Afflicted with the world they helped make, and afflicting it on everyone else. The Baby Boomers, old age, the Sexual Revolution, and expelling the Barbarians.

This is going to be harsh.

But not as harsh as it started out to be.  I actually toned it down.

And yes, it's another dissing the Baby Boomers thread.

This past week there's been two articles in major journals regarding the aging of the Baby Boomers.  One I had to hunt for as it was published in The Free Press, and I don't subscribe to that.  Still, I found it here.

The Long Boomer Farewell

This will not be a clean handoff. It will be an extended interregnum.

The article is well written and largely correct, although in my view, much more gentle than it should be.  It will be an extended interregnum because, like actual regents, the obsolescent monarchy cannot accept that the obsolescent monarchs should go, and go right now.

I said that this would be harsh.

But not as harsh as it started out to be.

I've been dealing with this topic directedly, recently.  The entire country has been in fact.  On a personally local level,  I'm presently so frustrated with it that, as a member of Generation Jones, I'm about ready to drop out of employment in my "good office job" right now. I don't only because a panicked spouse feels that's financial devastation, even if she's wrong.  I keep on keeping on only for domestic peace, that's it.

In this, I've been dealing with the intersection of the stubborn refusal of an entire generation to yield power on absolutely anything, while at the same time, watching how their choices and that of the post WWII era continually to negatively impact an entire society today.

In my experience Boomers just will not yield in offices, or in office.  Indeed, right now, Donald Trump, who is clearly demented is lamenting former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani being in the hospital in critical condition.  Giuliani is an 81 year old serial polygamist like Trump, age 79.  A hallmark of the generation is that it just thinks its going to live forever and that none of the rules that held society together from when the first Vandal was taught to read until 1968 apply to them.

They've never stopped to ask about the reason the rules were there and what tearing them down would do . . . even to themselves.

Or acknowledged they'll die.

They will, they are but they will not acknowledge it or yield, and they are well on their way to going from being celebrated, albeit mostly by themselves, to unlamented.

In professional offices, and often in politics, where they were granted power in their 30s and 40s, they retain it as a last ditch matter no matter what.  For two weeks running I've seen a Boomer confronted with the "it's time to go" reality and simply refuse.  That person would rather retain an presence in an office where the person is not wanted rather than leave with dignity.  It's bad enough that Gen Y and Gen X in that situation cites the Boomer presence as a reason that they might now want to commit to what the older person cites as his "legacy".

Well, if they have to work it, they may just let his legacy die in an economic desert.

Regarding one such struggle, I've seen a number of minor requests made recently of a Boomer, and some not so mild ones.  The latter come from an awareness by the Boomer's fellows that there's some cognitive decline.  "Whose project is this?" is the question, followed by, well Boomer took it in. . . 

Oh oh.

Less significantly, a minor request made by one Gen Xer to the effect of "can you move your office so the most active person in it could occupy it as we want that person up front was met with "No."  It's a prime example of the Afghan Warlord Principal. As we previously noted:

1.  "The Afghan Warlord Principal".  Years ago I saw a photograph of a body of men, all armed, in Afghanistan.  They were tribesmen fitted out to fight the Soviets. Some were boys.  The boys carried ancient rifles, and if I recall correctly one had a muzzle-loading rifle.  One man, squatted down dead center, had an AK47, the only one so armed.

He looked like he was 80, if he was a day.

He had the most effective combat weapon not because he was the most effective combatant, but because he was senior to everyone else.  Much technology in any one office setting works the same way.

It's not actually the physical trappings that concern anyone in this latter instance, it's just the stubborn grasp on the institution itself.  A better space is available for somebody who needs it, or who can better profit through its use. That person, whose in Generation Jones, cannot have it.  It'll sit, instead, largely empty a gaping Arch de Trump type monument to somebody who is largely not htere.

Things like this are the reasons that quite a few professional firms have a partnership agreement that actually expels a person at age 65.  

