The Lost Generation?

Lost Generation

Note: watch video before reading rant

Lost Generation actually refers to a group of American writers who lived in Paris after the First World War. These writers were looking for a more cosmopolitan and cultured way of life, seeing America as being market-driven, vapid, without a soul etc.. The Lost Generation were a set of oddly passionate, romantic and intellectual wordsmiths, who picked up stakes and moved somewhere they could drink wine in the morning and let the cat do the babysitting.

So, this new (lost) generation, who are *?* are either apathetic money-driven isolates, or principled to an astounding degree, and wholeheartedly believe in the values of marriage, and family. It's a schizophrenic juxtaposition to be sure, and suggests that whoever is doing the believing here is going through a pretty major ideological crisis.

The nice thing about the Lost Generation, (and perhaps this is only available as an analysis after all the books have been published, the memoirs written and the movie-adaptions made) is that they were people who struggled with their identity as what many continentals considered upstart Americans, and their desire to live creative, non-conforming lives. Their apparent apathy (at least apathy in the puritanical up at 7 to get to work sense) and refusal to commit to values they disliked was not laziness, it was protest, their passion was not a public global thing, it was a private desire to create a lifestyle and ethics that were not available to them at home. In fact the Lost Generation were America's first born and raised Bohemians, and that makes them kind of wonderful.

I get weirded out by videos like the one above, because that definition of young people, as either totally tuned out, or the Florence Nightingale of Post-consumer society - here to nurse the world out of it's current malaise, is not a definition that springs from the generation itself. And unlike the real Lost Generation, it doesn't leave much room for the exploration of new, as yet undefined, shared values and ideals by members of the generation.

So who is the Lost Generation actually?

Well, this video was made by the AARP, (the American Association of Retired Persons), so that might leave a bit of a clue as to who exactly is experiencing such deep fissures in the philosophical bedrock of their core beliefs.

This video is actually addressing the existential fears, and also the hopes and dreams for a "better world" of soon to be retired, or already retired Baby-Boomers. What makes this video insidious, is that through the voice of a younger actress, those fears and dreams, are unceremoniously dumped on our daughters/sons/younger sisters/brothers/nieces/nephew/neighbours.

Baby Boomers are the Lost Generation. Lost because they are experiencing a much more profound sense of their obligation to, and implication in, a messed-up social and economic system, and lost because taking responsibility for that much would make anyone afraid, sad and a possibly also a bit in denial.

This video says; "Here young people - let these be your fears and dreams, we are not sure what we can do about the world, and we don't feel we have much time left either. We love you and it scares us to think we will leave this world with so much less for you then we had, we hope you can share this fear and also take on a bit of the work that is left to do."

Whether young people want to help however is up to them, it should not be forced upon them as a generational definition. Not cool mom and dad.