It’s funny how my attitude toward today’s Millennial hipsters is exactly the same as how I felt about hippies back during the 1960s and early 70s.
Mincing no words, I hated them and wanted to see them subjected to severe punishment just for existing.
I’ll never forget the summer between my 5th and 6th grades. Something very strange must have happened, because a fair share of my formerly normal classmates came back to school as junior pseudo-hippies. Why their parents allowed them to act out like this, I can only wonder.
I do know that by the time our class graduated high school in the spring of 1975, folks were starting to clean up their acts.
At 59, I am what I believe has been termed a “trailing-edge Baby Boomer.” According to some sources, my sub-generation’s values aren’t quite the same as those who were teens during the late 1960s.
One article I read several years ago stated that it was the younger boomers who rejected counterculture values and became the “Reagan Youth.”
Well, I’m not sure you can prove this. But from a common sense perspective, I agree.
Looking back on my memories of the late 60s, when I was 11, 12, 13 — all I saw was a lot of people a little older than me making fools of themselves and causing immense grief to their parents. Now, my parents and I had our ups and downs, but I never would have adopted an entire lifestyle calculated to spite them.
So, nothing has really changed 50 years on. Youth culture is basically nothing but a lot of narcissistic playacting.
Still, if the past is any guide, most of the rising generation will muddle through — although this generation looks uniquely unprepared for the trials of daily living we all must face.
Woodstock - 1969
Here’’s the difference: society pretty much stayed the same for those “misguided youths” and they finally fell into place and that generation was a pretty innovative generation. Society now and corporations are changing culture to please them, and that’s what I disagree with. We had a meeting where we were told what the next generation of employees “expected” and how we (a government organization”) were going to have to change to accommodate it. You can imagine my reaction!