Yes, here I am again, mixing misery and gin and playing armchair psychologist for the ills of the nation. You may remember previously when I spoke of America's response to the shock of the Watergate scandal, and as I continue to delve into the quizzical habits of society as a whole I got to thinking of another issue that seems to be plaguing our collective conscious: the issue of grief.
How many times have you heard recently that "The American Dream" is "dead," "dying" or somewhere on the way to that conclusion? People don't use this metaphor if they don't mean it, especially when it comes to one of our most cherished ideas and, indeed, the cornerstone of our concept of American Exceptionalism. The American Dream is not something you joke about, and it is certainly not something you lambaste unless you are someone like the well-known Black Comic and social critic George Carlin, who once famous quipped that "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it."
So how can we get to a place where both the Huffington Post and Fox News can seemingly agree that something so beloved (in their own camps, a very different definition of it) can have been allowed to die?
Officially, the American Dream is as follows:
"that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."
Now, you can find a lot of literature hither and yon talking about whether or not the American Dream is
actually alive, and a few articles
seeming to be glad that the picture of success in a different American era is withering away. That may very well be a story for another day, but for now I want to talk about the effect this sort of conversation and parlance has on a nation as a whole. It seems that Watergate was merely the first punch in a series of gunshots that laid low our collective perception of America, and as such we have been, for some time now, a country in mourning of itself. Let's look, then, at one of the prevailing models for grief, first put out by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969. You've probably heard of it called simply
"The Five Stages of Grief."
This process can sometimes take years, even decades to come all the way through from Denial all the way to Acceptance. I'm sure we've all heard the poignant stories of women dressed all in black, keeping houses frozen in time for years out of mourning for a husband gone too soon. Perhaps you've seen this process in yourself, or in someone you know after they have had to deal with an aggrieving incident. But maybe, and here's where we're gonna jump, just maybe... we're going through this as a country, and it's not being expressed by just one group of people, but generationally.
There are three main post-Watergate generations that are currently having a strong effect on the country: Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials. Of all of these, it appears that only Generation X has completed the Kübler-Ross model completely: what started out as a generation of "slackers" who refused to care (denial) turned into the anti-capitalist terrorists of the late 90s (anger) only to later reconcile their Black Flag records with their need to provide for a family (bargaining) leading to a feeling of being forgotten between two larger (and as a result more the target of marketers) generations (depression), finally culminating with the embrace of the society they had fought in their own youth to dismantle (acceptance). Generation X should be congratulated on successfully navigating what I have recently called a very nasty world, but they also were blessed with a period that was relatively without conflict or shock. Yes, they faced the Reagan and Carter recessions in their youth, but the American Dream held true for them as they came of age during a time when they were best positioned to benefit the most from the Clinton boom of the 90s. Still, their psychological state, as a class of Americans, seems in much better shape than the generations that came before and after.
I have to admit, I wanted so badly for my study and thought on this topic to come out well for my Millennial generation, but the more I pored into it the more I realized some very troubling realities. Most notably, both the Baby Boomers and the Echo Boomers are not managing their grief well, if at all. So what is it, then, that caused the X-ers to become better actualized than their parents or their younger siblings? Again, the answer comes from the phenomenon of psychological shock. It's been proven and explained in great detail in the arresting work of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine that administering shocks as a means of psychological "reprogramming" treatment can not only result in lasting damage and no cure, but it can also retard or decimate a person's ability to function in their daily life. In this case, the twin shocks of Watergate and the financial crisis of 2007-2008 serve to be the catalyst for a stalled or stunted approach to managing worldly grief and the perceived death of the American Dream.
I submit as evidence this article or, more specifically, the comments section. Now, as any denizen of the Internet is well aware of, a comments section is a very unpleasant place from time to time, but sometimes unpleasantness must be bore out for illumination. A short collection of Baby Boomer response comments are as follows:
"What garbage."
"While the part about greedy leadership is true most of it is not. The baby boomers were the last generation that had a work ethic. The following generations all believed that they were worth more than any job was willing to offer at an entry level."
"What load of horse malarkey. As if 99% of the boomers had any more power than today's generations. However, in contrast to you pitiful, whining, "I went to an expensive private school and now I want my loans forgiven and I want my $100K/year starting job" crybabies, most of us put our heads down and ground out a living for our families so that our kids and grandkids had a better life than us."
"At least baby boomers can write a coherent sentence. At least baby boomers will have a conversation with you without becoming distracted by their phone."
"I honestly don't get this article at all."
"You know, I don't say to you "your generation failed" because so many of you are vapid, self-centered, game droids - the girls with duck lip selfies and the boys with their nihilism. Really, you should get some perspective."
The immediate reaction that those criticizing them must be wrong, the ad hominem attacks, the refusal to admit any fault in some of the commenters (not all, but some) speaks to a generation that never got out of the first phase of the Kübler-Ross model: denial. They can be hippies and stock brokers, capitalists and commune-dwellers, Reagan Republicans and counterculture warriors, all at the same time. In many ways, the Boomer generation responded to the shock of Watergate by, well, not responding.
Unfortunately, the Millennials didn't fare much better, as they've only managed to get one step further in the Kübler-Ross model before stalling out: Anger.
"Come See The Hit Show: Boomers On Parade! Watch! as boomers demonstrate the mental flexibility necessary to hold five or more mutually contradictory beliefs at the same time! Thrill! as boomers claim, "You can't judge a whole generation" while simultaneously blaming every other generation! Laugh! as Boomers who identify with the Boomer brand defend the brand against all criticism, with hilarious results! Cry! as boomers continue to screw up the planet while refusing to take any responsibility or change in any way!"
"I would LOVE to even consider going for a Master's, but as it stands I may not even be able to afford to get my Bachelors.
I could show you 15 people in nearly the exact same boat I am in from any class on campus.
What kind of future do I have to look forward to? Higher taxes, the possibility of Social Security and Medicare being cut, retiring at around 80. All while being told I have it easy with technology and I just don't want to work."
"Some of you may have done some good in your youth, when you let yourselves be guided by older and wiser minds, but what have ANY of you done for us lately, except take, take, take?"
"Collectively baby boomers have turned out to be a bunch of spoiled bast#rds who would rather sell their kids into debt slavery than deal with the problems they largely created."
"Both the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers seem to want to take responsibility for the good things, and let responsibility for the bad things "trickle down" to younger generations."
So, we have one generation that largely refuses to take blame, and one generation that is thrashing, flailing about, looking for anyone to blame. Between them both, the one modern American generation that got through to adulthood relatively unscathed. All three have reacted to tragedy differently, both have reacted differently to their own idea of what it means for "America" to die. It would appear that, in the future, there will have to finally be some movement on this: the Millennials want answers, and they just may have to extract it out of the Boomers. Gen X, meanwhile, seems to have no stake in this conflict. They managed to avoid this generational conflict and now it will be interesting to see if any of them will be willing to wade hip-deep into what may turn out to be a bloody melee, if only figuratively.
To bring America back to a healthy position, we need to manage this grief. Maybe the Millennials and the Boomers need to go into a collective therapy session where they work their ways toward acceptance. Maybe Millennials have to ask "Is the American Dream dead?" and the Boomers have to finally admit "yes." Something has to happen here: whether it is a peaceful something or something hitting the fan, so to speak, this tension cannot hold forever. Occupy Wall Street was only the beginning of the Millennials thrashing and looking for answers, and if something isn't done quick and some tough answers finally copped to, this could very well get tragic.
*Originally published at Generation Extant dot com on October 22, 2014