Boom to Bust

It's International Day of Peace today.

"Peace."

It was a common greeting back in the late 60's and early 70's, usually offered with the two-fingered "peace sign" which for some strange reason became the de rigueur photo pose for millions of young Japanese (even to this day! Point a camera at a group of schoolkids and see what happens!) 

The Pupster demonstrates the "peace" pose.

The boomer generation started off with such high hopes, beautiful ideals. What happened? Were the seeds of greed, selfishness, vengeance and lack of empathy already planted in us by our parents, unintentionally, as they tried to give us all the material comforts and conveniences of life? When we look back, yes, we were a lazy bunch. or were we just a bunch of hypocrites? It's easy to look back at the peace movement, civil rights movement, eco-consciousness movement cynically and say most of the people involved were really not committed but were there because other young people were there. You know, seeing demonstrations and protests as some sort of a giant rave. Was that all it was? Was it all a farce?

What failures we were in keeping the spirit and nurturing it for the next generation. Just look at the successive generations -- each one more self-absorbed than the last.

Boomer parents look at kids and go, what the heck is wrong with them? They're tied to their cell phones, their video games, their FaceBooks and Twitters, sending silly updates about what they ate or what they bought, always shooting "selfless." But WE gave that generation the cell phone. WE made the video games. WE created cheap laptops and the internet. WE turned them into vacant consumers who lack the brain cells to question authority, seek the truth, or even value what is real and true.

We were the kids who hid under our desks during a-bomb drills at public schools. We lived with the fear of nuclear annihilation. Well, that fear is still here but it's not our fear anymore. We've become fat and complacent, letting governments take us into war after war, letting them encroach on our liberties. We'll let corporations take over the world. We'll let industry destroy our ability to live on this planet, because as Big Dog says, Earth will still be here and the living things on this planet will mutate enough to be able to live in an irradiated world. But not us. Then again, why should we. We don't deserve this beautiful blue orb, so unique, so special, unlike any other we know of.

We could not teach our children the right values. We didn't even have them ourselves.

I've been disgusted with us a lot these days.