The beat goes on

Vox is at it again:

https://voxday.net/2022/05/19/beyond-cringe/

... and he mentions Boomers [natch] but also the Beat poets and that's the misnamed Silent Generation, they were anything but silent*, regarded as born between 1928 and 1945.

Have a glance down this list ...

RH Tawney 1880

Niels Bohr 1885
Walter Benjamin 1892

Herbert Marcuse 1898
Theodor W. Adorno 1903
Benjamin Spock 1903
Saul Alinsky 1909
William S. Burroughs 1914
Timothy Leary 1920
Jack Kerouac 1922
Allen Ginsburg 1926

Andy Warhol 1928
Charles Manson 1934
Ken Kesey 1935
John Phillips [paedo, pusher and singer] 1935
Elvis Presley 1935

Ben Lexcen 1936
Hunter S. Thompson 1937
JJ Cale 1938
Bill Ayers 1944
Eric Clapton 1945
Pete Townsend 1945

Steve Jobs 1955

Tim Berners-Lee
John Lydon 1956
Sid Vicious 1957
John McEnroe 1959

... and certain things become apparent to me.

Firstly*, there's not a 'silent generation', there's a silent component to every generation ... and then there are the troublemakers.

But even that needs to be clarified. Take 2022 ... there are certainly troublemakers and we refer to them as Globo, Woke and Karen, formerly Leftwing.  Destructive people.

The silent majority though are variously bourgeois, industrious, generally family-oriented, but they've also taken on the mantle of fighting for freedoms which the Woke have reneged on, albeit we do it differently to the way Antifa does and the Weathermen did [Bill Ayers, whom Obama adores].

Yes, we're also radical at N.O. but in a quite different, non-Bader-Meinhoff, non-IRA way.

So what I'm saying is that every generation had its silent component but also had its radical and the radical fall into two camps ... those like TB-L, Steve Jobs, Ben Lexcen who are creators ... then those who create destructive things, e.g. the Frankfurt School, e.g. whoever dreamed up Great Reset and so on ... and then there are the real monsters who see an opportunity for total destruction.

Meanwhile, people like us try to stop them. I'd agree with Vox that the Beat Generation were bad news, I was never into them, even as a student radical.  I'd further agree that there are many Boomers who were heavily influenced and probably never knew they were actually on a destructive path ... they thought they were heading for some new nirvana.

Meanwhile, the majority of the Boomers grew up, got jobs, had families, wanted a comfortable life ... which is different to the Life of Riley. That world view could still enjoy catchy music, some of us, like me, did indulge a bit in the Boomer thing Vox is so down on but there is such a thing as growing up ... eventually.

There's one more thing about the Boomer years ... there were it seems to me, three different phases - the war and immediate post-war years, another highly radical phase spilling over into the 70s - people born into the rock era is one way to look at it ... but between those years, there was an opaque Boomer time where nobody did anything much ... for a start they were toddlers at the time and by the time they became late teens, another generation after them, Vox's generation, were making all the running.

One might also call us the 'Missed the Boat Generation'.  I'm talking here very late 40s to mid-50s, maybe a 7 year span in the middle of the other two spans.  Or to put it another way, it was the 'Catch-Up' generation.

We did not create the rockers, the mods, the teddy boys, the Beatles ... nor did we create the Pink Floyds [1943], we were just after those people.  Nor were we the creators of Joy Division, the new melancholy [1956].  We were born between those years.  Think about that.  You could call us 'The Shadow Generation'.  always in the shadows. /END**.

** Dave Swarbrik 1941 Sandy Denny 1947 Ian Anderson 1947 Robert Plant 1948 Hugh Cornwell 1949 JJ Burnell 1949 Richard Thompson 1949 ...

Interesting, eh?