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Are the "Baby Boomers" at odds with social inclusion and equality hypocrites?

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posted on Jun, 29 2015 @ 05:39 AM
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posted on Jun, 29 2015 @ 07:19 AM
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a reply to: woodwardjnr

That's fantastic! I'd never heard it before.



posted on Jun, 29 2015 @ 08:53 AM
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a reply to: JadeStar


So while i'm was facepalming over what I perceived as profound ignorance I thought to ask how old she was. She never answered.

Something I've noticed about some (some) people who are having a hard time with change - it makes them angry. Something else I've noticed is that they seem to want to vent by saying ugly things that are personal - but they can't then go on to have a personal interaction. It's interesting to think about - but maybe they feel more comfortable insulting people in abstraction - they don't want to have an actual interaction


But if people supported them why didn't they speak their mind then? Were there just not enough or did people just not discuss it out of fear or discomfort?

All of that - and more. This is what I was trying to point out with my post - things are so different now that it's very hard to explain. Back then - interracial dating didn't happen - not often. Back then, if you were against the war - there were consequences. Official and societal

I'm not an actual boomer - but I lived in their wake if you see what I mean. I know those times - I can feel them

I can't understand the Great Depression in the same way, or Pearl Harbor - or the war, or the Nazis... That's all history. While I can understand it - very easily - I will never be able to feel it

But as I write that I realize something - age does bring something with it that makes a past you could never really know more tangible. Life has a way of making it all feel more accessible

The shorter answer to your question is - in a very real way the people in charge of morality made certain behaviors (even acceptance) more difficult if not impossible. No doubt - there were people living in the south during the generations of slavery that felt it was a crime against humanity but were in no position to say or do anything about it. Majorities are like that


whenI look in the mirror, i realize i am a product of it -all- not just one thing or another but ALL of that had to happen for me to be...well me, here, alive and posting on ATS.

that hit me all at once the other day and that's epically deep!

It is deep :-) It's the same for all of us

When you get to be a certain age - you'll realize how much you've changed, and how you haven't changed at all. I'm sitting here writing this and in my mind we're the same age - life is weird like that. We're all riding on the shoulders of the generations that came before us :-)


Without them i would probably not exist. I realize that their work and sacrifice may not be fully appreciated by a lot of my generation but they are appreciated by me.


Without them things couldn't have changed - but you also need to remember that its your generation that made the changes that pushed it over the edge - by living your life fully and not accepting anything less than what you deserve. You'll see - in the future the things you've accomplished will be very obvious - to everyone

Blaming the generation(s) that came before you is exactly the way it should be. Someday you'll be saying things like they just don't write songs like that anymore

:-)



posted on Jun, 29 2015 @ 04:09 PM
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In between the young generation now and the Boomers, us Xer's pretty much don't give a damn.

I saw a HUGE change in my parents, which may have been a slow process I didn't recognize - until it just flipped over completely after 9/11.

Suddenly, they became dedicated church attending christians and conservative republicans, happily sending their grandchildren off to war. They started snearing about the mexicans taking american jobs, gays and socialists destroying the backbone of our nation, and welfare mothers draining the life blood out of good american workers.

This, from they who once screamed "Hell no, we won't go", "make love not war", argued about the necessity of helping third world countries and protecting immigrants, divorced early and left their kids to live off welfare and state paid school lunches, and experimented with homosexuality for a period with a mexican lover.


It is perhaps not fair to generalize too much. But my siblings and I talk often about how terribly hypocritical our parents are, and it has caused some pretty big conflicts at times.



posted on Jun, 30 2015 @ 02:58 AM
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a reply to: woodwardjnr

So simple but yet so profound. Things like that should be taught in school. Inner child is the key.

Thanks for the moment of bliss.


edit on 2015 6 30 by LoveSolMoonDeath because: (no reason given)



posted on Jun, 30 2015 @ 04:23 AM
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a reply to: Bluesma

About generations and people's parents.

I think it is just the normal process of maturation that brings a transformation of ideology and opinions, all influenced by culture obviously.

