Failure of Our Generation — 

Time to Pass the Torch

I read a letter to the editor in the New York Times the other morning about the New York Public Library’s acquisition of Tom Wolfe’s papers for $2.15 million. The reader wrote in:

“Whatever happened to successful writers like Mr. Wolfe just giving their papers to august institutions like the New York Public Library?

One can only weep at the thought of all the badly needed and oft-requested books that could have been bought with the $2.15 million donated for the sole purpose of acquiring Mr. Wolfe’s papers.”

Yesterday morning I was talking with friends at a breakfast meeting about a number of current issues; Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s obfuscation about his involvement with the Senate scandal, the state of the US economy, income inequality and global warming.

Thinking about these things over the past twenty four hours leads me to some depressing conclusions. I’m generally an optimistic, idealistic person bit it’s hard to deny some difficult truths about the shortcomings, no, the dismal failures, of my generation.

I was born in 1958, a child of the sixties, a teenager in the seventies, young adult in the eighties, parent in the nineties and now on to whatever the future holds this millennium. Old enough now to have some perspective of my own generation, and I’ve come to the horrible realization that I’m ashamed of what I see. Ashamed of what we’ve done and haven’t done, and the world we’ve created for our children.

Our generation has continued to grow a corporate military industrial complex that increasingly poisons our air, water and food to the point where heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes and dementia are epidemic. The first generation in history whose children’s health will be worse as opposed to better than their parents.

A generation that has worshiped at the altar of capitalism, wealth, materialism, consumerism and growth to the point of causing one of the worst economic calamities in world history, and have we learned from that debacle? No, we got right back to work making sure the rich get richer, corporations remain untouchable, politicians continue to serve the highest bidder, and working class people continue to rack up debt faster than they can fill up their mortgaged homes and two-car garages with SUV’s and junk from Wal-Mart.

A generation so hopelessly addicted to fossil fuels that we blindly continue to burn coal and oil, spew carbon dioxide waste into our own atmosphere, acidify our oceans, wipe out other species, and threaten the very survival of our children and grandchildren with climate change.

A generation that continues to send our own children to be maimed or killed in wars about protecting economic interests or whose dogmatic religious beliefs are correct.

I’m struggling trying to come up with something of value that we’ve actually achieved in our generation. We’ve continued to advance technologies, computers, communications, energy, health, food production, in practically everything. In fact, we’ve managed to create the greatest wealth producing technologies in the history of the world. To what end? No good outcomes, I’m afraid. The majority of people are worse off. Income measured in “real” terms along with quality of life by any measure has diminished for most of us in industrialized nations.

I can’t help but come to the conclusion that the hallmark, the distinguishing characteristic of our generation has essentially been greed. As Oscar Wilde so aptly put it, “a society that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

A generation devoted to self-interest instead of public service, driven by avarice not altruism. Me, mine, more, the endless appetite for acquisition and consumption. Our generation.