Baby Boomers and how we/they are perceived in today's world

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This comment made me think. I don't have any profound observation, but it helps to contrast with other cohorts. Bill Clinton was a very early Baby-Boomer and, the widespread hatred felt towards him by many Americans notwithstanding, apparently had a longstanding ambition to succeed in politics and in particular he admired John F. Kennedy. Anyway he clearly had a belief in the power of Government to better society and worked toward that goal from an early age. I believe there are a number of "major celebrities or politicians" born around that time including our most recent ex-President. In contrast, what I remember about people born around the time I was, was a lack of respect for all large, powerful institutions — not just the Government but also the Military, Big Business, religion, and so forth. In contrast, many Libertarians want small government because they believe that social welfare should be in the purview of religious institutions. What I recall as my contemporaries' dominant way of thinking was that people should not be restricted in terms of sex and drug use; but in addition they hated guns but believed in such things as medical care and unemployment compensation being provided by society. At that time, Scandinavian countries were widely admired for having a "cradle-to-grave" social contract and most people I knew would have been delighted to see that come about in the US. At no point did you ever hear anyone express a fear that these things would jeopardize our personal liberties. To us, people in Sweden and Denmark seemed "freer" than we were in America. Well I guess my original point was that wanting to pursue a "traditional" career path that would lead one to the Senate or the Governor's Mansion wasn't a big thing at the time, and didn't become one again until a later cohort came of age admiring Ronald Reagan.

Sorry that wasn't very articulate but I wanted to try to express some of what I was thinking.

Later on when I feel up to it, I'll talk about how, a couple of months past my 17th birthday, I travelled from upstate NY to Washington DC to participate in an anti-War demonstration without my parents ever having found out then or later.

Back then it was the right wanting more government suppression of liberties and the left resisting it.
The government planting informants and disrupting in anti war organizations was viewed as an assault on liberties.

“Law and Order” campaigns were viewed as an assault on basic rights.

The Moral Majority types wanted to use government to intrude and suppress on your most personal activities.

Be it the Vietnam War or the Kennedy Assassination conspiracy theorizing was mostly a purview of the left. The “conspirators” were the government or a combination of government and powerful corporations.

So I did a Google search of famous people born within a couple of years of 1957, and came up with...

• Bill Gates (1955)
• Steve Jobs (1955)
• Rowan "Mr. Bean" Atkinson (1955)
• Martina Navratilova (1956)
• Tom Hanks (1956)
• Carrie Fisher (1956)
• Katie Couric (1957)
• Madonna Louise Ciccone (1958)
• Ellen DeGeneres (1958)
• Michael Jackson (1958)
• Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. (1959)
• "Weird" Al Yankovic (1959)

I wonder what my classmate may have been smoking?

More famous Boomers can be found  Here 

Famous People born in 1957

It might be a bit of a stretch to label as "Famous" most of the people at the bottom half of the page.

Wait ... the voice of Bart Simpson and I are the same age?!

My parents are technically Baby Boomers (Generational Cuspers close to being Gex X) and I am Gen Z (also a Cusper and if I were a bit older I'd be classed as a Gen Y millennial like my sister).

Personally, I do find it bewildering when I hear stories of my parents' experiences along with Gex X and Baby Boomers in general discussing what the job market used to be like. It comes across as alien to me. Apologies if I made anyone feel old here, but to put it into context I've never lived through an economic boom. There was a recession when I was a kid in the UK, things evened out enough to no longer be a recession, but still weren't great, and then 2020 happened and the economy took quite the hit again.

The phrase "OK Boomer" is a controversial one and not one I use. However, I can understand the appeal sometimes. I don't want to lump an entire generation together, since there are certainly people of all generations that I respect. However, it can be annoying when certain individuals judge you for not attaining particular life goals at your age despite the fact that things are different for young adults now. I find it amusing when I see articles complaining about millennials and Gen Z over such trivial things. Apparently Millennials are ruining the diamond industry and Gen Z are *checks notes* binge drinking less on average? Oh no?

https://favoured.co.uk/blog/2019/05/30/ ... -industry/

I have seen on Social Media instances of people commenting on others posts shaming them for not owning a home and / or having a stable job in their 20's. This is not acceptable behaviour. I have rolled my eyes at posts that brag about owning two homes, a nice car and them having a fancy wedding 'at your age' because it actively dismisses a variety of socio-economic differences and simplifies them to a lazy VS hardworking narrative. Sometimes it is well intentioned, I know a friend who had a parent actively encourage them to ask for a job in-person (absolute no-no) and of course when he did he was rejected. You can't just show up, by doing so you are actively hurting your chances. It's a different world and we have to play by different rules. Not all Baby Boomers are like this of course.

Well young lady(LOL)

Most of us Boomers here on WP did not have two houses a career and a family when we were your age because we had this issue called undiagnosed autism. Because of that I understand what it is to be judged as lazy and weak because I did not obtain what my peers did. OTOH there was no knowledge of autism never mind supports and accommodations growing up. Outside of WP there is still not much support for autistics in our age group. Many of my autistic peers are not here, they were locked away in an institution, or just died young from the stresses. Those of us still here are survivors. We are a tough bunch, we had to be. It is natural at times to be jealous of the young and look at them as spoiled. That does not make us right, it makes us human.

