Opaque Lucidity

Define Me

I am listening to the podcast of last night's Coast to Coast AM radio show, wherein Neil Howeis discussing the cycles of history and how American generations tended to act. Like so many people, he describes different generations in broad strokes, and it drives me crazy.

There are certainly societal trends present in every generation. However, these trends vary widely based on location, socio-economic status, race, sex, etc. I believe you could say "black men between 18 and 24 felt a need to actively stand for civil rights legislation in 1964" and be fairly corrent. However, to say "Baby Boomers were all about civil rights in the early 1960's" is wrong. Yes, there were plenty of rich, white people who got behind the movement, but there were also plenty of southern baby boomers who wanted nothing to do with it.

I believe defining generations began with the Boomers, but I could be wrong. What we see portrayed in the media today is that the average Boomer spent the 60's protesting this and that while attending college on mom and dad's dime. The people who were able to do this were a very small minority. Millions of the men and women who would later be classified as Boomers spent the 60's raising children, trying to make the house payment and put dinner on the table. Millions more went to Vietnam, not because they wanted to, but they understood the sacrifices necessary when your nation calls. To call even a quarter of Baby Boomers hippies does a disservice to the vast majority who weren't.

Each American generation has had to face a challenge of some sort. How we responded depends on many things, including the moral fabric of the society at the time and how strong the nation's sense of community was. The generation that fought World War II had lived through the Great Depression and so they understood common sacrifice. When the war came, helping to secure victory was almost always a given. My father, whose older brothers were in that war (dad's war would come later in Korea), said to me once, "No one imagined not going. You were called up and you went."

I guess it all goes back to our character as Americans: many of us like things all neatly stacked in a clearly-labeled box. But generations are messy, confusing things full of people who weren't average and who didn't follow trends. And that's a wonderful thing.