The following is one of many articles condemning the Baby Boom generation for what its author considers to be our unfair advantages and “Screw you, I got mine” attitude.
Truth is, everyone holds the same opinion when they’re on the wrong side of the dime.
It’s human nature to protect what you have to prevent someone else from taking it, like your broker or ex-girlfriend.
This is one reason I make sure and feed our dogs from two separate plates [they refuse to eat out of dog bowls].
If I feed them from the same one, and they’ll either fight for the larger portion, or you’ll notice behavior similar to what happens when you turn your back on your wallet at a Stop-and-Go.
It is with this in mind that I think people who hate on the Boomers suffer from Freudian projection [… a defense mechanism in which one attributes to others one’s own unacceptable or unwanted attributes, thoughts, or emotions].
The author of this piece of projected gutter tripe is Alexander S. Balkin, a whiny, pissed off millennial scribe who can’t keep his mouth shut about the Big Bad Boomers who are directly responsible for keeping him locked in his mother’s basement.
When I read crap like this, I can’t help but post refutations like this:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/10/millennials-need-to-stop-whining-about.html
Here’s a salient quote from the article:
“If I had one piece of advice for the likes of Balkin and his compatriots, it would be to put down the Ipods, smart phones and Twitter access and head to the library to do some serious reading: on history, politics and economics especially. To see first hand how you got to where you are without having to rely on simplistic scapegoats….like a whole generation. Knowledge is the key to your liberation, not picking on a large group that in many ways has been victimized as much or worse than you and for a longer time.”
I live with a millennial who is also my girlfriend of 5 years.
We’re a generation apart…close to two.
Like most millennials, she’s tech-savvy, and yes, arguably addicted to her phone.
While I prefer conversation, she communicates in bits and pieces of code, which she and her friends attempt to tie together into one cohesive thought.
Thankfully, we like the same music and TV shows.
This notwithstanding, we are a couple. Millennial and Baby Boomer under one roof.
The truth is that most generations share more than they care to admit, and, of course, most blame the other for problems neither one was entirely responsible for.
Time works that way. It’s a continuum. Things that came before pave the way for things ahead and so on.
When I was a kid it may have been easier to get a job because there were more of them.
Most of what was manufactured in the world was manufactured here, not everywhere else.
In this sense the world was a lot smaller.
And believe me it felt very that way, particularly when you stop to consider that the technology we carry around with us everywhere we go was non-existent.
Hell, if a World War broke out we’d have to wait to find out about it from the evening news.
But while things were different, they were not different enough to warrant all the vile banter.
If – at gunpoint – I had to identify one “flaw” in millennials, it would be their sense of entitlement.
This generation grew up in a world of media, foisting it’s own brand of reality onto a world of consumers starving for soundbites.
We learned all about the lives of multi-millionaire rock star celebrities with private jets and mansions on several continents that appeared to outnumber cockroaches as a percentage of the global population.
But in all the selling, this generation found itself with its hands out.
It sucks, really, because no one ever bothered to tell them that media is driven by one thing and one thing only: Money.
Guess which generation made it the focal point of out lives?