In the meantime I'm familiar with the descent into oblivion of another person, Gen X I think, who is killing herself with cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana.  I think it's intentional, but it's also putting the person into a situation in which she can really no longer be employed.

That'd be tragic by any measure, but the entire time I've known the person she's had the same grossly underemployed "boyfriend" that she's shacked up with.  Her life is the job she's no longer able to do, pet cats, the deadbeat long-term underemployed boyfriend, and bar hopping.  If she was in her 20s it'd still be bad, but redeemable.  Now it really isn't.

Left to Gen Jones to clean up, I'd note.

Related to this, the aforementioned Boomer was approached by another Boomer, also in her 70s, about a job.  Her company is closing, and no wonder.  Also a professional company, it just never was successful in recruiting anyone young to work with it, save for the son of one of the partners who has decided to leave the field and go into a new one with his wife, who has a successful business.  No succession plan, just an end.  At least the owners of that business were able to successfully bring it to an end. Nothing of it will remain.

She's worked for them for something like 30 years.  In the 30 years that I've known her she was never married.  I don't know if she was ever married, although I dimly recall it being mentioned that she had a daughter. She's been hinting to another professional firm in her office that she "needs to work" and needs to find a job, which was a broad hope that they'd offer her a job.  She finally just flat out asked. . . the Boomer, for one.  A 70 year old office worker asking a 70 year old professional for a job which everyone else would have to pay for.

Gen. Jones vetoed it.

They don't doubt she needs a job.  They just don't have one for her.  They're not going to hire her based on her resume for a position that doesn't exist.

And here's the harsher reality.  

People love concept of romantic love, which is a real thing.  But on top of it, marriage is, as so often noted, a fundamental aspect of society.  An institution so ancient that it seems to be full ingrained in hte species, the Boomers broke that, and they're inflicting the damage on everyone.

When lifetime marriages went out the gate, and bed hopping and living for yourself came in, did nobody think that there would be implications?

The main Boomer I noted here is divorced.  He's shacked with somebody too, which is extremely unseemly for somebody in their 70s, but it means that not only does he have no attachments, his attachment to his (former, more or less) place of employment is massively disordered.  He won't go, as it that is what he dedicated his life to, and he's clinging to it as if its his life. 

It is, but like life itself, it won't life on forever.

Estranged from his family, living in a relationship of convenience, and hostile to religion, he has the four walls of his old office.

Would that have been different in prior eras?

It's hard to say, but at least to a degree we can say yes.  Their father's generation had their families, and families first.

The two women in this story?

Well, had marriage remained the institution it once was they'd both have spouses and children to rely on, at least to some degree.  Maybe the one has a child, but that gets to another point below.

The first point, however is that societal structures existed for a reason.  Marriage has always featured love, in spite of what some may say, but it also was society's protection against children and destitution.  Married couples provided for the needs of their children, not the Department of Family Services and the school free lunch program.  And husbands provided for their wives, unless a husband was too sick to do so, in which case the reverse was true.

People did very often work into old age, and we should not pretend otherwise, but I have to say that the Boomer woman in this scenario would very likely not be in it, but for the destruction of structure mentioned.

Likewise, before anti biologic pharmaceutical's women could not become the sexual playthings of men save at great risk.  The younger woman mentioned above would be married. And the pressures of society would have bene such that the man in question, who could get a real job, would have gotten one.

The FDA allowed the first pharmaceutical birth control pill in 1960.  The Boomers had taken it up in spades by the late 60s and were engaging in illicit sex on a broad scale.  No fault divorce was first introduced in California in 1969, and spread throughout the country rapidly.  Abortion was made a right by the Supreme Court in 1973.

No matter how it was sold, the impact was pretty clear.  The Sexual Revolution reduced women to sex slaves and slaves in general.  In essence, Western women had their status stripped to what it had been in pre Christian times.  Toys for sex, who very soon had to work.  Feminism didn't liberate them, it enslaved them, prisoners of war of the Sexual Revolution.

But not just them, men too became casualties of the war.

