Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: People With Minds
Author: David Reeves Posted: 12/22/1998; 11:45:45 PM Topic: DaveNet comments Msg #: 1694 (In response to 1691) Prev/Next: 1693 / 1695
Dave--Don't be so quick to close the book on your experiment; a lot of us have jobs, deliverables, clients, and responsibilities. Thoughtful responses can take time to germinate, and a harried thinker often isn't a good one.
I find it very interesting that you singled out cynicism as the defining characteristic of your generation. One usually hears boomers described as either idealistic, strident, rebellious, socially concerned, revolutionary... or all of the above.
So where does the cynicism come from? Is it a recent phenomenon that replaced the idealism of the sixties? According to the traditional boomer canon, this was the generation that was going to change things; challenge old establishments and traditions, make new ones, and make the world a better place.
There was a deep distrust of the old; remember Abbie Hoffman's famous "Don't trust anyone over 30" credo? Tradition and authority were perceived as having gotten us into the mess the country was in. A great many old establishments were questioned, challenged, and deconstructed by your generation. Some of these were bad, some were good, and most were somewhere in between. In many cases, such as the Vietnam War, Nixon's presidency the challenge was right on. As with any revolutionary movement, though, there is always the risk of becoming too strident, self-assured, and going too far.
All this, of course, happened well before my time. I was born in 1975, in the depths of the last major bear market, just after Watergate and the first oil crisis, and at a time of great skepticism and doubt about the value and the future of Western culture. The films of and depicting the era are especially interesting in this respect. There is a whole genre of films idealizing the investigators, and challengers -- Alan Pakula's The Parallax View and All the President's Men, Winter Kills; on the other hand, other films -- Jules Feiffer's Little Murders, The Ice Storm and even Terry Gilliam's recent adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas demonstrate how deconstruction can eventually lead to a moral vacuum. Once the process of tearing down the old starts, it is hard to know where to stop.
The snowballing pattern of challenge and deconstruction of the past 30 years has left precious little to believe in. One can believe in oneself. My generation, I believe, is cynical and morally adrift, but for a different reason. The process of deconstruction and challenge has accelerated to the point where it is the routine, not the exception, and in its wake has left us an almost exclusively relativistic world, with very few moral absolutes. There are no heroes left. We believe in the self -- education, money, achievements, friends, or whatever floats one's personal boat; moral issues and social causes (for the most part) aren't as important, and we haven't felt the need to challenge the status quo. We're the Fast Company generation. If we only believe in ourselves, why should we care about the political process at all?
People don't want to see Bill Clinton deconstructed, whatever his flaws might be. Whether Bill Clinton should or shouldn't be believed is, in a strange way, beside the point. The public reaction to the impeachment (in the polls at least) seems to be its way of saying that deconstruction is too prevalent.
I don't pretend to suggest that deconstruction and challenge are inherently negative; nor should this be taken as a strong reaction against the ideals of the boomer generation. It is simply a recognition, I think, that the pendulum swings both ways.
This perhaps isn't as well laid out as I had hoped it would be, but I need some sleep. Hopefully it'll at least be thought-provoking.
-David
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