Sunday, October 16, 2011

Online Dating: addtional views frm a middleaged white woman: OCCUPY A BABY BOOMER!!!!

NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH!!!!!!! The end of the era of narcissism is coming to an end, THANK GOD!! OCCUPY A BABY BOOMER!!!

I know, you were hoping for a post about middle aged white women dating and I did this already. See previous posts. Nothing's changed. Sorry.

This post takes possibly too brutal of a look at the baby boomer generation but after years of observations, I cannot help but make a few on this generation.

BUT FIRST--my friend.

I have a friend who I will call Mary who I have been friends with for a few years now. There is a ten year different between Mary and I. Mary is a baby boomer while I am barely NOT. It has been fascinating to watch Mary go through what I can only call extremely painful cultural change because Mary is from the Baby Boomer Generation (now officially named with capital letters). In my opinion, only, but based on at least on anecdotal evidence, people from the Baby Boomer generation are the most self-absorbed, selfish, and materialistic humans the planet has ever seen. Science does back me up on this one since it has been shown that no generation in the history of the planet has consumed the vast resources that this ONE generation of humans has. In the HISTORY OF THE PLANET!! Despite all their "love and peace" crap, in the end, the love and peace they were "protesting" for was their own!! How could the hippie generation possibly then give us George Bush Jr and the Hummer? Do I really need to say more to prove this point? For a great generic example of the typical Baby Boomer, check out the television show "Community" and the character that Chevy Chase plays--a narcissistic pathetic self-absorbed loser named "Pierce." I don't know if they created this character to be the epitome of the Baby Boomer generation but in my experience, he is, in fact, the epitome of the entire generation and I have had the dubious opportunity of watching a Baby Boomer LIKE this try to shake it off and it ain't pretty!

Back to my friend "Mary." Mary was your classic hippie in the 60's. Of course, photos of themselves are up all over their house (of course) showing them in their bell bottoms (no offense to bell bottoms; they're cool) and peasant blouses, attending concerts (you know which ones), hanging out at Haight and Ashbury, blah blah and blah. All the photos you would expect self-absorbed Baby Boomers to have up in their geodesic dome house (no kidding but it is a cool house). Their entire lives have been about one and only one thing--STUFF. Really nice fucking stuff. Stuff in their house. Stuff in their garage. Stuff in their attic. Stuff in their storage shed in the yard. STUFF STUFF STUFF. This has been the focus of their entire lives. CONSUMPTION whenever they want to for whatever reason they want it. No questions asked. One sibling of theirs, also a Baby Boomer, has a thing for hiking boots apparently and once ordered five different pairs and when he did not like them, he took them all, still practically brand new, to the DUMP. Yes, he threw them away. So these are the kind of folks we are talking about. People so self-absorbed and obsessed with gratification, they would throw perfectly good new things away. The thought of taking them to a thrift store or god forbid, a homeless shelter, never ever enters their minds. They are not capable of comprehending that there are OTHER people in the world, let alone people in need. They lack empathy. This is why they are dangerous and scary. Then they enter politics and this is terrifying but I diverge...

So, back to Mary. Mary and I love to walk and hike together but after that, we treat one another like we are from different planets. Aside from the fact that Mary and I like to do the same things outdoors, I have little idea why we are friends. We are very different. I am from the "ecology" era of the 70's. Years ago, Mary used to chuckle about my recycling nearly everything. She would smirk at my washed plastic bags. When I would tell her something about the planet--one of the many planet's illnesses due to us, she would tell me I was just "being negative." The other thing the Baby Boomer generation did is codify their narcissism through something they call(ed) the "New Age Movement" which is basically anti-intellectual and anti-critical thinking. If anyone dares to have a REAL conversation or engage in something intellectual, they immediately shame the shit out of you that you are being "negative." They are apparently too stupid to realize that intellectual conversation is not the same thing as "being negative" but their little worlds are so fragile that they have shove anyone and anything out of their worlds that might be real--pathologically so.