As far as the “Ok Boomer” thing I am not offended. I think it is clever and funny. I call myself that sometimes. There is some truth in the criticism that our generation is self absorbed and glutinous. As an outsider to my own generation I have dealt with the negative consequences of that. Since we are such a large part of the population we have always dominated the culture to the point of being smothering. It is natural of those not part of it to be resentful of it.

A word of advice to my fellow boomers about the Ok Boomer “insult”. If you are going to criticize zoomers for being snowflakes, it is not a good look to get all bent out of shape by a microagression. You are supposed to be way too old to let something like that bother you.

I am not a victim, I am a survivor; and I did not become a survivor by being weak or stupid.

Just to clarify, I was not trying to imply that anyone here behaves in such a way. I most commonly see such behaviour on social media platforms such as Tik Tok and Buzzfeed. Websites and apps that typically have a younger demographic but are accessed by all. This behaviour is from a rather vocal minority, usually those suffering from what I like to call 'just get a small loan of a million dollars' lack of self-awareness.

The older generation always dislikes the youngest and the youngest resents the oldest. It's a tale as old as time.

I know Gen Alpha is going to dislike us (Gen Z) as they get older. It's natural for generations to want to separate themselves from other generations as an attempt to form their own identity. Frankly it'd be boring if every generation took the exact same approach to things. I can take a guess at what they'll make fun of us for, but I won't know for certain until they do. They'll have a lot of material, I am aware that my generation isn't perfect either. No group is perfect.

Also, I've thought the same about OK Boomer. A person can't criticise Gen Z for being too sensitive and then turn around and say they are under attack when someone calls them an out of touch Boomer without being a tad hypocritical. If a person wants to criticise the younger generations, then the younger generations should be able to criticise them.

I remember my dad taking me aside one day and telling me "Sure, listen to your elders, but also listen to your common sense and what you know to be true, because sometimes we have no idea what we're doing either or we're simply just flat out wrong" and I think about that advice sometimes.

I never believed you were talking about us, but in general.

The youth are spoiled, entitled, lazy, weak, and do not appreciate all they have gotten through our hard work. What our parents said about our generation. We called them “square”, said they were mindless drones to the establishment.

When I was an adolescent or college age, one was expected to rebel against one's parents because of their reactionary attitudes. Like I said at the beginning, the Generation Gap was supposed to have been caused by kids being raised in large families and feeling a strong kinship with their peers whose relationship with their parents was remote. I was an only child and did not have close friends my own age, especially in high school, and my parents were a key part of my support network such as it existed. So joining in to youth movements did not come easily to me. When students at my college were told to go on strike over the Vietnam War, I questioned the wisdom of that action however I was also not a conservative (there were a few campus conservatives around but not many).

In particular, I never understood the extreme animosity toward Richard Nixon. I more or less understood his shortcomings but did not actually hate him as my contemporaries did. In fact, I sympathized with his being hated by so many people, almost as if he were being bullied, if it's possible to say a twice-elected US President can legitimately be bullied. Interesting enough, my first girlfriend had a bust of Nixon in her room, but I never really discussed it with her. I tended to think she also sympathized with him. I don't recall discussing politics with her very much except that she would talk a lot about feminism. But she didn't have any what I would consider right-wing attitudes by today's standards. She was simply not a young rebel.

In later life, my parents told me they felt sorry for me having to deal with adolescence and at the same time having to deal with the pressure to rebel and participate in the counter-culture.

That was still going on a few years later. A sure way to invite bullying was to say you liked the music of your parents(Frank Sinatra, Big Band). People grew their hair long just to be not like their parents. Kids were embarrassed to be seen with them. By our time it was not a political thing, our parents were not reactionary, just old fashioned and out of touch.

Our parents were clueless. They did not have the technology to know what we were up to. When I hear parents discussing about how they are in constant text contact with their offspring who are away at college it is unfathomable to me. Also unfathomable is kids and parents talking about how they are best friends. That is not to say kids did not love their parents, respect them, or get along with them. But they were our parents not our friend. Same thing with other adult authority figures like teachers and later on bosses.

I started this reply discussing not associating with our parents music. That is not true today and has not been true for decades. Kids know and like groups Led Zeppelin and The Beatles. What this shows that dispite all the “do your own thing” rhetoric, the baby boom generation was conformist as hell.

