The Inter-Generational Elite

In my travels I have discovered a lot of resentment of the baby-boomer generation by modern youth. Beware; this is how all revolutions are controlled; by dividing a community against itself.

The baby-boomer elite led the “hippy” revolution of the late 60s and early 70s. It died when hope died. The baby boomer elite then led the survivalist phase of the late 70s after bitterness set in, but like all movements based on fear and anger, it imploded. Then the elite baby-boomer women led the new age movement of the 80s until it was taken over by the American publicity machine and got turned into a money making enterprise. Then came the health revolution, again led by the baby-boomers who where were starting to realise that just thinking positive thoughts wasn’t going to save them from the combined effects of hard living and contamination from living in a toxic environment. Where are the elites of other generations? Why have they largely not stepped up to join the elite club of the intelligentsia?

Let’s look at a little bit of history to help answer this question. The baby boomers were well educated. Subsequent generations are not. The baby boomers were the lucky generation. We had the last of classical education, and developed the first of the modern freedoms. But modern freedoms led to a decline in educational standards. Subsequent generations have gradually lost the logical disciplines, clear thought and clear communication created by a classical education. This makes them easier to control and makes it harder for those who should be the intelligentsia to make themselves heard. Nothing loses credibility faster than bad writing and unclear speech.

But they can still be heard if they do two things. They must get educated and they must learn from the past. They can get educated by reading, reading and reading. The can learn from the past by reading the wisdom of the past; they can kill two birds with one stone. Once they know what we did as a generation, they can work out why we failed to change society in the way we set out to change society. If they can see what we did wrong, they can avoid making the same mistakes.

Our big mistake; this is my opinion? We believed that it was our entire generation and the entire world that was waking up to the need to live in a new and more harmonious way. It wasn’t. It was simply the elite of the baby-boomer generation who wanted this. The rest did what people normally did; got jobs, got mortgages, had babies then fought for 40 years to hold down increasingly demanding and unrewarding jobs. The rest of us were too idealistic. We were not prepared to admit that we were an elite, and that the human world needs its intelligentsia, its intellectual elite, to diagnose problems and create solutions.

Once you realise that, perspectives change.

There is currently a new generation attempting to step up into the intelligentsia category. They think it is their generation that is waking up, but they are making exactly the same mistake we made. Sorry to disappoint you boys. It’s not your generation; it’s you. And what’s more, you are simply and merely the next generation of potential leaders stepping into the arena to join we old hands. You are the same as us; you are part of the elite that exists in every generation. But you know, if you don’t learn the lessons from the past, if you refuse to learn from us and about us, you will fail just as we have failed – to date.