An Open Letter to Baby Boomers
August 11, 2008Dear Baby Boomers (click here to find out what a Baby Boomer is),
I write to you while sitting in a chair at my local public library. Having had a conversation recently with my parents, aunts, and uncles, I am compelled to notify you that I would appreciate it if you would join me in analyzing your generation’s collective experiment and the ramifications of your choices for Generation X, Millennials, and other future generations.
Your generation began to emerge into prominence during Vietnam and following JFK’s tragic death and became rather vocal about your displeasure for American society. Piggybacking off the Beatnik movement, you challenged cultural assumptions en route to transforming culture into your own mold. With the bluster of change that could only be classified as a cultural revival, you challenged everything and brought America to its knees at your very presence thanks to your numbers and the noise your voices created.
I can’t speak well for you, as I wasn’t born after World War II, but I think I understand what you were after. Yes, the 1950s were really, well, plain. Everyone had the same car, same haircut, and same Levitt & Sons house that all screamed “conformity.” To spice up life, rock the boat, and try new things, you discovered new means to live. LSD became your new sugar cereal. Rock & Roll was amazing. Being more open about sex became your norm.
After Woodstock, you grew up. It was time to move on to bigger things: conquering a nation. Your older cousins, the Silent Generation, let you trample them miserably on your way to becoming CEOs, storming politics, packing the courts, and industrializing the nation. Its amazing how just 20 years or so of your generation has made such an impact on culture.
However, my purpose in writing this letter is to ask you a question that may haunt you, but I feel it is valid. Can you honestly say that you will be leaving America better than you found it?
Today, my generation is beginning to enter your workforce to take over your newly created cubicles as you retire, though we are moving into a different workplace. At one time, a corporation existed to improve people’s lives and communities. Today, by definition in college, a corporation exists to “raise shareholder wealth.” Thank you very much for your sweat shops that imprison children, the corporate landfills you created, and thousands of acres of forests you removed to build bigger buildings. We couldn’t have have made it without that.
Thank you very much for accepting the notions of philosophers who would have better been found in other places in time. “If it feels good, do it” has really helped decrease the number of people in prisons. “God is dead” really raised the bar for hope. “Sex, drugs, and rock & roll” has improved family lives for everyone.
Thank you for selling us to day cares so you could work. We appreciate the bigger houses, cars, and 200 TV channels we got for the trade, but really, your time would have been a lot more. You chose to work to “make ends meet” that you never had to create, so we decided that since you didn’t want us, we’d have to raise ourselves. Its okay – without you guiding us, we found ways to increase teen pregnancy, STDs, high school dropout rates, and juveneille crime without you. As we move out of your homes, we hope your 61″ HDTVs, boats, and Hummers were worth the price. They cost us a lot.
Thank you for deciding how schools should train us for your “real world.” Learning to think for ourselves by taking tests, learning how to type instead of handwrite, training us that spellcheck is better than phonics, and removing the concept of failure from our lives is wonderful. Not only can we not function in society, but we refuse to believe that we can’t function. At least we have our self-esteem. Go ahead and fire us in your workplaces – you never taught us commitment, anyways.
Thank you for all the prosperity you have brought to America by working your tails off. We really appreciate you earning your social security, though we’re not sure you made it into a system we can leave for you. Fortunately, you’ve all been saving all the pay from your overtime hours to make up the difference when we are forced to shut it down because you turned it into a bankrupt system.
Thank you for leaving us with a world where we are respected by other nations. The Europeans can’t wait to work with us in diplomacy, the Islamic World will forgive us really quickly for killing all their civilians, and the Africans didn’t want help with AIDS, anyways. They realize that spending $15,000 for toilets and other necessities you signed into law are more important.
As we take over your jobs, we look forward to finding all the problems you’ve left for us and transforming our world to what you were supposed to make it. Don’t worry – all the experts say we’ll probably do more for society than even our grandparents. You just sit back and enjoy the reality TV you created in your excessive homes while we’ll take care of everything.
Who are the parents now?
Sincerely,
Millennials
Cross Examine 
Wow.
This blog is powerful. “Open letter” seems to be somewhat like “naked truth.” I really hope that as we discover problems caused by past generations we can solve them and make a difference in our world.
It is time for our generations to work together and discover that money and greed are not the most important things but that family and time spent with each other outweighs anything we could buy.
