Remember, The Boomers Created the Millennials

 And excerpt from "How Not to Become a Millennial"

But why were the Boomers so bad at raising the Millennials?  Why did they give such horrible advice?  Matter of fact, why were they so bad at life themselves?  They did more drugs than any generation alive. Raised the national debt to record peace-and-war-time levels.  Made divorce and breeding half-siblings an Olympic event.  Destroyed the nuclear family and millions of their children’s lives.  And a full 2/3rds of them can’t even afford retirement.  And keep in mind this isn’t the old trope of the younger generation always blaming the previous one.  The Boomers are empirically and objectively an absolutely abysmal generation (which is the subject of an upcoming book).  How, after having every possible advantage in life and insisting they knew better than everyone else, is it they were wrong about pretty much everything?

The answer can be found in a quote by G. Michael Hopf in his book “Those Who Remain,”

“Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create hard times.”

And the Baby Boomers are indeed weak men.

If there was ever a generation born into good times it was the Baby Boomers.  The 1950’s and 1960’s were the golden era of US history.  Unemployment averaged around 4%, even going into the 2%’s for a couple years.  Economic growth was twice that of what we have today. You didn’t need a college degree to apply for entry level positions.  And those entry level positions could afford you the American dream on one income replete with a house, spouse, car and kids.  But perhaps the biggest advantage the Boomers had growing up is the incredible luxury of having both a mother and a father present in the house at the same time.  This nuclear family, combined with the other socio-economic factors, made the Baby Boomers’ upbringing the most idyllic the world had ever seen.  And with their WWII generation parents starkly reminded of the horrors of the Great Depression and war, it was a guarantee their children would be the most pampered and spoiled in then-as-of-yet US history.

The problem with good times, however, is that it destroys people’s ability to value.  If everything is handed to you, paid for by your parents, or the good times are just simply rolling, nobody has to suffer, sacrifice, or pay a price to get what they want.  And it is simply not mentally possible to value anything unless you have paid a price for it.  But if you have to toil, work, suffer and slave merely to stave off poverty or simply to survive, you become acutely aware of what does and does not have value in life, including things like food, clothing, shelter, freedom, your fellow man, and yes, even your children.

In this sense the WWII generation had an incredible ability to value.  They knew what was important in life because they had to work so hard to get it.  But the Baby Boomers had none, because (though in a well-intended attempt to make sure their children never suffered) the WWII generation deprived their children of their own ability to suffer, thus value, thus making them the weak generation the Boomers turned out to be.

The problem with being weak men, in having no ability to value, is that you inevitably need something of value in your life. You need a reason to get up in the morning.  Something to cherish.  A reason to live.  But if all your basic needs are met, and you’ve never had to pay a price for anything, you are mentally incapable of valuing or appreciating anything in life.  Thus, in the mind of a weak, spoiled man the only thing of worth, the only thing you have in your life is yourself.  And thus you become solipsistic, self-centered, and incapable of selflessness, altruism or love, because only you matter in your own mind.

This doesn’t mean that the Baby Boomers weren’t capable of loving their children, caring about society, or being well-intended.  But it does mean that for many of them their own self-interests trumped everything else in life, especially if push came to shove.  And if you don’t believe it, simply look at all the different types of Boomers you’ve ran across in your life and look at the actions they took, not the words they said.  What you will find, via their own actions, is that most of the Baby Boomers were primarily motivated by four things (or a combination thereof):

A fear of real work, toil, suffering or sacrifice (laziness)
Politics
Profit, and
Self-love

And these things superseded everything and everyone in most of these Baby Boomers’ lives.  Including their Millennial children.