I am young enough to have given a reality check to the hippie teachers who infested the schools in the late 1970s. There were enough ex war teachers to introduce me to Latin, Shakespeare and Pope. The locusts from 1968 removed these things from the curriculum and replaced it with the worst literature available because they deemed it relevant.
Drawing the bridge to previous generations behind them.
They are now trying to bring their market model into postgraduate education — driven as usual, by those useful muppets from the Canadian college of physicians and Surgeons — and the still working children of the Thatcherism who infest my nation’s capital I cannot say much more because I have skin in this game. I’m trying to ensure the next generation get a fair shake.
Because the Boomers want to taint those that follow with their brush, particularly in NZ, when peak fertility was not 1950 but a decade later.
I don’t want to kill the hippies. I want them broken, retired and repenting. Before they ruin everything.
All of this could simply be a bit of cosmic justice. The generally accepted theory is that Western culture collapsed in the 1960’s when the English speaking world allowed their kids to pull down the institutions that made all of it possible. That is certainly true. In fact, the Boomers have been like a wave of locusts, sweeping through each aspect of the culture as they aged, leaving nothing but waste behind them. In the 60’s and 70’s they destroyed social norms. The 80’s they destroyed education. The 90’s is was politics.
As the Boomers head into their golden years, they are prepared to bankrupt Western society by becoming a great financial burden, but the youth have other ideas. It would be amusing if the Boomers are eventually vanquished by a youth movement that is, at its heart, an embrace of everything the Boomers rejected. I cannot find an example of restoration genocide, but there is a first time for everything. The phrase “you have to go back” will become the slogan of this thing for a number of reasons.
Not being a boomer or a youth, I have no dog in this fight. I know, I know. “First they came for the Boomers and I did nothing because I am not a Boomer.” That’s a chance I’m willing to take. My guess is Gen-X will be just as easy for the kids to ignore as we were for the Boomers. There’s a lot of Boomers to push off a cliff, so my bet is they wear themselves out before they get to me anyway. At that point, I may have died from excessive amusement, so bring on the Boomercide!
I have met, and at times sat in jams, with musos from the punk era (that was a long time ago, and before I became a violist). The number of them who ended up hooked on opiates — which are so hard to get in NZ that chemists use codeine as a base for heroin — wer significant. The cost of that lifestyle was great. And these were the punks: the hippies died like flies.
But Moses predicted this.
11 Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” 13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” 14 No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.
15 See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. 16 If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. 17 But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. 19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, 20 loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
Now, the covenant we now have is with Christ, but that does not mean that the law of Moses is without utility. For if you keep the laws of Moses it will in general lead to you living a longer and happier life. It is far more important that you put your love and time and effort into your children and your family — caring for your kids and parents and welcoming your cousins and neices — than it is for you to get that last promotion or have another 100K invested in the bank or a good car.
Our brother Cappy pointed out years ago that a man can live with a beater car, a motorbike, some clothes in a studio apartment and be happy because he can then take time for his hobbies. What he did not note then, but has later, is that living hedonically leads to boredom. With two stepkids, three of my own and three grandkids I experience all emotions but boredom. The generation before the hippies did this, and at their funerals (Bruce was a good example of these people) the fact that they had looked after people throughout their long lives led to them being honoured.
those who break the bonds we were created to have generally — yes there are exceptions — have lives that are nasty, brutal and short. Hobbes was correct.
These locusts are not my generation. They are not anyone’s generation. Do not be them. Do not be like them. The time of Billy Bragg has gone. We are at war. Deus vult.