I'm pretty tired of "adults" complaining about my generation, especially in reference to our work ethic/expectations.
I saw this article, and a response immediately started forming.
(This one's quite wordy, so feel free to bouncebouncebounce now.) <---Get the joke?! Love me some Remix.
Say hi to Bobby.
Bobby is part of the Baby Boomer generation,
the generation born between 1943 and 1964.
He's also part of a hippie culture that makes up a large portion of Baby Boomers.
I have a term for hippies in the Baby Boomer age group--
I call them Persons Addicted To "Happiness" at the Expense of TheIr Country,
or PATHETICs.
A PATHETIC is a unique brand of hippie, one who is completely oblivious to the destruction they've cause over their lifetime.
So Bobby's enjoying his PATHETIC life, and he's very pleased to be Bobby. Only issue is one thing:
Bobby's caused the downfall of America.
To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone cause the downfall of America in the first place. It comes down to a simple formula:
DOWNFALL = (IRRESPONSIBILITY + LAZINESS)TIME
It's pretty straightforward--Bobby's generation took advantage
of a strong economy, got complacent + irresponsible with money,
and just kept putting off having to face the sweet, debt-owing music.
To provide some context, let's start by bringing Bobby's parents into the discussion:
They might not say that. But they're thinking it.
Bobby's parents were born in the G.I. Generation, or the "Greatest Generation,"
who grew up during the Great Depression,
fought in World War II, and were most definitely not PATHETIC.
Good ole Mom & Pop.
Bobby's Depression Era parents were obsessed with economic security
and raised Bobby to envision a successful and stable career for himself.
He was taught that there was nothing stopping him
from getting to the Promised Land of employment,
but that he'd need to put in years of hard work to make it happen.
Instead, Bobby's generation became complacent & entitled.
After graduating college--
college that was remarkably easy to get into as well as pay for--
as an insufferable hippie, Bobby embarked on his career.
As time rolled along, the world entered a time of unprecedented economic prosperity.
Bobby did even better than he expected to.
Instead of feeling grateful, this left him feeling self-satisfied and arrogant.
Having draft-dodged Vietnam and with a head cloudy from the White Album and kush,
(my timeline is iffy--let it go)
Bobby wanted less work, longer vacations, and a good life--now.
So Bobby loaded upon debt. (We'll come back to that later.)
And then Bobby had children.
Terrified of getting older and having acid flashbacks with each visit to the chiropractor,
Bobby raised his children to be special unicorn fairies with limitless possibilities.
And he wasn't alone.
"Baby Boomers all around the country and the world told their Gen Y kids
that they could be whatever they wanted to be.
This left [the Gen Y kids] feeling tremendously hopeful about their careers, to the point
where their parents' goals of a green lawn of secure prosperity
didn't really do it for them. A [Gen Y]-worthy lawn has flowers."
(Sidenote: Don't most parents want their kids to hope for more than what they were given?)
But Bobby got older, despite his debilitating fear of aging.
And that debt from his youth? Yeah, it caught up to him.
And instead of facing up to his mistakes, Bobby did what Bobby does best--
made it worse and then cried until someone else came along to fix it.
Yes, Gen Y-ers are "wildly ambitious."
Yes, Gen Y-ers are "delusional."
But only because the vast majority of Gen Y-ers were raised by PATHETIC Baby Boomers.
And those of us who managed to be born of God-and-Reagan-fearing folk
still inherited an economy that had been raped & pillaged by aging hippies.
When it comes to talking about how sucky my generation is,
I will race anyone to the soapbox and roundhouse-to-the-face young & old alike
for the chance at the megaphone.
I've moved on from despair to acceptance that my generation
will probably bring about the end of civilization.
But it is offensive & outright wrong to lay the blame solely on us.
Unless we are a generation of feral children, someone was there
telling us we were special and exceptional and
to reach-for-the-moon-because-even-if-we-miss-we'll-land-amongst-the-stars.
And unless I'm mistaken, that's a pretty hippy, Baby Boomer, parent thing to say.
And as special & exceptional as I am, even I couldn't make that shit up.
I probably plagiarized a lot, and these are not all my own ideas, and none of the pictures are mine (I just altered them). So don't sue me or anything.