This is a good segue into something I said I'd talk about earlier. So when I went away to college, a good six hours' drive away (it wasn't actually my parents' choice that I go so far away, but it was also their choice I go to college one way or the other) I hadn't been 17 for very long. So that autumn, a large protest against the War in Vietnam was planned in Washington DC and colleges were organizing groups to attend. Somehow I decided to sign up (I don't recall how I paid for it) and rode a chartered coach full of other students to DC. There we were somehow assigned various places to spend the night, in my case it was in College Park, an area I didn't know well at the time. So I was in some apartment with a bunch of strangers. Somebody had weed and I tried some of it, which was probably my first time, anyway shortly thereafter there was a rally at the Field House (I can remember that June Lockhart was one of the speakers). I then had to return to that apartment. As I recall I was befuddled by the weed although not actually high. I was wandering around looking for the apt., I actually approached some strangers in the belief that I could ask them for help finding it and I think they ran off. Nevertheless, by some miracle I found it. The next day on which the demonstration took place, as I recall I got to the Mall by hitchhiking (I think I was with others who had stayed at the same apartment). At no point was I in contact with anybody I knew personally. Then by some other miracle I found the bus I needed to take to return to college. In particular, I have no idea how I found my way back to the apartment the previous night nor how I found the bus after the demo. And quite certain my parents never knew about what happened. Mind-boggling when I think about it today or to think how my wife might have reacted had this happened to our one child who could possibly have done such a thing. Of course, there are details I have forgotten that might make the situation seem less preposterous could I remember them.

Another, unrelated point I'll make is that although at the time there was a lot of discussion of racial injustice, black militancy, etc., I can honestly say I had no real understanding of how racism worked in the US although I was at least superficially supportive of black Americans and their experience. I would attribute this to lacking Theory of Mind as I couldn't really see my self in the situation of a black person, but OTOH I think a lot of young white "activists" also didn't really understand. Their political awareness arose primarily out of a fear of being conscripted to fight in Vietnam, so beyond where the issues of the day impacted them directly, they didn't really understand and soon forgot once the threat of dying in battle went away. I sincerely believe the "woke generation", no matter how much disrespect they get, understand these things far better than we ever did and yes I think the Internet and Social Media have contributed to this.

@ASPartOfMe you had mentioned that the only "activism" you recall from college was some anti-Apartheid stuff. I am a bit surprised as I can recall a great deal of anti-Nuclear activism at that time, in particular large demonstrations against construction of the Seabrook power station which was in LI of all places. You never saw any of that?

The big demonstration at the Shoreham Nuclear Plant was a month after I graduated. The No Nukes concert was a few months later. I was at school when Three Mile Island Melted Down in March. We were worried about the radiation drifting over but no demonstrations over that at SUNY Oneonta that I recall. I remember hearing an anti apartheid demonstration outside of class, maybe a dozen people and thinking how quaint.

At the risk of seeming to want to one-up you, I should tell you what happened to me when I was only 14, although the story reflects more on the cluelessness of my parents than the generation I was born in (I can imagine an early-Gen-X latchkey kid possibly having the same experience).

So in 1967 they had something called Expo 67 in Montreal. My mother's favorite first cousin lived there (if I may seem to have more knowledge of goings-on in Canada than might be deemed proper for an American, this has something to do with it). Anyway, it was agreed I would go to Montreal on my own to stay with her while visiting the Expo. Which I did. An all-day journey by Greyhound and/or Trailways Bus with a transfer at the infamous Port Authority Bus Terminal. When I got to the border, they took me off the bus and called my cousin (whose number I gave them) but when she said she was expecting me, they put me back on and I continued my journey. I can't honestly imagine what my parents must have been thinking, of course it seemed normal to me at the time as no adult had given me reason to think otherwise. If this happened today (COVID-19 notwithstanding) I'm certain they would have called the nearest US law-enforcement authority to have me taken into custody until one of my parents could have gotten to upstate NY and claimed me (and possibly have faced some sort of charges).

I suppose maybe I have something in common with those Honduran kids who travel to the US on their own (NOT! but still I can't help thinking about it).

I thought I would mention some things Baby Boomers originated that are now accepted parts of American culture, unfortunately I don't believe I can think of all of them at present but would be delighted should anybody else care to add some.

1.) Acceptance of music performed on guitars and percussion as respectable rather than low-class. Rock 'n' Roll etc. began in the 40s or 30s but the "intellectual élite" would have nothing to do with it. "College men" cultivated a taste for Jazz and Classical music until the mid-60s.
2.) Overt repudiation of the idea that sex outside of marriage was unacceptable in proper society. It had always gone on (both my parents indulged) but never talked about in the open. With the Baby Boom, that changed abruptly.
3.) Foreign foods including many that weren't necessarily brought to the US by immigrants and Americanized, but that affluent young Americans had experienced while travelling overseas and created a demand for at home e.g. Crêpes, Sushi, "authentic" Chinese food, food from parts of Italy that had not sent a lot of immigrants to the US, and so forth. As these dishes became mainstream, the traditional American "steak and seafood" kind of restaurant faded away as well as "family" restaurants such as Howard Johnson's and Hot Shoppes.
4.) The idea that "recreational drugs" might have a legitimate place in daily life, although it suffered a huge setback in the 80s, but the process that led to legalization in many states and possibly nation-wide in the near future really began when Boomers reached adolescence.
5.) Likewise acceptance of LGBTQ+ which doesn't need much explanation.
6.) Secularism in general, by which I mean a turning away from the idea that mainstream Christianity forms the moral basis for American society. Not that there has been a thoroughgoing revolution in that regard, but this process began with the Baby Boomers, had some setbacks (esp. in the 90s which I can recall as having been an especially pious decade) and has led to the US today having the lowest average church attendance in history, if I can recall correctly.