Thoughts On The World That is

About to be Inherited by the next generation.

This article is a continuation of Dave Williams comment on “This.Is.A.Serious. Problem” as stated here. I completely agree with him in that it is, indeed, a serious problem; and it is one we should all consider, I hesitate to address it because of the “political fixation of everything” that we suffer from now. But, I thought about it for quite a while, and decided that a little “history” might be in order. One of the greatest inventions in explaining history was the concept of history being a “Time Line”. Rather than reducing events to a recitation of names and dates, the focus was changed to EVENTS, then names, dates, and location. This gave us a better perspective on actions and consequences — the real drivers of history. So I would like to apply a little of that to a particular question: “What’s ‘wrong/right’ about kids these days”. I believe that this is not an “Oh Dear!” Moment, but a “Why they might” problem.

“Baby Boomers” are the moving target in 20th Century history. They benefited from the profound “stability” of the post-WWII era in America. Prior to that, Europe reached its apex of power under the realm of Queen Victoria. I will not recite the history of those times as they have been well covered in both books and film by others. But because it is more important than most Americans realize, I will cover what my own experience as a “6 months before the first baby boomer was born” person who has watched first the 20th, and now the 21st century unfold. The “Baby Boomers” grew up in an unprecedented era. Europe had just escaped from the “Social Democrats” AKA Nazis. Because America had not been directly exposed to the physical destruction in Europe, the 20th century became known as the American Century. Baby Boomers rode it like a surf board.

It is interesting to see how concepts that have been morphed into how young people might understand them as they are used right now. An unexpected thing or two happened that re-defined the meaning of certain words. It took “The American Century” (20th) to develop fully, and it might not yet be fully grown. It is possible to draw some fictional analogies for this process by thinking of certain images from stories of recent memory: “The Borg” from Star Trek, the monster from “Alien”, or perhaps the entity of “Stranger things” taking over a Small “Americana” town. I contend that the monster we are talking about is “Media”, beginning as radio and currently in “Social Media”. The newest incarnation of this monster could very well be “Influencers”.

Consider, for a moment, the influencers of the twentieth century, they were various writers and scientists from the late 19th and early 20th century. That era began with a “reform” movement that was able to correct some of the previous excesses of the 18th century. The 18th century world view was a mechanistic understanding of how humanity functioned summed up by “we like things just as they are — with power retained by the rulers ordained by God”. By 1776 in America, this idea was getting a little stale, as it was in Europe.

As the 19th century began, there was a tendency to see people trying to understand the world by admitting that humans had needs and feelings. That is why it became known as “the Romantic” era. The last gasps of the 18th century of stable monarchial government crashed down in France with the death of Louis the 16th and his wife, Marie Antionette. It held on throughout the 19th century in England because the French Revolution, coming on the heels of losing the American Continent literally terrified the English monarch to move toward. Constitutional monarchy. The Rule of a monarch tempered by parliament exists to this day, but the monarchy will not entertain the idea of crowning any English Monarch as “Emperor” of another country any time soon. The death of Queen Victoria ended the era of “Britannia Rules the Waves” and British colonial rule.

The First and then Second World War ended the 19th century habit of “Empire” building completely. Due to the overwhelming power of mechanical warfare during the war years, “Science” was restored as important for a while — until the Atomic bomb made its debut. With that, we Americans began to split. Atomic bomb “bad” = Science “bad”. We can still see traces of that split in current Science-Fi and even in how healing happens. More splits were to follow, all enabled by “Advertising” in various eras of Media (from radio to the internet) and continues today with “influencers”. Ultimately, the work of “Advertising” became our singular vision of truth, greatly amplified by social media. Our ultimate result for now is the concept of “alternative” truths — formerly known as “make it up as you go along”.

ONE thing that Boomers had was the ideal family life illustrated by the television series, “Life with Father”. In the 1950s, growing up in a stable, predictable environment and a consistent societal story was the national norm. Whether the “story” was true or false was irrelevant. In the 1980s, there was a follow-up to “Life with Father” called “Happy Days”. Reagan brought “Morning in America” and everybody wanted to get past the chaos of the “Vietnam” and “Racial Hatred” that culminated in the 1970s. By then, we were all defining ourselves as “different”. We began calling our selves “hyphenated” Americans. Goodbye, “national unity”, hello “every person for themselves”. Things began to go south for American culture when we took seriously the fact that we were all “different”.

While it is true that individualism should be celebrated; it was subsequently used like a razor blade by persons who had distilled their vision of “we are all the same” into the current wrecking ball known as Project 2025. This mind-set is built from the idea that everyone should be the same: a certain type of Christian (Nationalist) heavily weighted with fascistic overtones such as “men are more equal than women, white people are more equal than brown people, etc.”. Unfortunately, this concept is not widely understood — in fact, the extremes of left and right don’t have any understanding of the words fascist or socialist. Why? Everybody knows that Hitler was a Nazi, but did you know that the name of his political group was “The National Socialist German Workers' Party”?

Better yet, where do we go from here? Perhaps we should consider: “if you were 16 today, where would you start”?