipolar, alcoholism, after all, is just self medication for depression of the mind and a wounded spirit, and our country is driving more and more people insane. We use two thirds of all the antidepressants manufactured in this country. It’s a Brave New World, indeed.
Our government and our warped values never get the blame for most of the world’s ills that they rightfully deserve, because most people choose to remain ignorant and patriotic. We want to remake the world in our ugly, artless, soulless image. No wonder so many people feel depressed, because such values are ultimately empty and worthless. Phil Ochs stands as a symbol to me of what happened to the ones of my generation who tried to maintain their idealism. Idealism always suffers a cruel, sad death at the hands of reality.
Like many people of his generation, Ochs deeply admired President John F. Kennedy, even though he disagreed with the president on issues such as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the growing involvement of the United States in the Vietnamese civil war. When Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Ochs wept. He told his wife that he thought he was going to die that night. It was the only time she ever saw Ochs cry.
When the truth is found
to be lies
and all the joy
within you dies
Jefferson Airplane
All the things my generation said we believed in, we really just dabbled in. It was mostly superficial like ourselves, or most of us, anyway. There was never anything of substance there. So while we might recycle, we also buy, consume and throw away in the most massive quantities. Our water heaters might be solar, but our SUV’s are gas guzzlers. We said we eschewed making money and worshipped aesthetic qualities, and then went on to build the biggest houses, make the largest fortunes and sprawled and paved all over nature. We value money and materialism over the environment. We might save an individual animal and donate to charity but let homeless people die in the streets and millions of animals be euthanized every year. We value longevity but not life. We hated anyone over thirty so we try to preserve our looks and our youth at any cost and spend billions on plastic surgery. We still refuse to grow old because we worshipped youth. We value youth, not wisdom. We fought and protested against the VN war for years and then went on to wage the longest wars ever in our history. We value profit over all. We are a generation that says one thing and does another. In the long run, mostly, a generation of selfish, superficial, hypocrites. And that is why the change didn’t happen. It wasn’t real to start with. We were human with all that entails, like any other generation.
Life is defined by events. Our lives were defined by the events of our lives starting with the assassination of John Kennedy and later, Martin and Robert. Then, there was the VN war, civil rights, acid, marijuana and great rock and roll music. These are the things that defined our lives, and for awhile we were one and seemed to act in unison, it felt like a zeitgeist, but it was an illusion. After we got hammered by the cops in protest, killed in a war we couldn’t stop, put in prison for drugs and beaten down from our youth, the war was over, college completed, and it was time to get on with things.
Like every other generation before us, our energy was spent, and most went off to do the same things every other human has strived for before them, make money, have children and a family and be comfortable. The few who really believed what we said and thought we stood for, the idealists, are still living the alternative lifestyles we envisioned today, but that is a small percentage of the whole. We hated the establishment, the man, the pigs, and then promptly took their place as they retired.
My generation likes to look back with nostalgia and think fondly of those times. It was fun while it lasted, and that’s mostly what it was, fun. Sex drugs and rock and roll were ultimately about the pursuit of pleasure and very few, although some, found enlightenment. As for some deeper meaning or change, the world evolves slowly and thousands of generations have turned into dust through time in the sands of obscurity.
We are a country who criticizes the whole world, but thinks we are somehow special and above it all. Our lives are somehow more valuable than the lives of those in Africa, Haiti or the ME. The loss of life around the world rarely gets reported unless an American was killed in the tsunami or earthquake, a temporary blip on our screens and we donate some money to ease our conscience and carry on,. And of course we want the rest of the world to reflect us and have our values, so we export our Walmarts, Starbucks and McDonalds to every country. We want to feel right at home when we go visit some strange land. In the name of mammon, my generation is responsible for this neutering of art and culture.
But my generation did make a lot of people angry, and many still hate us today, so I guess that is worth something. It is better than going through life placidly and unremarkably and having everyone say how good you were, throw some dirt on your grave and promptly forget you. At least we are talked about. And better that we are remembered with derision than fondness, because fondness isn’t worth a crap. If you don’t deserve to be loved or respected, you might as well be despised. You don’t change anything by making people fond of you. And change isn’t always for the better.
Of course we rightly deserve much of the scorn and hatred heaped on to us by our parents and children, but we won’t accept it. We, who hate criticism and are highly critical of the rest of the world, can dish it, but we can’t take it. Some say we were spoiled and self indulgent and it is true, but we also don’t like criticism. We think highly of ourselves and think highly of our children, and so pass our mistakes on to our children to the nth degree. The materialism we said we rejected, they are drowning in. The empty values of our parents we said we rejected they are bombarded with by the media every minute of their lives; and their lives are consumed by media, there is no corner in our country free from it. Our self absorption and selfishness will be our legacy and be carried on with them, because they don’t like criticism either, and we have strived to make their lives one of optimum self esteem and avoidance of anything critical, even if that meant being a good parent.
And this is the greatest tragedy of my generation. We came to realize most of all we did meant nothing, and we ended up chasing after the same meaningless things that most other humans always have, money and materialism. We weren’t different, we weren’t special, we were just like all others before us. All our youth, idealism and energy spent and wasted in futility.
Some will say we changed the world with the computer revolution. Yep. We gave the world the most selfish, freedom depriving technology in the history of man. We didn’t invent computers, we just found a way to make the technology more personal and mass market it, and that allowed a few individuals to accumulate massive fortunes and power that rival most countries. Ultimately, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates symbolize the world’s best hustlers and marketers, values we esteem highly in this country.
But, it has changed our world. Technology has seduced and enthralled us with its magic. It has opened new channels and ways to communicate and express ourselves, but it has also made our world more selfish and impersonal and allowed the government to deprive us of freedom like no other time in history. Ironic for a generation that sang “freedom” at every turn. I remarked not long ago to a friend that I felt fortunate to live in the last free times in America. He said, “When was that, the early seventies?” And I said, “Yep”. We didn’t realize it then, or even now, but it has been computers and technology that has stolen our freedom to move about without being watched and tracked. 1984 has become a reality. It is hard to feel free when your every word, purchase and movement is constantly beng watched and monitored.
Crooks and thieves can now steal everything you own, even your identity, with a few key strokes without you ever knowing they did it or who they are. Now corporations, advertisers and marketers are free to track our every little move and gather information on us, along with a government that can also kill us and go to war remotely. Killing is so much more impersonal when you can do it with a drone in Afghanistan or a laptop in Iran behind a computer in Colorado.
The risks of online banking fraud are real. More people are using these services. And more online fraudsters are using more sophisticated, effective and malicious methods to perpetrate their crimes, the FFIEC says. Organized criminal groups have been identified as well, and some now specialize in financial fraud, using kits of automated "attack tools" that can be downloaded from the Internet.
http://finance.yahoo.com/...
http://www.presstv.ir/...
Now individuals can take over any public space with their laptops and cell phones and ignore the world and others around them with impunity. It screams “I am more important than anything else”, “me, me, me”, louder than anything that has ever come before. It is the height of selfishness and repression of freedom. A perfect monument to my generation.
I was born in the middle of my generation, the same year as Steve Jobs. Not the beginning and not the end, in-between. I felt like observer for a lot of what happened, so I turn my observations to My Generation. Maybe, I have been harsh in my assessment of my generation so far. We shall see. I can’t change anything, but I can call it like I saw, and see, it. I saw the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s been five decades for me to make these observations of what my generation meant or did. Time will write the rest of the history.
