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by Richard Neville
Rediscovered, reinvented and celebrated by baby boomers,
will Byron Bay's next incarnation be that of the worlds most
glorious and grooviest retirement community?
Some boomers complain of a lack of respect from the next
generation (ie, their kids). Tempers began overheating some
time a go when maturing hippie/futurist RICHARD NEVILLE
(the world's first boomer?) was asked to respond to a spate
of media attacks on his generation: "clinging to power...
stuck in the past ... disssing our rap."
Commenting that, of course he feels nothing but compassion
for all living beings, even Xers, Neville let rip this fusillade
after a coked up day-trader ran off with his stash of Prozac.
WHY BOOMERS ARE THE BEST GENERATION EVER TO HIT EARTH
Anti boomer prejudice has descended to a schoolyard bunfight.
Well, up yours, Xers! Time to offer a few home truths.
So, you have problems with fifty-something fogeys hanging
onto the corner office? Poor diddums. It was also a geriatric
tyranny when we burst onto the scene; school-leavers faced
3 years running errands before they were given a desk. Racism,
sexual repression, rock/pot phobia, an Asian war, short back-n-sides,
spam... We hit the streets - not the gyms.
Okay, wrestling naked in vats of jelly while chewing Nepalese
temple hash as Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar, may not
have been the best way to influence Western foreign policy
, but at least it postponed the millstone of a mortgage. Anyway,
it did influence Western foreign policy.
If you really want to change the world, try thinking further
than putting a ring in your nose, pounding a palm-top, dripping
with irony and stealing your parent's pot.
- We offered you deep ecology, altered states and the politics
of every day life. You settled for moshing, alco-pop and Video
Hits.
- Our university courses: literature, sociology, psychology.
- Your university courses: marketing, commerce, tourism.
- We burnt the bra, you had it re-engineered.
- Rock festivals were something we did, not something we
had done to us.
- We took drugs to open the doors of perception. You take
drugs to close the doors on life ... or to go clubbing.
- We started magazines to change the world. You started
magazines to hype sport, sell lager & show tits.
- We marched in protest at the war. You march in protest
at the cost of Uni.
- Sport was merely a self-help group for befuddled jocks,
not the religion of a nation. And our sneakers (if we wore
shoes) cost $5 and were not made in Asian sweat shops.
- We planned to die before we got old, (oops). You plan your
superannuation. - We made a fetish of peace. You made a fetish
of violence.
- We gave you gonzo journalism, peace demos and Astral Weeks.
You gave us Spreadsheets, Nintendo and S&M.
- Our counter culture was a complete rethink of Western Civilization
(still on the drawing board, that one), your counter culture
is the shopping counter - Prada, Tommy Hilfiger, Stussy, Mossimo,
Calvin Klein ....Born free, you are everywhere in chain stores.
-We wore aphorisms on our T-shirts - you wear trademarks.
- Our dreadlocks were shaped by the forces of wind, surf,
and eons of neglect, not acquired for big bucks from a poncy
salon.
- We gave you the Gay Mardi Gras. You made it an arm of
the hospitality industry.
- We spent a decade or so in tree houses, basements, squats,
mud brick yurts and Sikh temples, ignoring the opportunities
of rock bottom property prices in our inner cities and outer
beaches. Yes, we are slightly miffed that you lot have already
organized your early retirement and bought up all the fun
real estate.
- We made Australia safe for D H Lawrence, Nabakov, even
the Sex Pistols. You carried on the torch of free-speech with
screen torture and gangsta rap.
- We went to Asia and tried to live like Asians. You went
to Asia and made them live like us. Now look what's happened.
- It's true most of us never grew up. You lot were never
young.
- Our alternative film-makers despised Hollywood, the Academy
Awards, the whole shebang. Lacking movie cameras we even painted
directly on film stock. For today's wheeler-dealers, LA is
the centre of your universe.
- We revved up the underground press and a thousand nutters
published. Now three mega-moguls run the whole show , and
you want to work for them
- Our acid head programmmers put anarchy into the internet
and user-friendlines into Macinstosh. But all you really want
is a Turbo Modem and online shopping.
