LONG AS I'VE GOT MINE

"I'm goin' where the water tastes like wine....you've got a home, long as I've got mine."
                                                                  Canned Heat:  "Goin' Up the Country."

   In 2020, "OK, Boomer," is an ongoing insult (friendly, I believe) that young folks use on each other when they believe their peers are acting stodgy, grumpy, old. Well, we of the Post-War Baby Boom have gotten old. And again, people are talking about "my generation." As our parents, the WWII or "Greatest" generation, passes on, we are turning into the same old codgers we made fun of in our youth. We know now that young people, having gotten to the point where they believe they know everything, have yet to learn that history repeats itself. They will learn. Hoping they will learn more easily than we did, we old boomers of the "Woodstock" generation" need to share our memories and growing pains, even though the youth of today, like ourselves when we were young, will probably not pay attention. It doesn't matter. We need to share.

   Being born in 1948, I emphasize the older boomers, personally influenced by the War in Vietnam and the civil rights movement, who have more in common with War Babies and even people born late in the Depression than with younger boomers. Events of those dramatic year forced many Americans to question our country's ethical, economic, political, and social balance, leading to fundamental confrontations that made people of all ages at the least extremely uncomfortable. Of course relationships get complicated when we consider younger and older relatives of people directly involved in those intense events. Still, personally, "my generation" refers to people born roughly between 1937 and 1955.

   In the sixties and seventies, as we of the Woodstock generation became adults, we did "as best we could" what people do, what we always had intended to do: took responsibility as citizens of our society. Early on, we gave up the goal of "going where the water tastes like wine." This line from "Goin' Up the Country," Canned Heat's song featured in the Woodstock movie, was a nice fantasy which did not square with reality, and we knew it, or learned it. Overdoses (including Alan Wilson, the writer of those lines) along with drug-induced psychotic behavior rather quickly taught us that a transcendent state through chemicals was no answer to mankind's problems. Besides, being human, we wanted to accomplish something. With maturity most of us learned to moderate or abstain. It was not always easy, and those who could not perished.

   In this respect we are like our parents' generation, who liked to alter their realities with alcohol and nicotine; we simply added to it. The negative effects of our elders' drugs of choice had become frighteningly obvious by the time we were coming of age. As members of the greatest generation morphed from youthful, jubilant victors in WWII into people with jobs and families approaching middle age, they discovered the difficulties of moderating or eliminating these activities. Since parents naturally want their children to avoid their mistakes, they were discomfited to watch their children add other chemicals to the mix. Along with drugs, large numbers of young people took part in protests against war, poverty, prejudice, pollution, political corruption, crooked business, and a lot more of society's ills. Many parents wondered if their children were in a drug-addled frenzy to destroy our society--a society young people had grown up in, for the most part comfortably.

   The elites took a gamble and retaliated against those protests with brute force. Older Americans were largely silent, and some actually favored using the big stick. Not that the oldsters approved of the conditions youngsters were protesting--they doubted there was much anybody could do about it.
They knew that destruction of property would be ineffective. And there was always the ugly shroud of communism to frighten anybody who believed in democracy. What about tuning in, turning on, dropping out? Who would get the work done? Did anybody ever tell the younger generation about the process of getting something to eat? Were Americans spending hard-earned, easily-taken tax dollars to send kids to college just to destroy our civilization? How had America's youths strayed so far from their American heritage? Drugs were a handy explanation.

   With time, boomers matured and turned off the drugs, at least constant over-consumption--or tried to. The Woodstock generation began to assume its responsibilities in society, following generations past. Actually knowing the process of getting food after all, we went to work. Many of us took seriously the sacred notion of rugged individualism and tried to avoid, or at least soften, the top-down corporate party line. Some were fairly successful, meaning they earned their living and kept their dignity without going mad. Some were so successful they became corporate titans themselves. And we learned in the real world, water tastes different from wine.

   Another line from the Canned Heat song was "you've got a home, long as I've got mine." From hippies in Haight-Ashbury across the continent to revelers at Woodstock, the notion that we shared a common fate and should share the solutions was a strong sentiment in our youthful culture, and it united us for a while. The concept of the human family is still with us, though considerably diluted with reality. But within most of us aging rugged individualists is a core that still shares a universal desire for a better world.

   The quest for a just, equitable world is not the sole province of any generation. Thoughtful people throughout history have sought this goal.  But in the 1950's and 1960's mass media made Americans aware that the ideals our country professed were not being met. Being Americans, having the energy and comparative social freedom to do so, we boomers took action. Some of our actions were inconvenient. Others were destructive. Angry reactions from older generations allowed the power structure to commit harsh repression in the name of preserving America. Still, Americans of all ages were forced to look at the severe social and economic problems our country faced, and the injustices our country committed.

   We who grew up in the years after WWII were the first to be innately aware of our comfortable circumstances, of the world's plenty. The two or three generations before us were too busy with WWI, the Depression, and WWII to notice just how good the world had gotten at producing all human needs. Boomers saw that Earth was, or could be, a place of plenty for everyone. On a planet so provident, humans might simply stop fighting and enjoy life. At the same time our parents, who had survived the privations of depression and war, emphasized the value of work, of each doing his or her part. The old people felt in their hearts that children should be seen and not heard.

   The old people of those times slipped their mortal coils, and the greatest generation, having lived long lives in greater numbers than ever before, are passing too. That leaves us boomers in the position of having briefly inherited the earth before we pass it on to younger people, who make fun of us for being old. Some of us still desire to pass on a world that is pleasant, or at least habitable. Though we
did what we could, our goal of a world free from fear and want, where everyone enjoys freedom of speech and religion, is still our of reach.

   The greatest generation hoped to leave us a world that reaches those goals, and fell short. The main factor behind their failure was human nature. We all need the basic necessities, and we all like some comforts. People need to raise families and get by in whatever cultures they find themselves in, without undue harassment. The daily needs of survival take large amounts of time and energy--virtually everything everybody had, until machines lifted some of the burden. The problem, as everyone knows, is one of management of production and distribution, and while we all have differing opinions concerning how human production should be distributed, the fact is that today, as always, a few have incredible riches while many have barely enough to survive. The legacy of a just and equitable society is not ours to leave. While we can hope for progress, our time is short, and we will leave our heirs a lot of poverty and injustice. We need to leave our experiences, and the lessons we have learned, that they might have a chance to build a world that is more just and equal than the one they'll be getting from us.

   Not all boomers want to make the world a better place for everyone. We are many, and we are human. Some grew up mean and hostile. Some grew up greedy. We all needed to figure out how to take care of ourselves. We turned out to be not so different from our parents. A just, equal, provident society is what most humans desire, to live in and to leave behind. In society, as within ourselves, we all seek balance. And we're not there yet.

   We boomers, having reached old age (though not as old as I used to think it was) are now subjects of ridicule to young people. This is what young people do. It's a rite of passage. Our responsibility is to understand. Our privilege is to be understanding. To Generation X, the Millennials, and Generation Y, we can bestow our experience, our education, and our continuing hopes and fears. They can use what we have acquired as guidelines to avoid some of our mistakes. Or they can sneer "OK, Boomer," and go on their ways. Their reactions are not our business. Ours is to bequeath something of value whether they value it or not. We are still a long way from the society many of us sought when we were young, but is still a worthwhile goal. Some day humanity may achieve culture that is free from want, free from fear, where people can speak their minds and practice their faiths--where people can honestly say "You've got a home, long as I've got mine"