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Boomers gonna Boom

Scottty

Well-known member
In which we discuss the American "Boomer" generation and their equivalent in other nations...

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This generational identity stuff feels a lot more common in the US than other countries. Maybe because hhe individual suburbian housing with no intergenerational cohabitation is their thing.
 
This generational identity stuff feels a lot more common in the US than other countries. Maybe because the individual suburbian housing with no intergenerational cohabitation is their thing.

Interesting question. Though "you got to leave your parents' home when you start your own family" is a cultural norm in other parts of the Anglosphere as well, and we don't have the same sense of the different generations each having such a starkly different outlook on life.

The big problem, in my humble opinion, is the zero-sum thinking: divide people into groups... then treat each group's needs as being in conflict with all of the others. That sort of thing can Balkanize a society into a ticking bomb.
 
Interesting question. Though "you got to leave your parents' home when you start your own family" is a cultural norm in other parts of the Anglosphere as well, and we don't have the same sense of the different generations each having such a starkly different outlook on life.

The big problem, in my humble opinion, is the zero-sum thinking: divide people into groups... then treat each group's needs as being in conflict with all of the others. That sort of thing can Balkanize a society into a ticking bomb.
Which happens mainly when the groups are too separated/isolated, both physically and socially. Urbanism is a culprit, of course, but also the organisation of things like education, with university paid for by parents or by taxes, or the reverse with retirement pensions being individual savings or taxes. In both latter cases, it's a lot harder to get such frontal and damaging intergenerational opposition. Same for the invidualism à outrance encouraged in the US moreso than anywhere else including the rest of the anglosphere, which is turned into identitarianism and such zero sum games.

Here, I don't really see such an opposition taking place, the lines of divide are different. Hell, even the concept of boomer isn't really a thing, at least not the way portrayed in English-speaking media.
 
Which happens mainly when the groups are too separated/isolated, both physically and socially. Urbanism is a culprit, of course, but also the organisation of things like education, with university paid for by parents or by taxes, or the reverse with retirement pensions being individual savings or taxes. In both latter cases, it's a lot harder to get such frontal and damaging intergenerational opposition. Same for the invidualism à outrance encouraged in the US moreso than anywhere else including the rest of the anglosphere, which is turned into identitarianism and such zero sum games.

Quite a bit to unpack there. A traditional society in which your parents look after you when you are young, and then you and your siblings look after them when they are old, is obviously better than one in which you pay through the nose to give your children a good start in life - and they then go off and live their own lives leaving you to your own means in your declining years.
The thing is though - the Boomers from what I'm told, rather neglected their children. Here's a something from the Internet:


So if there was a multi-generational community, the Boomers broke it. The points you make may be more symptom than cause.

Here, I don't really see such an opposition taking place, the lines of divide are different. Hell, even the concept of boomer isn't really a thing, at least not the way portrayed in English-speaking media.

If the Frankosphere has it's own generational cycles - and it probably does - those would be shaped by French history and experience.
Boomerism is the product of children growing up in post-WW2 America, which was enjoying enormous prosperity relative to all the countries whose cities and industries had been bombed to rubble in the war.
Their parents remembered the Depression, did not want their children to be in want like they had been - and so unintentionally spoiled them rotten.
 
Quite a bit to unpack there. A traditional society in which your parents look after you when you are young, and then you and your siblings look after them when they are old, is obviously better than one in which you pay through the nose to give your children a good start in life - and they then go off and live their own lives leaving you to your own means in your declining years.
The thing is though - the Boomers from what I'm told, rather neglected their children. Here's a something from the Internet:


So if there was a multi-generational community, the Boomers broke it. The points you make may be more symptom than cause.



If the Frankosphere has it's own generational cycles - and it probably does - those would be shaped by French history and experience.
Boomerism is the product of children growing up in post-WW2 America, which was enjoying enormous prosperity relative to all the countries whose cities and industries had been bombed to rubble in the war.
Their parents remembered the Depression, did not want their children to be in want like they had been - and so unintentionally spoiled them rotten.

I'd rather blame the urbanism and identitarian obsessions. We had the Trentes Glorieuses here as well, massive prosperity for a generation was very much a thing and didn't cause a perceived generational entiltement. Isolating people from each other to an absurd level, OTOH, is a big issue IMO: individual homes separated from the others in their garden bubble, moving to work in individual cars which are their own bubble isolating yourself from the city and the others - I experienced it in Houston, etc., lead to a mindset where each person is their own individual able and willing to live aside from society except in ritualised and highly controlled social interactions.

The identitarian obsession from both Reps and Dems just internalised it to a whole new level.
 
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