Say Goodnight Baby Boomers

An open letter to the Baby Boomers:
Barack Obama is the first president from Generation X. In 1990 Time Magazine profiled GenX:

"They possess only a hazy sense of their own identity but a monumental preoccupation with all the problems the preceding generation will leave for them to fix . . .This is the twenty-something generation, those 48 million young Americans ages 18 through 29 who fall between the famous baby boomers and the boomlet of children the baby boomers are producing. Since today's young adults were born during a period when the U.S. birthrate decreased to half the level of its postwar peak, in the wake of the great baby boom, they are sometimes called the baby busters. By whatever name, so far they are an unsung generation, hardly recognized as a social force or even noticed much at all...By and large, the 18-to-29 group scornfully rejects the habits and values of the baby boomers, viewing that group as self-centered, fickle and impractical. While the baby boomers had a placid childhood in the 1950s, which helped inspire them to start their revolution, today's twenty-something generation grew up in a time of drugs, divorce and economic strain. . .They feel influenced and changed by the social problems they see as their inheritance: racial strife, homelessness, AIDS, fractured families and federal deficits"

Born in 1961, Obama is on the fence as to which generation he belongs to, as far as historians are concerned, but I think that he is a far cry from the typical Baby Boomer. That is why I have said that he is the first GenX president. To the Baby Boomers, I say that the torch has officially passed. Your time is done; and your sunset is closer than your dawn. Collectively, I belive that we are not sad to see you fade. What we have voted for this past November is a referndum on what you have left us. You made us. Please do not cry when you have to reap what you have sown. The media have portrayed this election as a battle of red versus blue/conservative versus liberal/urban versus rural. I do not think that this is true.

Each generation writes their own definitions of conservatism and liberalism. How many times have our political parties changed polarities in their respective histories? Too many to claim any kind of consistency of policy or doctrine. This election was an overthrow of government by the next generation. We are the "Home Depot" generation. The "fix-it" generation. The "Do-it-yourself" generation. I think that it is not a coincidence that the do-it-yourself type shows that are so popular. We are a generation that loves to fix things. I think that we have rediscovered a respect for the spirit of work that was lost. Over the past few decades we have been internally and externally destroyed. In the coming years we will need to rebuild, like the Greatest Generation did following their war. While their war was disimilar to ours, and though we will never fully resurrect that sense of their spirit, it holds a place in hearts as the antithesis of what we fight against. The most incredible thing that the Greatest Generaration has done is to leave for us something to strive for.

Our futures will be written not by us, but by our children. Let us raise our children to be the kind of people that we want taking care of us when we pass the torch.

A Note on the Concession Speech of John McCain

It is a shame that John McCain's concession speech was the best speech that I heard him make throughout his entire campaign. It had the control and command; the precision and poise that I had expected, but never saw, from John McCain. It embodied everything that John McCain should have been about from the beginning.

Scapegoat in Chief

ahhhh debates. There is nothing like a great debate. Cook a little dinner, go for a walk on a lovely evening, get to feeling a little warm and fuzzy and then come home to catch one of the most useless spectacles in television. Every four years two very decent and probably well meaning people are chosen by the citizens of the united states to fight each other in the public arena. The whole system is designed to promote a civilized version of a prize fight. A fight where the american public is the trainer, promoter and judge. Every November we watch the final stages of a fight where two men who have absolutely no ill will towards each other have discovered that they have to tear each down in shameless ways in order to win. Two men forced to become enemies. But it is a fight where the fighter isnt even the winner, he gains very little. The people who chose/trained and promoted the candidate gain the most in the end. They gain the influence change the direction of country. No wonder we are bipartisan country. We manufacture our hatred for ourselves. Its a funny kind of psychology that we have developed in America. Even our elections have become an expression of our desire to compete, dominate and live and let die.

Have You Ever....

....shoved a hot poker in your eye? I didn't think so. But the truth is that we do voluntarily inflict pain on ourselves, in some form or another, on a nearly daily basis. The bonus truth is that we do it because we get some satisfaction from it. Most of us aren't crazy enough to actually shove a hot poker in our eyes but we will find some small way to stimulate those pain receptors without destroying one of our 5 senses. Pain is part of the learning process. You probably had to learn the hard way which things were hot and which were not. Even Snoop Dog knows to "Drop it like it's hot." I have a theory, and it is that pain is so deeply embedded in our primitive psyche that it is the primary way that we prove our existence to ourselves. Thus we prick ourselves repeatedly releasing adrenaline and for a moment there is a rush. And over time we have developed a Stockholm Syndrome-esque relationship with the pain of our lives. Basically, i think that there is an emotional attachment to the suffering and all you have to do when we don't feel like you are in enough pain is get that 9volt battery and apply it directly to your tongue as a reminder.

