Amerika

Once it was clear by about 1942 that the Axis powers were not going to win the last world war, the West began churning out the “Me Generation,” so named because of their nearly absolute individualism. Where previous generations deferred to culture, history, nature, and faith, the Me Generation worshiped only the human itself.

This made their grandparents detest them because it was clear that a Me Generation was not going to build society, only eat the seed corn and sell the silverware so that it could party for another few moments before ineffable death slammed the door.

Their parents, probably the most odious generation and the only one ridiculous enough to call itself “The Greatest,” were Andrew Carnegie graduates who lived Death of a Salesman in that they got ahead by manipulating others and selling things to them, re-arranging society around the Napoleonic model of a total system.

Its future was defined by the ability to manipulate others and sell stuff or make political statements. The farms were receding, replaced by cities and office jobs; they called this “progress” back in the 1920s, and numerous authors like C.S. Lewis rightly pointed out that it was an inhuman worship of the human ego.

Boomers were really the first generation created by a society dedicated to this environment of symbolism. The social hive-mind ruled and to succeed, you had to convince others that they needed you, you were important and relevant, and that you deserved whatever it was that you had so others would not take it.

We might call them the first generation born of moral argument. Their only morality was what the group would support because that enabled them as individuals to do whatever they wanted. This was how to succeed, and in the classic bourgeois mode, it became their religion.

In the age into which Boomers were born, being able to milk cows and plant crops was no longer as important as being able to manipulate others. This was the age of the salesman; if you could convince others to buy your product or services, you got ahead, since the city economy had dominated the world and the social hive-mind had come with it.

The social hive-mind represents the Devil’s Bargain that is individualism: you can be a me-first individualist, but you will get clobbered unless you let others do the same. This is how individualism, in a collective context, becomes something like socialism.

If you go to the third world, you can see this system in place. If anyone grows more crops or bakes more bread than the others, they all show up with claims of family loyalty or victimhood, and they take it all. This keeps everyone equally poor except for a few sociopaths who rule them and own anything beyond the level of subsistence agriculture.

The only way to succeed in such a society is to come up with victimhood arguments of your own. If you have a sick kid, you can take more bread than others. Therefore, you better make that kid look sick. In the industrial West, this meant finding ways to argue that society had “oppressed” you.

Boomers, both Leftists and conservatives, waged victimhood campaigns. The Leftists claimed society was unjust and they had been wounded by it; the conservatives claimed that society had forgotten all of its important values, and therefore that it made the moral remnant into Christ-like sacrifices.

Apparently humans never think through their plans much and egalitarianism is no exception. An individualist wants to do whatever he wants and to have someone else both pay for it and clean up the mess. With egalitarianism, he can demand this of others, but others can demand it of him, too, unless he is more of a victim than they are.

This means a total denial of reality that accelerates over the years as each generation reacts to the illusions of its parents with more illusions, each person attempts to stand out from the crowd, and each group tries to make a name and trademark theory for itself.

Over time, the individualistic needs of the many erode anything shared, like the commons, ideas, culture, history, and even a sense of what is real. Boomers were the crest of this process since the Anglo-Saxons had just been dethroned, so the Boomers picked up what was left and took whatever they could in hopes of escaping.

We can see the cycle in which the Boomers were caught through an analysis of bullying that shows how people who face bullying eventually end up bullying others:

“Sadly, although not uncommonly, this child started out as a victim of bullying. Then in an attempt to connect with students he began acting up, demonstrating bullying behaviors to others.

“Ironically, this generated a sense of social standing within his peer group, which led him to detention where he forged a friendship group—the ‘detention kids’—and a heightened sense of status and belonging.

“Like all of us, he wanted to feel connected and like he belonged; he wanted a friend. But at each turning point, this need was filled by negative behaviors, rather than positive ones.

“In the end, the only way he knew to engage and connect with his peers was through bullying.”

Bullying — bluffing with the threat of violence or at least conflict — forms the basis of democracy. Each individualist demands to be treated equally, then immediately starts cheating on this social contract so that he can get more than the others. Mice, humans, and yeast behave the same way under these circumstances.

Once bullying becomes the norm, only salesmen rise in the system, mainly because they are sociopath enough to flatter others without taking it seriously, but gregarious enough to understand what most people want. In the hands of the crowd, the system rewards sociopathic liars.

The Devil’s Bargain of the Big Lie, equality, begins in the idea of contrarianism, or rejecting reality so that solipsistic and social human ideas can replace it:

The most obvious pitfall of contrarianism is that, just like following the crowd, it outsources your judgement to others, albeit in rejection rather than acceptance. It’s also impractical. It’s all very well to dismiss what is popular when you have the time and expertise to judge well for yourself. But nobody knows enough about everything for that. Borrowing some opinions is inevitable.

Boomers came out of this situation. Democracy replaced reality and then rewarded those who parroted the unreal the best, which meant that only reality-deniers got ahead, so whether Right or Left they embraced symbolic issues and rejected real ones.

This is why Generation X keeps dropping pillows on Boomers and waiting for the kicking to stop before lazily hitting the “summon nurse” button.

Tags: baby boomers, me generation, salesmen, solipsism