GENERATIONAL STORIES

Every generation needs a new story, a new narrative, a new sense of history. That's what  gives the new guys the confidence to go out into the world and challenge the old bulls. I've witnessed several new stories in my lifetime and all of them are nothing less than fascinating. I thought it might be fun to tell some of them here. I'll start with the story my Dad's generation, i.e. the 40s - 50s generation, made for themselves.

My Dad's generation developed the story that my Granddad's generation were nice people but they were also stupid and uneducated farmers who were intellectually unfit for the modern world. If you saw the movie "The Caine Mutiny" you got a taste of that. 50s man believed he was suave and sophisticated and adaptable in a way that no previous generation was.

My generation, I'm embarrassed to say, was the Hippie Generation. For them the previous lot was racist, sexist, jingoistic, constipated, and emotionally disturbed. We, on the other hand, We perceived ourselves as....Ahem!....svelte, gentle, artistic, intuitive, idealistic, and (unfortunately) too hip for manual labor.

My generation was replaced by the Punks who thought that we hippies lacked manliness and were pampered and worthless. Their story cast them as refreshingly authentic and righteously angry that they were stuck in lower class Hell. A typical Punk dinner might be hot dogs with a side order of Cheese Puffs washed down with diet soda or bourbon.

Coinciding with the punks were the Yuppies who re-invented the mainstream. They had disdain for the excesses of the Hippies and Punks though they secretly envied their purity. Yuppies had a story that cast them as futuristic warriors like Luke Skywalker. They would end poverty and bring about universal peace by being Fabian Socialists working within the system and yes, making a buck or two.

The Punks and Yuppies were replaced with a grunge movement that tried to unite the two warring camps but failed. They morphed into the Emos and Hipsters, which is sort of what's around now, but is slowly winding down. Emos combine Anime, Punk, and gay culture influences. Their story is that they're the most aesthetic generation ever, and the most imaginative. I doubt that, but who am I to question?

Last but not least, comes the very latest wave...the Computer Geeks. They might look like Grungers or Hipsters or Yuppies but what they have in common is their total dedication to the computer. They have disdain for Gen X'ers who were merely part-time computer users who got side-tracked into diversions like video games.

Geeks believe that Gen X'ers never understood the mystery, the power, the cult of the computer. The Geeks story is that they are first true human beings. They are the old- world destroying infant that appears at the end of the movie, "2001." They're mad because the rest of us are still are still drawing breath. They believe that new computer programs should be as hard to use as possible because that will cull out the inferiors from the true humans.

Me, I'm a product of most of the movements that occurred in my lifetime. Maybe most people are. I'm both an anti-communist Cold Warrior, and a mellow hippie. I have a taste for the Punk, in-your-face shock ethos, and I like a good suit and a fresh salad just like the Yuppies. I like my video games and I like my computer. I'm not aware that I have any Emo influences, so maybe that's the exception. I have additional bookish influences too, but that's a subject for another blog.

Fascinating, huh?