Be the brightest and best
So some politico said “Ok Boomer!” and a big portion of the planet reacted. Having read the deluge of outrage and cheering that followed Chlo¨ e Swarbrick’s use of a Millennial meme in Parliament, and having thought about it until my ancient attention span expired, I have decided to leave it alone, for the most part. But not completely.
I do not need to defend Baby Boomers. Millennials probably aren’t listening.
They are just another generation: no more enlightened or politically active than any that came before or any to follow. Like all generations at a particular age, they know all the answers to all the world’s problems, and, what’s more, they know who to blame.
Having someone to blame is especially gratifying because it means you don’t have to actually do anything, just condemn a previous generation for all the ills you can name, and then some. Truth and evidence don’t even have to feature in the equation. It’s the pointed direction of culpability and the ensuing smugness that’s important, plus the realisation that of all the generations that have been and gone, yours is the brightest and best and the world will be a better place for it.
But there will come a time when the enlightened, bright, young things will get older and, if procreation is not beneath them, a new generation will follow. They too, armed with “new” information and a selfrighteous perspective, will look at things as they are and find them not to their liking. The issue may no longer be climate change — Millennials are going to fix that — but whatever it is it will be the fault of the generation before
. . . and on it goes.
As a Boomer, I criticised my parents’ and grandparents’ generations for any of the world’s problems I could recognise at the time. Then I grew up, and discovered they were doing the best they could with the tools and knowledge available to them, and the good they had done I only saw when I had matured enough to appreciate it. Unfortunately, it is true, through them we discovered the wonders of plastic, and when plastic shopping bags appeared on the scene we were relieved — at last, we can stop killing trees to make paper bags! See where we were going with that? We, and those before us, swapped one environmental issue for another. In good faith. We could not see the future for the trees.
The world is looking at electric vehicles to ease pollution and the steady depletion of fossil fuels. We are using cheap methods of communication via our mobile phones and devices and we are consequently more knowledgeable and armed with enough information to change the world. That’s good.
Those cars and devices are powered by lithium ion batteries, the mining of which is one of the biggest ecological disasters on the planet. That’s bad.
This column is about hindsight. True understanding is a slow process and is rarely present in the young, impatient and meme-obsessed.
Yes, I too would like to see climate change corrected, endangered species saved and a secure future for the planet and all who sail in her.
But that’s not going to happen by finding scapegoats and demanding generational contrition.
It will happen when everyone pulls together and makes change by actually doing something constructive, intelligent and reasonable. And try not to be so smug. No generation is perfect and never has been.
Judging by social media comments thrown by those without sin, capital punishment appears to be making a possible comeback for those who have opinions and ideas scraping against the common grain.
Those who judge the most are refusing to see it as anything other than asserting what is right and demanding those who are wrong change their ways and choose the right side of history. The trouble is, there are so many sides, and each is hell bent on yelling the loudest abuse.
What, I ask, has happened to reason and rational argument?
It reminds me of a Christian movement of some decades ago of which their symbol was a front-facing hand with the first finger pointing upwards. The slogan was “One Way”. There was one way to God and ALL others were wrong and their adherents doomed to everlasting hellfire.
Today we see, read and hear there is only one way of thinking, one set of rules, one vicious dogma, and to imagine there could be compromise or even another way, is to invite the vitriol of legions of the illinformed righteous, ready with their devices to sit in judgement of anyone daring to voice an alternative opinion. Am I wrong? I’ll soon be told if I am.
‘True understanding is a slow process and is rarely present in the young, impatient and meme-obsessed.’