>>> seamus2001 at home.com 08/08/01 04:04PM >>>
Well it's tough to make generalizations about such a huge age group, but yeah this is precisely the 'complaint' of younger people; 'Boomers' sold out. Every youth culture is idealistic about reducing the level of social suffering, but it seems that the individualist ethos displaced the need of doing the hard work of confronting the institutional dynamics of racism,sexism, classism and everything you mention. My personal, tiny, hope is that what happened in Seattle, which was organized by boomers and younger people working together has the seeds for getting over the cynicism and passivity and the way that plays into the exploitation of the rest of the planet. The question is whether 'they' can regain some of that idealism. The level of totally unnecessary suffering in the world make the following non-boomer ethic[s] a total imperative:
"Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective." [MLK]
"A human being is part of the whole called by 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in it's beauty." [that pesky socialist Einstein]
My 'point' about the animal metaphors for our own proclivities to dehumanize one another is that other animals don't do that to their own [with the exception of chimps, our cousins]
Workers of all countries unite,
((((((((
CB: Anyway, I suppose I was sort of half thinking you spoke tongue in cheek about dropping acid causing the pattern of behavior in "boomers". I don't know. But I agree with what you say here. And certainly I retain hope that we 'boomers' can reverse the reversal, negate the negation of the 60's and all.
Sadly, when often on these lists we are trying to define what is uniquely human ( language, or social being, or productive labor or whatever) , I have to stop and remember that we are also differentiated from most animals by the level of horrible things that we do to our own species. I guess lions eat their young sometimes don't they ?