OK Boomer

As an ageing baby boomer, I love this retort. It means that despite our failures, and many there are, we have successfully educated our grandchildren to think critically and not to accept a given answer as gospel. We should thank our children I suppose. All those participation awards have empowered our youngest to speak up & talk back and that is fantastic.

My generation had so much hope and potential. We ended an unjust war, we fought for human rights for African Americans, homosexuals, and women. We began the environmental movement. We created culture and art that influences the world. We conquered a dictatorial communist empire and converted others to market economies. We shrunk the world with the internet and spread dignity & education around the world by championing markets, human rights and women’s rights.

Alas it wasn’t enough. In fact, you could argue that our parents are really the ones who deserve those achievements.

We allowed our materialism and greed to influence our politics with tax avoidance and more unjust wars. We dropped the ball on the environment, resting on our laurels of reducing air & water pollution. We forgot to take care of those less fortunate in our towns and cities. We looked to enrich ourselves without any concern about the infrastructure of society. We stopped championing human rights and just made the easy sell of markets. Those countries we conquered have become new versions of their former selves just with more money. After Watergate we devalued public service and that made room for people of less character to become our leaders. We allowed con men to convince us that we didn’t have any responsibility for the world we created.

We limited our life goals to “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

We lost our imagination and creativity. We could have recreated our society into a near utopia. Most of our art is formulaic & auto-tuned (ok maybe that is the kids).  We settled for the internet when we should have been exploring the solar system. We launched more satellites that look at ourselves than look at the universe.

The “OK Boomer” retort is a perfect case of what goes around comes around. I remember "Don't trust anyone over 30". Our generation HAS failed our country and the world. We went from “peace & love”, to profits & power. From “do your own thing”, to “Just say No”.

I hope the new generation is smarter and wiser than we were and don't fall into the traps we did. They appear to be. 

Practicality and career shouldn't dominate looking out for each other, the country and the world. Don’t lose your idealism, it’s more valuable than it looks at 30 or 40. You’ll always have regrets just do your best.

Go get 'em kids! I wish I was 18 years old (for so many reasons). I'll have to help from where I am.