04-27-2022, 03:20 PM
(04-27-2022, 05:36 AM)galaxy Wrote: This article is the highest-profile, but there's been a lot of discussion of this lately, whether in film, television, and literature, or on social media. Society is already in the mindset that will raise a new generation of Prophets/Idealists.
https://www.vox.com/culture/23025832/eve...urning-red
I have mixed feelings about it. For people my age it really does feel like we are the generation that will correct all of the failings of our own parents, but that's what the GIs and Silents thought too, and look how the Boomers turned out. Not well.
There's a real comfort that comes with knowing the cyclical nature of modern history, but there's also a nihilism and hopelessness that comes with it, knowing that it's impossible to truly "fix" any problem. The fix will create new problems, to be fixed by a later generation, which will in the process recreate the original problems. I guess that's the thing I'm struggling with. There's something really beautiful in it, but it's also so hopeless.
P2: That is also what the Boomers thought during their youth as well, and they were extremely vocal about it as well; much more so than succeeding generations have been thus far.
P3: This thought was immortalized in a popular song during the 1960s inspired by a Biblical passage. It also adequately describes the societal malaise we have had in place for several years now; maybe even a couple of decades. Much worse than that supposedly described by Jimmy Carter during his presidency, even though that actual word wasn't used in his talk to the nation.
What happened was that upon reaching relative maturity, much of the Boomer generation became introverted and reserved, especially after AIDS killed off the sexual revolution and a cocooning movement began, which was once described as a National Geographic videotape running in reverse as one time social butterflies began their cocoons. That was when demand for carryout food skyrocketed, now having been eclipsed by home delivery mostly through third party phone apps such as DoorDash. Full disclosure: I have been a DD driver for nearly six years.
In what had been an extroverted world they may have felt pressure to express their thoughts and ideas but with rare exceptions they haven't really felt the need to share them, at least not with the world at large. Except for situations such as George Floyd, there hasn't really been the spark that was there during the 1960s and perhaps early part of the 1970s. In fact the advent of social media with the Internet and smartphones has made the society even more inward than it had already been.