OK. The American Baby Boomers dropped the anti- establishment ball. So certain in the late sixties and seventies that corporate money grubbing was at the root of nearly every social evil, many bought the myth that things could better be changed from within the system. Many immersed themselves in the system and were swallowed up in busy-ness. New technology, opportunities for economic advancement and security, put questions of right and wrong on the back burner for twenty five years - a sad marker of maturity.
Now they are reaching retirement age and current events are conspiring to remind them of unfinished business. If they can possibly recover the health and energy they lost on their detour, they are going back to the right and wrong of the status quo, they have been supporting.
The naked idealism of their youth created a generation gap with their parents and will likely create the same gap with their children; a generation that largely sees the future as next year and global events as mysteries somehow connected to money. The Baby Boomers will have to find allies among the grandchildren, if they hope to change the future in the next twenty years. I think they will pull it off.
Rejecting their parental role models, the Boomers were truly without any at all. Heroes were scarce. They became a social experiment with very mixed results. They have been pummeled with idealism backlash. They have submitted to pragmatism. It has not fit them or worn well. They are about to shed their pragmatic skins and return to their idealistic roots. They have a hindsight that reinvigorates the possibilities for the future beyond that which was conceivable twenty five years ago. And they have economic power far beyond that of their youth. They can now change trade policies simply by agreeing with each other they need to be changed. They can now see the abject failure of two party politics. Beginning in another five years, the oldest of them will be free to return to political activism. Some aren’t waiting.
Half or more of them will choose to remain employed at least part time. At first glance it would seem they will be competing with their children and grandchildren for that employment. That will not be the case. They will become the greatest group of corporate drop outs the world has ever seen. Moving back into the world of individualism, they will create many of the new, unincorporated businesses that will employ millions with better working conditions and personal satisfaction, than has been known before. They will cease their support of universal corporate power and begin creating global hope and prosperity. They will begin setting the examples and providing the models the world craves.
Half of those remaining employed will do so from economic necessity. Lack of private pensions, inadequacy of Social Security and little support from their children will force them to remain employed. However, they will have options they could not imagine before the Twenty First Century.
They will personally take on the responsibility to provide full and profitable employment for all those who want it, not on a mere national scale, but a global one, because their successes will be documented and published globally. They will create worthwhile global models. They will shed the national fraud that we are better because we have more than everybody else. It is as though a generation has patiently awaited the opportunity to take their message around the world.
Neither is it to be expected that U.S. Baby Boomers will be alone in their efforts. Most of those born of World War Two veterans are of common spirit and ready to move beyond social criticism to social activism. We see it with Bill Gates and Ted Turner, Wayne Dyer and Oprah Winfrey. The list of progressive thinkers grows daily and globally. Boomers were sadly deficient in role models. No more. We have them for us and generations that follow. This makes all the difference.
In ten more years philanthropists and global charities will be asking how much they can do with a dollar, instead of how many dollars can we raise and waste. How much difference will that make in social progress? In ten years consumers will convert to disciplined customers and prosumers. People that choose to produce more than they consume and put it on the market at prices the poor can afford. In ten years corporate power will de centralize and move back to informed people as has been promised for a hundred years by those consolidating corporate power. In ten years the people will dare to say no.
In ten years forgiveness will be a political option and the cause of violence will receive more attention than the violence we now call news. In ten more years there will be such a wholesale de centralization of power, political, religious and economic, the whole earth will sigh with relief.
Few today feel free enough to imagine such a future but then, the future has never depended on the many. It has depended on the visionaries and the corruption of their visions by the war and power mongers. They have had their day. Their work is done. The corporate puppets that pass for government are dying off and giving up. Wisdom is replacing rhetoric and popularity, winning new supporters and contributors every day. If you can't see it, perhaps you haven't really been looking. As we approach what seems to be the end of civilization, we begin to appreciate the joke that has passed for civilization for six thousand years. It dawns on us all that we finally have a chance to declare global bankruptcy in all areas of life and truly make a fresh start.
Christian Scripture, corporate power and current events all argue that things will get much worse before they get better. The end time message is: prepare, prepare, prepare. Take it or leave it!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Freelance writer published in news papers and websites.
justanotherview.com
edhowes@hotmail.com
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