The generation that marched against war, embraced counterculture and promised to change the world now votes overwhelmingly for conservative parties. What happened to the ideals of the baby boomers?
The incubators of Woodstock, and closer to home Nimbin, those who marched in the ‘Moratoriums,’ hippies, who the establishment feared would pull down the whole sacred edifice of capital and progress, the whole counter-cultural milieu. Those wild days of the sixties and seventies. Whatever happened? Why have we of that generation become for the most part, such conservative boring old farts?
Poll after poll make abundantly (frighteningly) clear just how conservative we ‘baby boomers’ have become. I’m about to turn 72, a significant number in Babylonian numerology (think months, hours, minutes, degrees) and I wonder, how on earth did this happen to my generation. Who flicked the switch? When did we become ‘the squares’ (our parents?) we used to so disparage?
Gone are the idealist young rebels, burning with zeal, ready to change the world – we are now the generation marked by stolid right wing voting, a strong tendency even to One Nation! Polls show six out of 10 of us would cast our votes for the right, a quarter for One Nation, if an election were now called. Just 1.5 per cent for the Greens (just one recent, but fairly representative poll)!
It’s depressing, despairing. It makes me question, why has my generation now become for the most part, mere oxygen wasters? Is it time to bid farewell and shuffle off?
It’s all as good a reason as any to pull out what remains of my rapidly thinning hair.
Most of us ought, at our age, one would think, be more free than ever. What is this desperate hanging on to security and the status quo all about? Why the fears? What’s with the timidity? It’s a fruitless pursuit after all, for soon coming to get us with ultimate finality is that moment which makes all pursuit of, and hanging on to security pointless, even laughable: the ‘final transition.’ In an instant,’bang,’ all we are striving to hang onto, gone.
Facing that, there-goes-everything moment, what on earth are we trying to grasp? ‘You can’t take it with you.’ What’s then with the conservatism?
It’s not as though we’re short. Most of us have all the material comforts we could ever want, homes (yeah you could buy them in our time), good super, health care like no previous generation. We’re secure, so why are we then so dammed frightened, resistant to any change? What’s with the anxiety? Our security, while still on this mortal coil, is covered. So why are we living crippled lives built around the most base safety and security? On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs we ought instead be ‘self-actualising.’
For an old hippie like me who spent hours listening to all that great music: Dylan, Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, the Cat, Rodriguez, Joni Mitchell, Lennon, Melanie, and many others I could name, it is truly devastating.
Those same polls showing just how far my generation has fallen, also reveal the progressive nature of the young – 65 per cent progressive (radical even) over just 35 per cent conservative. I won’t be around to find out, but please, please, don’t become like most of my cohort, fading to insipid grey.
Re-kindle that fire we once tended, and then keep it burning, maybe even blazing. To borrow an expression, ‘grow old disgracefully.’
Talking about my generation. What ever happened to the revolution? Maybe we should have died ‘before we got old?’ Or did we? Sad.
John Queripel is a Newcastle-based historian, theologian, social commentator and published author of four books. His latest book, ‘In Wisdom and in Passion: Comparing and Contrasting Buddha and Christ’. His examination of the Easter events, ‘On the Third Day: Re-looking at the Resurrection’ has just been re-printed. His blog may be found at www.johnqueripelblog.com.Substack / https://johnqueripel.substack.com’