Busted Boomers

Buzz Submitted by : Cèlia Hil

Buzz : La Revolución Madurescente

Original Buzz featured a Spanish TED Talk with Laura Rosillo where "Madurescente" is a play on the word adolescence - or adolescence in mid-life - which Jacques called "Mid-Life Crisis" - but Rosillo treats it as a maturation phase of life equated with but not like adolescence. 

When a comment of mine runs over the edge there is the tell-tale sign of another of my paradox wisdom.  This is the first paradox wisdom that emanated from an actual buzz rather than a buzz which is usually from a producer.  My paradox wisdom here relates to my Societal Pathway or Cyan Learning in my online process here.

It was difficult translating from a video as my comment noted at "Madurescent" link above :

At the same time as much as I am concerned about the world of image we are in - our as the Guy Debord would call it "The Society of the Spectacle", and as much as I found the enormous power Human Resource professionals wield in many organizations while they still try to gain a "seat at the table", this power play has been responsible in part for the creation of ageism.  Who sets the tone of hiring older workers in this era?  One does not have to go far then put the finger on modern HR that continue to engage in professional witchcraft rather than enter the 21st Century.  There is more resonance towards new age thinking within HR then there is taking what should be better learned from Eastern philosophy, which is respect for elders.  Indeed in America, respect for elders is core to the indigenous or First Nations people, another group of people who in their displacement into reservations have had far greater cruelties perpetrated on them during history. 

Then there is an additional source of ire personally for me and that goes beyond the overly marketed animal world and the professional hierarchies that subvert managerial practice, there is the awful side of the contribution of boomers to create a society where the future has been mortgaged largely for existing boomers benefit.  The boomers are themselves a fairly narcissistic bunch, at least in the regard that they let governments run up huge deficits and in creating the culture of youth, now cry that they are victims of ageism.   They are victims of their own self-centered 60's philosophies.  Even in education today, millennials are taught by boomer hogwarts (as in Harry Potter) in an education system that is rife in 60's mentality. 

The 60's is over - today it is the 21st Century and it is about time the 60's counter-culture became a history lesson rather than societal meme that still informs 21st Century practice.  For sure the group of boomers who call themselves hippies did provide us with the roots of modern technology and computers, so to that side of the Steve Jobs generation goes plaudits - but only so far as much that we should not be using 20th Century mindset to operate 21st Century technologies.

Nor should we make the virtual world an abject duplication of the physically bankrupt one.  The modern healthcare system or the modern education system was not messed up by the millenials, it was messed up by the boomers for the simple reason, the boomers kept their heads firmly in their affections for their 60's contributions.  That is why I have no time for the word revolution.  I much prefer another boomer's view of it which is Albert Camus's view that the rebel is more important than the revolutionary, and that nearly all philosophies end up culminating in some form of death or nihilism.  To hear boomers continue talking about Revolución is what I expect to come out of boomer thinking.  Not only did the boomers use up tomorrows money to live out their lives, they now complain that they are the "sandwiched" generation.

I don't see a sandwich generation, I see a shit sandwich, a sandwich which on the one side has the milennial generation and on the other side the golden generation.  Where are many of the golden generation today?  Are they basking in the warmth of respect one gives elders as they do in the Okinawan featured in the video below (where longevity in a particular town has been studied) or are they en-massed in what we today call "Retirement Communities" which are better called "Old People's Homes". 

So it is millennials stay at home and not because they are practicing communal living or the conception of extended families and village community as re-emerged, but because they move into a future which the boomers robbed them off and that they still need to pay for.  It is at this point that millennials can be justified in not making a fuss about ageism, but that would be just as self-defeating as those boomers who looked after their own interests, rather than the interests of the generations to come. Millennials do need to work with boomers but only if boomers wake up to the fact that their duty is to give back to the younger generations.  I am not talking about platitudes and slogans and branded existence - the boomers were very good at all that, but getting back to a more human centered world and being cognizant of the dystopia that emanates from decisions that did not serve the future. 

I am not against initiatives that extend the working life of boomers for the simple reason that the whole idea of RETIREMENT is a mentality that has expired its sell-by date as an idea.  When retirement was first created it was not really about what to do after work life ends, it was based on life expectancy, retirement basically assumed that we would be dead by or even before reaching the age of 70.  When retirement as a concept was created, no one contemplated that life expectancy would add 20 to 30 years to a human life. 

Just as corrupt is the idea that education is what you do before the career path and retirement is what you do after the career path. This career path mentality is absolute stupidity.  The quicker we drop this antiquated 20th Century mindset and move to a LIFE PATH mentality the better.  Yet what keeps us from moving from career path to life path is the stuck-in-the-mud mentality of boomers - a generation that admires conflict and argument more than it does humanity and collaboration.  Some may say, but wait a minute - you are a part of that boomer generation.  Am I really?  If one does not fit the boomer label, then maybe it is because I never ascribed to that mentality in the first place - and that was not a conscious choice - that was because I was a daydreamer at school and all that conditioning I was meant to receive simply passed me by - I just did not listen to it and thankfully my teachers did not do what boomer teachers did, which is stuff my belly with Ritalin tablets.  Back when I was a kid, it was normal to be a day dreamer and even a later developer.

Even if I am classified as a boomer because some 60's educated dickwad believes that definitions must be adhered to or whatever chronic way of rule-making that still persists from 20th Century mindsets.  I have sufficient humility and mindfulness to apologize to our future generations that the self-serving generation that I was born into were largely blind to seeing the 21st Century coming. 

Well we are here now, so it is time for forgiveness and an era for a new sense of collaboration.  Now I am not selling more boomer utopia, I am living in the 21st Century. which means I am explorer of this century (and not an overgrown child) and those people my age who do, don't need a label called "Boomer" - they simply know themselves as what they should be and all of us for that matter should be - which is a human being.  And thus ends another paradox wisdom here personally for me.  Whose wisdom?  My wisdom.  Everyone else is responsible for their own wisdom, and being that I am still a learner, it means that I still have time to become a little more wiser.  That is why this is a Paradox Wisdom.