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Saturday, December 20, 2014

Silent Majority Boomers - not their parents - running (and ruining) this planet

I've changed my thinking - at least a little.

The unacknowledged divisions within the Boomer Generation


I still believe that the most extreme and the most vocal supporters of climate change denial are older people - men mostly - in their eighties - people who were teenagers at the very apogee of Modernity and who thus naturally find it hardest to change ingrained habits.

Rupert Murdoch is a prime example of this sort of 'changed reality'  denier.

But Murdoch and his generation aren't running and ruining this world - at least not officially.

My generation - the Boomers - is.

Clearly not all of us Boomer kids fully absorbed the obvious lesson from WWII : that there actually are limits to even supermen's ability to control reality.

Not all of us Boomers - not by a long shot - successfully made The Transition from the old ways of thinking (ones that had fueled the Enlightenment Project for nearly 500 years) to the needed new ways of thinking.

These Boomers weren't the most vocal or most visible part of the Boomer generation (recall the Sixties protests), but like their parents before them,  they formed a powerful - if largely reticent - silent majority.

Some of these silent majority Boomers are now prime ministers, presidents, CEOs, media publishers etc but most are not.

They are simply voters and consumers who might even (feebly) talk the new talk - but when it comes to their pocketbook at the gas pump and the ballot box, walk (or rather drive) the old walk.

And if we can't help them make The Transition - and soon ! - subsequent generations might never get a chance to live out their expected three score and twenty five ...

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