Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

The word “Boomer” has become an icon for a time in history when life seemed, in retrospect, to be idyllic. Boomers are mocked for their optimism, enthusiasm & positive, go-getter attitudes, but that's more out of envy than belief. No other generation can do better than Boomers as a whole; those times are past. Boomer is obviously more a concept than it is an actual time period during which people were born, but there were some distinct aspects of life that created the Boomer attitude. As a Boomer, we thought getting an education in anything but STEM was a waste, and following your muse was unrealistic. When I grew up, I couldn’t wait to get out of my parent’s cramped house, but my children had multiple rooms and learned to drive stick in a Ferrari.

Generations now simply can’t compete so they made new goals, and per Nietzsche's concept of Slave Morality, their goals are the opposite of their Boomer parents: because Boomers believe in liberty, meritocracy & patriotism, what their children want is egalitarianism; since Boomers were high-income consumers who lived in the suburbs, Millennials disdain money & things, and live packed together in cities. Boomers are individualists who think they got where they were by their own efforts, which is only partway true because Boomers had more opportunity and less restrictions. Boomers are poor at self-awareness because they never had to think of anything else, but they were the most creative & pioneering because they could be. A saying of Boomers is that “the world is your oyster,” but what possible sense does that make now?