Good post.
As the ideals of the “American Dream” go down the drain, I say adios! Living for the large house with a two car garage, white picket fence and the 2.5 kids is overrated.
It’s time to live for more than success. Is anyone else tired of being measured by their successes and cursed by their failures? Unable to make any sort of personal relationships because there is simply not enough hours in the day, exhausted by trying to stay alive in the rat race, caught up in the business of America.
For the love of everything good and holy, why don’t we freakin’ love somebody?
As a baby boomer, woman, wife, mother, teacher,
entrepreneur, and patriotic citizen, I totally disagree with millenial about the condition of our great country destined to be your future inheritance.
Where else can you still choose your own destiny by
the choices you make? Our country is still in a learning process where individuals come together to make the choices for the masses. Please be sure you
elect to run for office, serve our country, or teach our children, then come back and compare results.
The argument here is not that there aren’t still opportunities. Boomers had those way before they emerged. The question is: what things have been improved versus what has deteriorated?
I agree that, as a whole, the USA has been trashed in the last 50 or so years. But I would go further back than that – I think the seeds were sown years before. Discipline and morality and frugality and true self-respect all been undermined. Dignity is a lost concept, people know the word but can’t seem to see what it would look like in real life.
We think that psychological manipulation and emotional discipline of children will work better than old-school methods of loving correction. We think that security in a growing portfolio will bring more safety than a close-knit family. We think that whoever is better at manipulation should conquer the marriage.
We think that cynicism is a virtue and not a wrong focus. And only within the last 100 years have we experimented with the idea of having government pay people to not work or have children.
When I look into the lives of people who lived before 1900, struggles and all, I see an entirely different concept of what life meant. I wouldn’t want all that their culture had as values, but I must admit, they had much wisdom we have lost.
My thoughts, anyway.
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I could have written a letter just like this when I was your age.
I would have thanked my parents’ generation, the G.I Generation, for institutionalized racial and cultural segregation and debasement (against non-whites and non-Christians); for subjugating women to clerical and menial jobs (wanted: Gal Friday); for poisoning the environment in unprecedented tragedies such as Love Canal; for perpetuating an arms race with the former Soviet Union and conditioning the nation to “duck and cover” from impending thermonuclear war; for glamorizing tobacco to the extent that 50% of men smoked; for abusing other drugs such as martinis and barbiturates; for creating a culture of conformity that was devastating to anyone “different” (a.k.a homosexuals); for promoting polices making the U.S. as oil dependent as the nation is today (such as deconstructing the nation’s efficient and streetcar rail system in favor of automobiles); for creating Medicare without regard for the demographic boom they were creating and its ultimate impact in old age.
They were our parents, and they did the best they could. And they did more for us than we understood when we were young and impetuous. And they gave us a chance to make the nation better. And we did the best we could. And now you sit where you are, the beneficiary of more gifts of technologies, social maturation and global opportunities than you may fully appreciate.
Get some historical perspective, young man, beyond the stereotypes and media-manufactured myths that you’ve chosen to embrace. No generation is perfect and neither will be Millennials. You’ll have a chance to perfect the nation. No more bitching. Just do it.
A Baby Boomer
I don’t mind that Boomers “did their best.” In fact, I agree that they set out to change the planet with great intentions.
I would also add that Millennials probably won’t improve things as much as they believe, either. Optimism is a key to improvement, but its also the biggest ingredient for being naive.
Hopefully, we can contribute.
Who do you think you are to presume to write such a pretentious letter?
What life-long profound and comprehensive discipline have you engaged in to enable you to presume to lecture others on how they should live?
Who were/are your LIVING Spiritual Teachers? Such Teachers being necessary to guide you and more importantly to challenge you to examine ALL of your ideas and opinions about quite literally everything.
Have you been humbled by your own sweat and suffering?
If you read the biographies of the great Saints and Realizers from all of the traditions you will find that most of them went through a profound ordeal of struggle and testing until they came to their Spiritual maturity—it often took decades.
You are mortal and entirely subject to the Mercy of The Divine. You own nothing and know nothing. There is not anything to be believed that is the Truth.
You must be touched in your feeling by the unspeakable suffering of this world, and thus become broken hearted. It is only on that basis that you can truly serve others.
Everything else is just an extension of your own unexamined obnoxiousness, and your drive to achieve power and control over others.