So here we are.  Crediting Generation Jones, as we should, as a real generation, the youngest Boomer is now 72 years old.  Save for those who solely own a business, or who are in family businesses actually run by their families, not one single one should be working.  Those who have the means to retire, absolutely should. Those who are in position of societal power should not be.  Sure some may be in great shape, and "want to contribute", but most aren't, and aren't contributing in a meaningful way.

But not all can retire.  For one thing, a lot of them don't have the spouses that would help them to.  Many lack the children that would provide guidance.  Even those with children are finding that the warehousing of the elderly they advocated and participated in, and the warehousing of children they advocated for and participated in, has come back to haunt them.  The damage they did to societal structures, in particularly their churches, has aided in all of that.

But the expectations remain there.  Gen X and Gen Y will still employ us, right?

No, they won't.  They have their own families and priorities, often much more traditional than yours.

Well Generation Jones will, won't it?

No, we're tired.  We had to struggle our whole lives due to you Boomers and are ready to lay our burdens down ourselves.  We will go, however.  You often never had a place for us, and we're not going to end our lives finding one for you.

The past was far from perfect, in every sense.  Women got married as they had very few options for a single life, if that's what they would have preferred.  Couples that did not have children, prior to 1960, or actually some time following that, did not have them due to what was usually a tragic medical situation, or because the marriages were truly ones of convenience.  Children didn't always grow up in a home in which they were really valued and wanted, but then of course that's true now.

But it is also the case that in fact much more of life had to wit with the family, and was much kinder.  My paternal grandmother, for instance, was in close contact, often daily contact, with all of her children.  My maternal grandmother was in close contact as well, in spite of her children being spread across two, and often three, countries.  One of her sons lived with her until he died, and then his siblings were careful to take care of him.

Now, well the barbarians are back through the gate.  The Boomers let them in.  Everyone behind them is struggling in some ways to toss them out.

Sic transit Gloria Mundi.

I'm surrounded by electronic communications devices. . .

 and I don't like it.

Richmond and Backus Co. office, Detroit, Michigan, 1902.  This is obviously a law office.  A set of CJS's are on a rotary shelf.  On the window sill are a set of corporate seals.  The bookshelves on the left are barrister cases.  The office is sort of a mess, like most real law offices are.  Missing, however, is the dread telephone.

This week I started using an iPad.

This isn't because I love the latest and the greatest in technology,  I don't.  Not at all.  In fact, I tend to be a contrarian on it.

This is partially as I just view tools for their utility.  I don't understand, for example, why people trade in perfectly functioning cars they own for new ones. The old one would have gotten you from point A to point B just as well in lots of instances.

"Well, it's new!"

Yeah, so what?  You spent money on something you didn't need to get a job done, something you already owned did.

M'eh.

But I have a computer in my home.  Two actually, as I have my own laptop that I got for work purposes back during the first part of the pandemic.  I already had a work issued one, and I frankly can't really tell you know exactly why I thought I needed my own, but I did.  It might be because things were really topsy-turvy at the time, and a person with a good workplace laptop risks somebody purloining it for a temporary purpose that become permanent, or in some instances you actually need to in order to run things for trials.  Indeed, I took my own and my issue laptop to a trial in August in Denver and I mostly used my own in my hotel room, not my issue one.  My issue one I took to court each day with me, but I didn't use it much there.

Anyhow, I never saw need for an iPad, even though my daughter has one and loves it.  She uses it for school.

Then, one of my younger confederates at work, upon whom I depend a great deal, bought a surface and started using it as a notepad.

A high-tech notepad.

I was impressed, to say the least.

I'm pretty much afloat in paper all the time, and it's easy to take notes and not recall where they were or memorialize what you need to do from them.  This can address this problem pretty efficiently.

And so now I have one, and I used it for the first time yesterday, the day I got it.

It is an improvement, although it reemphasizes my horrible handwriting.

I'd gone to fountain pens due to my poor handwriting, and they do help. This takes me back to writing too fast, so it's retrograde in that fashion.  But it's an improvement nonetheless.

