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 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.
