11-01-2016, 01:07 PM
(11-01-2016, 05:16 AM)taramarie Wrote:(11-01-2016, 04:36 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I'm a Boomer, and most of my time in the Boom Awakening was in a staid family in the rural Midwest, where one never got a chance to partake in much of the 2T. I saw only a little loosening by may authoritarian, traditional farm-raised parents... and I got little chance to participate in the Boom Awakening.
I am not ready for another Awakening era. I can warn X and Millennial generations: you might begin to think the Boom Awakening quaint, much as I remember media suggesting that the Gay 90's (yes -- it really was called that, and that had nothing to do with homosexuality) were quaint. People had forgotten the booze and opiates. (As I said to one of the best-liked posters on the old Howe and Strauss forum, the poppy field in which Dorothy falls asleep from the narcotic effect of the poppies in The Wizard of Oz gives some indication of how booze-sodden and doped up America was in the Missionary Awakening, even if only through the patent medicines full of 'liquor and laudanum' that could be sold with impunity before the Food and Drug Act of 1906).
Lost kids were often pushed into factory work if they were of the urban poor or pressed into farm work if in non-rich farm families. Lost kids from the economic elites couldn't understand what the hyped fun of young adults extending childhood was all about and found nothing.
Ah I do not think so if we are to take the apollonian/dionysian saeculum theory seriously. You guys messed things up culturally with no solution to fix what was messed up.
We most certainly did. We lack the reform movements of the Missionaries and the culture of the Transcendental generation. We were good only in polarizing the discourse. Economic elitists of the Boom generation will need to be shoved aside if there is to be any structural reform of American political life and ways of doing business.
Quote:The next prophets in America will be what we have over in my country currently; apollonian prophets. So, similar to your missionaries. They will be more organized. When I look at our boomers who are apollonians and look at what they are doing and compare them to the cultural mess that is the American boomers I have to say you guys are anything but quaint. I am appalled at the mess and appalled that these discussions still have to be said in this day and age and of all places, America. Worse still that there has been no solution, no resolve.
So long as the Boomers are divided into hostile, exclusive camps we will hev no resolution other than brute force.
Quote:Such is the fate of a dionysian group that can only create mess but cannot fix it. But that is the role for generations who crave law and order like myself. I do not see you American boomers as anything even comparable to "quaint."
People will see the Hippie stuff, the Boomer rock music, and the psychedelic art without knowing the context and see it as quaint, much as I saw fin de siecle (19th to 20th century) expressions of art and music 'quaint'. Wow, people used to do that?
Quote: I see the opposite of that in fact. Two sides screaming at each other and pushing the destruct button on both sides pulling a nation apart even further for self serving gain. This is not the way to bring a country together. This is certainly not the way towards building a strong nation. I see dionysians as mess makers. Not worthy of the word "quaint." I could use that word though for our boomers who are more collective and love law making to fit round their ideals.
If they press the 'destruct' button, then Boomers will destroy much more than their own creation.
The dominant Boomers are now much like the White side of the Russian Civil War.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.