Confessions of a Baby Boomer

                                              Confessions of a Baby Boomer

 

                                        

 

                                      "All I’m gonna do is just go on and do what I feel."
                                                                                    ~ Jimi Hendrix

 

I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s at the epicenter of a revolution in human consciousness in California. I had a privileged, upper white, middle class, great education, sheltered life (materialistically at least). And I was exposed and influenced to my core by humanist psychology, Feminism, Civil rights, mind expanding drugs, music, Eastern philosophy, Ecology, self-growth movements, and many other revolutionary ideas and experiences. This certainly left a very positive influence on me in terms of being a radical thinker and expressing myself in many ways to help, entertain, and bring my gifts to others. But it also gave me what Ken Wilber calls Boomeritis.

 

The dark and pathologic side of my cultural matrix is that I have a part of me that thinks I can save the world, not like a Messiah (ok, sometimes like a Messiah), but more in terms of my intentions and efforts with others, that we can build a peaceful happy world. I have a part that thinks it’s only a matter of time before people ‘get it,’ and start living the way I think they should. 

I have parts that are willing to work for peace and change, as long as I don’t have to change, or give up any of my comforts, securities or addictions. These are all symptoms of Boomeritis, and these are the symptoms of my generation that are in my view; ‘holding us back’, even though we Boomers think that everyone else is holding us back!

 

 

My Baby Boomer generation is one that is stuck in the idealism of an entitled youth that doesn’t want to accept and learn about the realities outside its narcissistic idealism. It is a kind of cruel irony that so many of my generation have dreams of a unified world that we have worked all of our lives to actualize, and that we have been the ones standing in our own way toward the actualization of our own dreams. A good example of this is public mental health systems, which are set up to help promote mental health, but in fact contribute to mental illness, because the systems themselves are “mentally ill.”

 

Ken Wilber’s 2002 book “Boomeritis” is a fictional expose on the ‘disease’ of the baby boomers which he describes as “the deadly combination of a modern liberal, egalitarian worldview with a deep unquestioned narcissism, it is a pluralism infected with narcissism."

 

  Pluralism, certainly very positive, is our current ‘politically correct,’ social reality, where diverse racial, ethnic, and religious groups mix within one society. This shift in consciousness in the 60’s, gave rise to cultural anthropology, feminism, civil rights, ecology, and multicultural sensitivity, all quantum leaps in our evolution as a species.

 

But this pluralism had a dark side, and was a breeding ground for all kinds of trouble. So we had ideas that “You have your truth and I have mine, you do your thing, I’ll do mine, make love not war, if it feels good to you and it won’t hurt others, do it man! Leary had his banner “Turn on, tune in, and drop out,” which was great to expand your mind, tune in to ‘alternate realities’, and drop out of the oppressive systems.

 

But there was incredible hypocrisy in that most of us were doing all that tuning in and turning on with daddy’s $, and daddy was certainly part of the system we were trying to drop out from!

Eventually we ‘grew up’ and had to join the system. But we didn’t really grow up, we remained stuck in a kind of adolescent, entitled, indulgent, and naïve narcissism (see Robert Bly’s book “The Sibling Society”).

 

Another dark side of Boomeritis is the leveling and flattening of consciousness that extreme egalitarianism leads to. Because every world view has equal validity, there is no ‘better,’ no hierarchy, no developmental stages to move through and to. This lends itself toward a passivity and complacency where people don’t really have to look at themselves and change. They become comfortable in their bubble of ‘tolerance.’

 

There’s a video on youtube called “I’m not Black, you’re not White.” It’s like that old coke commercial with Michael Jackson “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.”  It’s incredibly naïve and wrong in my view. To be Black or White is not a label meant to judge or stereotype, but it is a cultural identity that is different, and should be acknowledged, celebrated and understood as such.

 

Just as men and women are different, and the differences should be acknowledged (I acknowledge this could be dangerous!). There are aspects of one gender or another, one culture or another that are indeed ‘better,’ more skilled, and more conscious than another and should be studied and accessed in their ‘betterness,’ to help, just as someone would want to hang out with Michael Jorden if they wanted to become a better basketball player, because he is indeed BETTER than someone else.

 

Men are overwhelmingly better parallel parkers than women, and can throw shit farther with better accuracy, women are infinitely better multitaskers, can tolerate pain better, and infinitely more emotionally and relationally attuned than men. And, in spite of the military caving to political pressure, there is good evidence to show that women suck in combat conditions (this is a compliment!).

 

Boomers have moved beyond the previous cultural stages of traditionalism and scientific modernism and as such can claim to have propelled consciousness beyond those specific stages, but they are blind as to the fact that there are and will always be a certain demographic that will not be able to see beyond traditional values, or scientific materialism, or tribal, monotheistic extremism such as isis.

 

This fact is something Boomers have their head in the sand (or worse) about. Because Boomers have this idea that we can all join hands, take off all our labels, and sing kumbaya, they fail to make room and choice for other modes of consciousness they don’t like, they think; 'Eventually, they'll come over from the dark side into Boomerville.'

 

This is where the system of Spiral Dynamics is very important, and should be studied to help understand and bridge one mode of consciousness with another, this will not happen in the Boomer mind!

 

Last but not least, is Boomer narcissism, which unapologetically labeled ourselves "the Me generation," which is very accurate in that we are so focused on ourselves; going to retreats, going to therapy, posting on facebook, getting another bumpersticker, learning how to live longer, etc. that we lack the discipline, sacrifice, and service to actually serve something beyond our own sense of reality.

 

So we are incredibly vulnerable and indulgent to cult psychology like Scientology or gurus, or therapists, or facebook, or models, or do good causes, that we aren’t willing to actually change ourselves and really see our dark side, because of all the “good” that we are intending.

 

So do your best to put up and help us aging hippie babies who mean well, but will kill you (if you’re not careful), with our ideas, philosophies, youtube video’s, and save the gay whale protests, till the cows come home to the organic Woodstock farm!