I think that almost all people on some level are inherently masochistic and this just comes naturally. I don't want to limit this to physical pain either. We can hurt ourselves emotionally in equally small increments without destroying our emotional capacity. Why do i even bother to mention any of this? Because I just spent the last 10-15 minutes doing exactly what I have writing about (not the battery thing). I had to rationalize why in the world I would intentionally do something unpleasant to myself. I figured that the rationale for doing it would make a great intentionally vague blog.

Also keep in mind that I take alot of time between when I post something and when I begin writing something. There are usually weeks and months between the beginning and the end. So the odds are that this topic has no current bearing.

Quotes Regarding Pain

"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God"-Aeschylus

"I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine." Henry Rollins

Like Father, Like Son and Unlike Son

I am the Unlike Son

I had an engaging political debate with my father and brother recently. It occurred on mother's day after dinner. My mom, my brother's wife and my girlfriend Jenny were all present for this landmark moment in family history as well. Somehow the men-folk ended up in the kitchen in deep discussion and the women-folk ended up in the living also in deep discussion; just alot more polite. The way the males in my family communicate are with loud voices and hand gestures. I suppose it was enough to drive the women-folk into the living room. I don't think that there has been a political discussion in my family ever. I never knew what my Dad thought or my brother thought about anything political. I assumed they thought like me since we all lived together and grew up together. I am not sure how it started but conversation opened my eyes to what the rest of America must be struggling with. And I didn't like what they had to say.

How the West Will be Won

We started with immigration. It turns out that my Dad and brother are more into nationalism than I am. My dad asked me whether I thought it was a right or a privilege to be an American citizen. I actually told him that I didn't really care where I was as long as I was doing architecture and getting paid fairly for it. I didn't really understand the point of his question and I don't think that he understood my response. The point, to me, was that I just want work at doing something that I enjoy that is going to put food on the table. Which is what I think that most people want, including immigrants. And if we are dedicated to proposition that all men are created equal and that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right then we should find ways to help the people who are striving to claim the rights that we believe that they have.

Fear and Loathing

The conversation turned to oil. I knew that they were speaking from a position of ignorance and fear so I had to forgive them for what they said. I have read more on this and studied this more than both of them combined. They have both bought the idea that there is going to be some kind of near catastrophic economic crash caused by oil that will make the depression look tame, that the American living standards are going to fall to unprecedented levels. So I asked them to tell me about their standards of living. Several TV's each, lawns, 5 cars between them. They commute a combined 100+ miles each day each way. They said "Hey, we live in a suburban culture now. How do you expect us to change?" I swear that my brother stopped short of telling me that the sky was falling. I told them that they were not thinking things through very well. I told them that they had forgotten how the world used to work. How cities used to be dense and people lived on bus lines and train lines. People used to live close to where they worked.They weren't buying it. I still don't think it will come to the point where we have tenements and typhoid all over again. Before we quit our suburban culture we will find a way to make cheap fuel again. In my opinion business will continue more or less as usual.

More LOST

There is another thing that I think is amazing about LOST. Despite the popularity of the show, LOST has not produced a pop culture cliche. Pop-culture has tendency to devour things that are rabidly popular and in doing so reduces that thing until all that is left is a small piece of the original that becomes a symbol of the thing. Pop culture ingests television readily and acts quickly to reduce it. There is almost always some signature phrase or icon that emerges once pop-culture has fully digested and reduced popular thing. Kit the Talking Car, from the TV show "Knight Rider" was before my time but I still know the reference when I see it. Kit is all I know of the show but I still recognize the symbol. (The usage of the symbol is another issue entirely) "Star Trek" is another example. Who doesn't know what it means to be "beamed up"? but how many people have seen a complete episode of the original "Star Trek". Up to this point LOST has resisted being reduced to anything less complex.

What happens to massively popular unsymbolized things when they are forgotten? I think that they become something akin to black holes in space. The only way that we know that they exist is because of the affect they have on things around it. If I could cite an example then it would shoot a hole in my theory. I guess the second option would be that, like electrons, they can be located only for a second before blinking off to somewhere unknown without any proof that they were there.

The conundrum for LOST is that the things that ultimately do not become symbolized are truly lost. Maybe it is only appropriate a that show about people stranded on a desert island that is disconnected from space and time is destined to be forgotten. The momentary nature of LOST, mirrored in the show and in reality, is another reason that I think LOST is amazing.

The TSA - Or Why I am Never Flying Again

Holy %$#@! I am never flying again. My neighbor works for the Transportation Security Aministration aka the TSA. My neighbor that I loathe and despise for her domestic violence, whining cat and dirty indie kid parties that run till 3am works for f'ing TSA. HOLY F$&*ing S*&t! Seriously, only the government could create a bureaucratically bloated money pit of an agency that would hire this kind of person. Unbelievable. If you were a flying monkey HOLDING A NUCLEAR WEAPON I doubt that my neighbor would even blink an eye. Dammit.