And once I figure it out, and I will, it'll do a lot more than that.

When I started practicing law, we didn't even have computers.  We got them the first year I practiced, and it wasn't even super clear what we were using them for. They didn't have internet connections, and while the internet existed, it was dial up and all that.

Shortly after that, we did get dial up internet and soon after that, I got a computer myself, with an internet connection.  It was actually my second, as I'd had one without a dial-up before that, although why is really an open question.

Soon after that, the "Blackberry" came in, which served various functions for those who had them.  I never did, but I did have something similar that was passed down to me by a more senior lawyer who had upgraded to something else on the Afghan Warlord Principal.^[1]   I can't really recall what the thing did, other than that it stored contacts.  It wasn't a phone.

Soon after computers came in I started to type out my own work using them.  There was huge resistance to this and I was repeatedly ordered to dictate my work.  I did quite a bit of it, but I ended up abandoning that soon after we had computers.  Indeed, when I dictated I tended to write out, by hand, what I was going to dictate, first.  Anyhow, I was the first in the office to abandon the Dictaphone.  Now, I think, there's one semi retired lawyer left who uses a variant of one.

Dictaphones replaced direct dictation, which had been common before that.  With direct dictation the author dictated to a secretary who could take shorthand notation by hand, and then that person, usually a "she" in later years, transcribed it using a typewriter.  Before that, when secretaries were still "he's", that person usually wrote the document out by hand. People who did that were called "scrivener's" and were hired for their good handwriting.  Even today in the law we use the term "scrivener" as a substitute for author, because it's fun.

For notes, lawyers wrote everything out by hand on long yellow legal pads.  Many of us, myself included, still do.

But those days are ending.

Dictaphones have gone away, for the most part, and nobody is employed as a scrivener any longer.  The era of the true secretary, whose job was taking dictation and doing transcription, is over as well.  Scrivener's as an occupation no longer exist.^[2].    

Where all this leads I can't say, but I really don't like being tied to electronics so much.  I do like being able to publish myself, as in here, but I'm at the point, I think, where I'd rather not have to be on the constant office cutting edge of technology.  Some people love it, even tough, long term I worry it'll be our destruction.  I'm not one of the ones who love it, even though I've been a fairly heavy adopter of it.

On that, however, it's odd how the initial adoption sometimes came by force, and then sometimes obliquely.  My first home computer was really a toy from my prospective.  I probably played Solitaire on it more than do anything else, but it came with games.  My justification for getting it was that it would be a great home word processor and much better than a typewriter, all of which is true.

The internet at home was the same way.  It was a toy.  Now I have to have it due to work.

I resisted smartphones at first, but at some point it was no longer possible not to have one.  How many I have had by now I couldn't say, but it's quite a few.  I've adopted to the text world, and I'm glad that it lets me keep up with my kids in college, sort of.  And I like having, oddly enough, a little pocket camera, which of course it also is, all the time, something that's reflected on these blogs.  And I really like the iTunes feature, oddly enough.  Indeed, I had a little iPod before I had an iPhone that I used for music.  I think that I started listening to podcasts after I had my first iPhone, and I really like them.

But, given it all, while I don't like romanticizing the past, if I could place me and those I love back a century, before all this stuff, I'd do it.

I'd probably be the only one I know, however, who would.

I wonder, if I ever retire, what of this stuff I'd keep?  I don't think I'd keep it all.

Footnotes

1.  "The Afghan Warlord Principal".  Years ago I saw a photograph of a body of men, all armed, in Afghanistan.  They were tribesmen fitted out to fight the Soviets. Some were boys.  The boys carried ancient rifles, and if I recall correctly one had a muzzle-loading rifle.  One man, squatted down dead center, had an AK47, the only one so armed.

He looked like he was 80, if he was a day.

He had the most effective combat weapon not because he was the most effective combatant, but because he was senior to everyone else.  Much technology in any one office setting works the same way.

2.  To my surprise, although I shouldn't have been, it exists as a last name, however.  

Makes sense.