I am a generation x, born in the early 70's and my ideas have progressed. As a teenager I was very liberal, I considered gayness not an issue of society, I went to a lot of parties and was mostly hedonistic. As I have matured and added life experiences I have learned more about things that previously had uninformed opinions on. For example gayness, having worked in catering management for years in my 20's and hearing the awful experiences and behaviour of gay waiters, that were always attention seeking, out to shock etc, they seen everything through a crazy gay lens and constantly told the rest of the staff details about their exploits. I realised that the gay scene they were part of is far from okay, a blight on society. I won't give details but really unethical and disgusting. I only learned that from experience. I don't hate gay people or consider myself anti gay but those gay men I knew of weren't mentally stable, mincing around calling themselves 'queens' using a fake style of voice and constantly attention seeking is not the behaviour of rational people. It is an observation, I don't expect everyone to agree but it is an example of evolving opinions based on experience. There are a lot of things my opinions have evolved on since being more informed. It isn't hypocritical, just human nature.

That said, my own upbringing was far from not being a plethora of hypocrisy. From very traditional conservative Victorian values, my maternal family attended 4 churches every Sunday as children and can recite plenty of the bible. As a child I was told daily about ''boys being better than girls'', (they aren't) and constant attempts at enforcing subservience (I have a strong character and will always refuse that), to the point I was being violently attacked regularly and expected not to defend, all in the name of 'male dominance' (and probably evil and hatred of other females). I moved out when I was 17 then moved to another country. My mum still hates the idea of me being educated and has constantly said over the years when not in a relationship that it was ''a man that I needed'' instead of getting promoted at work or doing postgraduate study. All that while she would criticise her own parental influence as being ''old fashioned'' and even now refuses to wear certain clothes she considers ''old fashioned'', that I would say is hypocrisy. Though I guess not all boomers are like that, most I know of are rather traditional and mostly always were, though they thought nothing of wearing the shortest skirts and being hedonistic in the 60's.


edit on 30-6-2015 by theabsolutetruth because: (no reason given)



posted on Jun, 30 2015 @ 05:07 AM
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originally posted by: theabsolutetruth
a reply to: Bluesma

That said, my own upbringing was far from not being a plethora of hypocrisy. From very traditional conservative Victorian values, my maternal family attended 4 churches every Sunday as children and can recite plenty of the bible. As a child I was told daily about ''boys being better than girls'', (they aren't) and constant attempts at enforcing subservience (I have a strong character and will always refuse that), to the point I was being violently attacked regularly and expected not to defend, all in the name of 'male dominance' (and probably evil and hatred of other females).



You know what is amazing?

You almost perfectly described part of my experience growing up in my family and community.



posted on Jun, 30 2015 @ 06:49 AM
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originally posted by: theabsolutetruth
Though I guess not all boomers are like that, most I know of are rather traditional and mostly always were, though they thought nothing of wearing the shortest skirts and being hedonistic in the 60's.



Just goes to show we should never assume our experiences are universal! I can't even imagine such a lifestyle and education!

I've always seen the Boomer generation as my parents were-acid dropping, pot smoking, group and bi sex doing, activists for feminism and cheering on the Black Panthers, perpetual students...in the middle of the Watts riots and Woodstock, meditating to sitars and eating vegetarian. But I'm from California.
So their switch to hating gays, and anyone with other than white skin, thumping bibles, raging against abortion and socialism (deep frying their Thanksgiving turkey...) was REALLY a huge turn around.

But I should have seen it coming when they became full on yuppies right before- they have always just been whatever will allow them to benefit the most and claim their moral superiority, in one way or another.



posted on Jun, 30 2015 @ 08:49 AM
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a reply to: Bluesma

I grew up in rural Scotland in a town lots of churches and also lots of pubs, alcohol is normalised there and so is having bigoted opinions. Few boomers there were anything other than traditional though a childhood friend's parents were a bit wild. There is a major masonic influence there and in the 70's and 80's a culture of male dominance, of the unethical sort.



posted on Jun, 30 2015 @ 08:57 AM
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That sounds awfully dreadful yet I can relate to you there.

a reply to: theabsolutetruth



posted on Jun, 30 2015 @ 09:47 AM
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posted on Jun, 30 2015 @ 09:56 AM
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posted on Jun, 30 2015 @ 02:50 PM
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a reply to: JadeStar
I'm 59, had gay friends since the 80's. I'm glad the fight is over. Love is Good. I'm straight, white and old, don't categorize me.
edit on 30-6-2015 by ugmold because: addition



posted on Jun, 30 2015 @ 03:15 PM
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originally posted by: theabsolutetruth