So of course, when I would try to talk to Mary about the plight of our beat up planet, I was "just being negative." When I would talk about uncontrollable corporate power and our Supreme Court, I was "just being negative." When I would have the audacity to suggest she call her legislator or our county council members or do ANYthing for ANYone besides herself and her husband, I could see her eyes almost roll back into her head and she went into, almost, some kind of convulsion. The idea that she would spend ANY time on the poor, democracy, the environment (that she loves so much) was so beyond her frame of reference, I once thought she was going to have some kind of seizure. And of course, everything I said was amusing. Simply amusing. It was tough for me to handle.

So, they had lots and lots of money. Lots and lots of material crap. On and one they lived (?) their lives until one day, I don't know, let's say about 2008, the shit hit the fan as we all know and it has kept hitting the fan ever since. They went from the 1% to the 99% without even realizing it and I am now getting to watch them coming to grips with this as they realize, all the things I have been saying for years are NOW COMING TRUE. Cultural paroxysms!! I am now watching my friend Mary going through them. It is fascinating. Once oblivious to the news, any news, because she was her own news, she is now picking up little tidbits of information--things like Occupy Wall Street, 99%er's, getting screwed over by unbridled corporate power (which happened to them), air quality where we live which can be bad and keeps her indoors...in other words, I am watching the exoskeleton of narcissism on my Baby Boomer friends, start to crack. Yes, it is cracking. And it is painful for my friends because they can no longer run out and BUY something. They don't have the money anymore. This has left them almost incapacitated for they knew no other way to to be an American. America is about one and only one thing by the way--materialism. It is not about "democracy" and "liberty" and "freedom" only in the sense that you can make a democratic choice with liberty and freedom what crap you buy at Walmart. There is freedom here. Other than that, we don't stand for much.

So you can imagine how narcissistic new age materialistic baby boomers are coping these days surrounded by a younger generation that is pissed off and gets it. The younger generation is not about accumulating massive amounts of crap. The younger generation has the audacity to bring up GLOBAL issues--one village stuff. Things like climate change, population growth, compassion for others, the poor (GAG. NOT THE POOR!! Do those people EVER go away?). The Baby Boomer generation is now surrounded by people DIFFERENT from them when they were so used to be "special" and the "role models" for the rest of us and now we are leaving them behind. Like the grown babies they are, they cannot take it. They are lost. They are confused.
They hunker down in front of their big flat-screen television sets with their boxed wine and watch porno taking breaks to check on their stock portfolios or what is left of them. This is what they do now. This is who they are. In the end, all the Baby Boomer generation did was consume the hell out of our planet and left the rest of us to clean it up. They ended up being weak and selfish except maybe one, or two, or three...One of them, my friend Mary, is slowly but definitely "getting it."

I have been eating whole wheat bread since I was 12 when I came home and told my parents about a disgusting chemistry experiment in which we took white bread, rolled it up into little balls, then dropped them into test tubes and even after one week, the HCL we added to the test tube (simulating the acid in a human stomach) could not penetrate the "bread" balls. This so grossed out my parents that we switched over to wheat bread immediately. Also, my mother was an amazing woman who in addition to raising three kids and working fulltime, regularly made whole wheat bread from scratch (and no, bread makers did not exist then). Anyhoo, Mary just discovered whole wheat bread. She is completely enamored with it but of course, assumes she is the first and only person to discover the benefits of whole wheat bread. She has been telling me about all the different kinds. Since I figured this out over 35 years ago, I just listen, incredulous. She is reading the news now or at least listening to NPR which is something. She is supporting the 99%er's on Wall Street and around the world. She told me she is concerned about climate change. She is taking her own bags to the grocery store. And how damn ironic. How damn ironic that all the things we THOUGHT the hippies stood for then, my generation and younger are having to TEACH them these things when they were supposed to be teaching US. It's bullshit but...

So while Mary's pathetic husband stays home and watches porno everyday with his t.v. and wine and computer, Mary is quietly but painfully breaking out. Breaking out of the curse of her generation. Breaking out of her shitty marriage, and hopefully breaking into a vision of our planet that is about something more than herself. We'll see. The jury is still out. I am right now 'occupying a Baby Boomer'. I'll let you know how it goes. Go find one to occupy. Stay tuned.