- Our heroes defied the odds, righted wrongs and retired
on communes.
- Your heroes calculate the odds, win at all costs and retire
on product endorsements.
- Instead of envying their parents jobs-for-life, boomers
created a range of jobs for fun: (Lonely Planet; Virgin, The
Body Shop, Rolling Stone, The Byron Guide...).
- We wore Dayglow daisies on our nipples, not death studs
in our scrotums.
- Our universities were hotbeds of revolution, not composts
for careers. We kicked the arse of the establishment, not
licked it.
- What you call our mindless hedonism, actually created
many positive and fruitful trends. Those mud massages on the
fringe of rock festivals evolved into the booming holistic
health industry.
- The only sports most of us ever cared about were lovemaking,
book collecting and playing frisbee. No true boomer can remember
a single Olympic incident between 1960 and 1990 - now The
Games is the dominant Xer motif.
- Work was just another 4-letter word, not the meaning of
life. You've managed to turn the world of business into the
whole world.
- For us, Jack Kerouac was a raving, existential literateur,
not a hunk in chinos posing for GAP.
- And Van Morrison is STILL laying them in the aisles, ha!
Something else to make you bitter: Just as we shook up birth,
sex & politics, so too will dotage and death be re-styled
when we do it.
Mystics will prepare us for early reincarnation, possibly
as your grandchildren. Our retirement villages (dotted around
Byron Shire) will be pleasure domes, whose nubile staff of
bodyworkers pamper us with hash cookies, anti-aging drugs
and bracing aroma-therapy massages on waterbeds. Funded by
you.
To Richard's shock, some xers took time off from their
speed laps, designer piercing and stock market rallies to
email ascerbic replies; of which these are a selection:
Why do Baby Boomers consistently overrate and falsely congratulate
themselves? The vast majority were not idealists, political
activists, revolutionaries or hippies. And those that were
live in the past, harking back to their glory days.
- Most "free thinking" hippies seem to have become right
wingers (e.g. Bob Dylan's son was sent to a private school)
and are hugely reactionary by nature.
- Every generation obviously has an impact on Western foreign
policy.
- Most baby boomer's children have to score for their parents
not steal from their stash.
- Who's Tommy Hilfiger?
- You ALL wore flares and day glow colours; we wear what
ever we like - eclectic, individual, tribal, Versace suits...
call it what you want.
- You burnt the bra; we do not see them as symbols of female
oppression, besides you lot have the need to wear them more
than we do.
- Don't you think there is value in Gay events moving into
the main-stream?
- The ecological lobby has never been so powerful (perhaps
a little too much so) in the 90s.
- "Xers" are skilled in the art of direct action; they don't
"sit-in" in order to protest.
- The young do not shop on the net, they design and program
it
- Most people past their youth, baby boomers included, are
cynical about contemporary youth culture.
- The 90's contain the most diverse youth culture yet seen
in any decade.
- In what way is the Olympic Games "the Xer motif" - as
an Xer I say nonsense. By the way who invented the "Xers"?
The term "Generation-X" is little more than a lazy marketing
moniker created by an overfed, over-ripe Boomer ad exec irritated
that his salad days of boardroom coke orgies came to an end
on the Black Friday of 1987? Sure, you gave us All You Need
Is Love, but one of the more pitiable televisual sights of
recent times was that right-on knight of cool, billionaire
Sir Paul McCartney, tinkling the ivories while Oprah, her
studio sisters and middle America grooved along. Stop your
whingeing, Mr Neville, and go and have a massage and a good
lie down
| (Richard Neville is currently
undersedation in The Timothy Leary Clinic.) No he's
not. He's laughing all the way to his think-tank: delighted
that a few bright Xers rose to the bait. Their observations
were pertinent & revealing - not only about boomers,
but themselves. Despite all their dexterity with software,
cyber surfing and Clinique lipwear, some people never
catch on when their leg is pulled. |
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