For example gayness, having worked in catering management for years in my 20's and hearing the awful experiences and behaviour of gay waiters, that were always attention seeking, out to shock etc, they seen everything through a crazy gay lens and constantly told the rest of the staff details about their exploits. I realised that the gay scene they were part of is far from okay, a blight on society. I won't give details but really unethical and disgusting. I only learned that from experience. I don't hate gay people or consider myself anti gay but those gay men I knew of weren't mentally stable, mincing around calling themselves 'queens' using a fake style of voice and constantly attention seeking is not the behaviour of rational people. It is an observation, I don't expect everyone to agree but it is an example of evolving opinions based on experience. There are a lot of things my opinions have evolved on since being more informed. It isn't hypocritical, just human nature.


My dad was a bit of a racist (he's better now). When he was in college, he worked as a teacher's assistant in a high school that was in a very bad neighborhood. He had some very bad experiences with some of the male black teens there, so that started his prejudiced views against blacks. Then when he was a manager in an insurance office, some of his secretarial staff were black women. He saw some laziness and bad attitudes from them, so that just fueled his views.

The truth is, he was around some not so great groups of people. There are many blacks who work hard and who DO become successful. Over the years, he started to see that, and realized that he shouldn't categorize a group of people according to his narrow experience.

I have had two gay bosses. I became good friends with one of them, and met his group of gay friends. All of them are highly educated, financially very successful, and very professional. They are all in monogamous relationships with their partners. They don't go around telling everyone of their sexual exploits.

Don't categorize a group of people according to your narrow experience.



posted on Jun, 30 2015 @ 03:21 PM
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a reply to: kaylaluv

I bet you can't even quote any 'categorisation of a group' from my comment.

You also know nothing of my experience so your accusation of me having ''narrow experience'' was a perfect example of hypocrisy. You presumed then categorized.



posted on Jun, 30 2015 @ 03:57 PM
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a reply to: theabsolutetruth

Sorry, my mistake. I guess what you were really saying was that you were only around a small group of people at that time who were gay party animals, which has nothing do with all the other gays in the world who are as normal as you or I. I agree with that!



posted on Jul, 1 2015 @ 01:38 AM
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originally posted by: ugmold
a reply to: JadeStar
I'm 59, had gay friends since the 80's. I'm glad the fight is over. Love is Good. I'm straight, white and old, don't categorize me.


You rock! *hug*



posted on Jul, 1 2015 @ 02:22 AM
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I understand the valid objection of generalization.... there is nothing more provocative than hearing a generalization which pertains to you and that you don't relate to.

Generalizations refer to a majority in a group though, and that can often be verified statistically.

That said, in this context , of the Boomer generation attitudes and behaviors, perhaps it is more fair to use hyponyms- which I was aware of when I posted, but did not specify-

The behavior I am pointing at as typically of that generation concerns people of that age group in southern California in the sixties and seventies.
There was a local culture that was quite extreme at that time and that many young people either fell into, or came there exactly to be part of that. There has been (in the majority) a very big swing the opposite way amongst that particular group, and they have strangely not been willing to acknowledge it. Unlike those who have pointed out- "we change, we learn , as we age".

With my parents and their peers, their past life at those times is a taboo nobody dares mention. It was as if it didn't happen.



posted on Jul, 1 2015 @ 02:49 AM
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a reply to: Bluesma

Generalisation happens constantly, it is part of human nature.

The PC brigade attempt at banning generalisations is very silly and hypocritical, especially seeing as most of the groups it supports generalise themselves, such as LGBT specific places for those generalised as that persuasion, specific ethnic organisations for those generalised as being of an ethnic category, etc.



posted on Jul, 1 2015 @ 09:30 AM
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a reply to: theabsolutetruth


The PC brigade attempt at banning generalisations is very silly and hypocritical


Relax. Nobody is banning anything. Take a good look around

Do you see every challenge to your way of thinking (and supposed moral authority) as an attempt to ban something?

Give it a rest - nobody owns thinking. All the arguments against Political Correctness are just a transparent attempt to promote another kind of political correctness

If you're that afraid of new ideas - I have to imagine this life is a very stressful experience for you



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