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As tempting as a purely generational hypothesis is, it's challenging to point the finger at such a huge population as "sociopaths". Many of the 60's radicals an

As tempting as a purely generational hypothesis is, it's challenging to point the finger at such a huge population as "sociopaths". Many of the 60's radicals and celebrities were born a little bit too early to be categorically Boomers(post-1945) and many within the generation faced new, unprecedented forms of market competition and technology displacements - white-collar temping/freelancing rose with computerization and the end of the dedicated secretary, recorded music took over live music, multiple generations of automobile-only suburbs were built, and the onset of containerized shipping and the resulting new globalization spanned their entire lives. There're plenty more examples like that - and lots of room for errors and untested new ethics in all of it. Some of them were inherited from consequences of pre-Boomer policies, others arose because of the marketplace or political clime. And in many ways, the experience of the rich Boomers is functionally different from the rest of the group. At all levels, it seems, one can find a terror over "losing what I have," but the elite group can leverage their finances and connections to vote themselves more, while the rest are political pawns in comparison, with a house and possibly some stocks as their only assets - too small to be a major voice, too big to be rolled over politically, so they mostly act to obstruct change. In that sense I find the Boomer dynamic kind of pitiful, because they really lost the idea of community in attempting to follow through on a world containing millions of tiny fiefdoms, even to the point where my own mom thinks appeals to "community" are basically "Communism". The Millennials - sample size, myself and my friend group - are more focused on a combination of daily survival, and where they get the breathing room, lifestyle fit. There are no expectations for stability. Career scripts are exceptional and tend to require being on a government job track. There's a lot of fluidity, a lot of meeting different people and maybe only knowing them for a little while before things change again. You can fall out of touch with friends by accident - because they don't play the same video game as you, or they stayed off a social network, or a thousand little things. There's constant pressure to make it all work, but also a bountiful world of stuff to access - people, information, services - far more than was in the Yellow Pages, the local newspaper, or trade journals. There is no wise elder telling us how to navigate it, but it's nowhere near as cold and lonely as those suburban streets and highways.

Melk 10y ago
It sounds a lot like you are looking at your own life by living it and looking at your that of your parent's from an overview of their past. Ask them what they were doing and how they felt at your age at the start of their career and trying to raise a family and I'll bet they had the same anxieties that you do on a day to day basis. I don't like this habit online discussions have of blaming Baby Boomers for "everything" because they usually aren't here to give their side of the story.
- buzzybee 10y ago
  I know what my parents say about the starts of their careers. Dad: abject strong-silence, refuses to reminisce because it makes him look less competent, I hear about all the odd jobs he tried before programming from Mom Mom: playing music is a bad business and sheet music is a bad business and teaching is a bad business and everyone was hostile about everything I tried and I never succeeded - votes Trump I say anything about what things are like for me and they're stunned, they can't relate. Mom makes a good effort to relate, but it mostly turns into her career story each time. I don't blame the generation, really, though. I blame whatever sociocultural fallout it is that created such scared, damaged people.
  - fuzzfactor 10y ago
    After Nixon was done some boomers were more damaged than scared, others the reverse. Lots were scared and damaged by the immediate situation, but others had also traditionally inherited both feelings which were passed down by their grandparents to their parents to them over the 70 years leading up to Nixon. Uncautious boomers who were caught by surprise by the finality of the 1970's were the most unprepared for increasing opportunities to no longer be generally available to themselves or future generations. There was widespread superstition that this can't really be happening in the USA and that is an element of the boomer groupthink that still colors their understanding of more recent generations. For boomers whose parents had the opportunity and successfully used it to achieve financial prosperity from scratch without the benefit of any family resources beforehand, it was very common for their grandparents to still be existing on the same type of survival rations that got them through the Great Depression, even while the boomers themselves were growing up in a priveleged community. Yes, that's the last generation to be able to arrive that much better off than their grandparents, but it's not their fault.

Melk 10y ago

It sounds a lot like you are looking at your own life by living it and looking at your that of your parent's from an overview of their past. Ask them what they were doing and how they felt at your age at the start of their career and trying to raise a family and I'll bet they had the same anxieties that you do on a day to day basis. I don't like this habit online discussions have of blaming Baby Boomers for "everything" because they usually aren't here to give their side of the story.

buzzybee 10y ago
I know what my parents say about the starts of their careers. Dad: abject strong-silence, refuses to reminisce because it makes him look less competent, I hear about all the odd jobs he tried before programming from Mom Mom: playing music is a bad business and sheet music is a bad business and teaching is a bad business and everyone was hostile about everything I tried and I never succeeded - votes Trump I say anything about what things are like for me and they're stunned, they can't relate. Mom makes a good effort to relate, but it mostly turns into her career story each time. I don't blame the generation, really, though. I blame whatever sociocultural fallout it is that created such scared, damaged people.
- fuzzfactor 10y ago
  After Nixon was done some boomers were more damaged than scared, others the reverse. Lots were scared and damaged by the immediate situation, but others had also traditionally inherited both feelings which were passed down by their grandparents to their parents to them over the 70 years leading up to Nixon. Uncautious boomers who were caught by surprise by the finality of the 1970's were the most unprepared for increasing opportunities to no longer be generally available to themselves or future generations. There was widespread superstition that this can't really be happening in the USA and that is an element of the boomer groupthink that still colors their understanding of more recent generations. For boomers whose parents had the opportunity and successfully used it to achieve financial prosperity from scratch without the benefit of any family resources beforehand, it was very common for their grandparents to still be existing on the same type of survival rations that got them through the Great Depression, even while the boomers themselves were growing up in a priveleged community. Yes, that's the last generation to be able to arrive that much better off than their grandparents, but it's not their fault.