From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   Baby boomers get criticized a lot. One response I have seen was them claiming   
   that they were the coolest generation and listened to the best music.   
      
   I have listened to their music, and I have found undesirable things.   
      
   We have Moody Blues with “take your share of the gifts that are there, they   
   all belong to you.” What is being encouraged here is greed and a sense of   
   entitlement. The gifts that are there don’t only belong to you. They belong   
   also to 7 billion    
   other people and to some things that aren’t human, such as God. What is   
   being encouraged here is greed and a sense of entitlement; and that leads many   
   people to become jerks.   
      
   We have Led Zeppelin with,   
      
   And it’s whispered that soon   
   If we all call the tune   
   Then the piper will lead us to reason   
   And the new day will dawn   
   For those who stand long   
   And the forests will echo with laughter.   
      
   The piper that they got was Ronald Reagan. The forests didn’t echo with   
   laughter; they got cut down. A situation was misdiagnosed and mishandled, and   
   it was the kind of people who listened to Led Zeppelin that suffered for it   
   the most.   
      
   Then there’s the Beatles with “It’s gonna be all right.” It has not   
   been all right. We have global warming and rainforest deforestation. We have   
   the federal debt. What is encouraged here is naïve optimism; and naïve   
   optimism leads to many wrong    
   things. People fail to see the problems, and the problems keep getting bigger.   
   Because I pay attention to these problems I have been accused of being   
   negative. No; I care about what world we live in, which many of these people   
   obviously do not.   
      
   Led Zeppelin with “a girl who took my heart – she’s only three years old   
   and it’s a fine way to start,” Jim Morrison with “take me to the next   
   little girl,” Beatles with “she was just 17” – no need for comment.   
      
   I both sympathize with baby boomers and am critical of them. They started out   
   like me: seeing what’s wrong in the world. However their solution –   
   positive thinking, self-esteem and believing in yourself – were wrong.   
   Positive thinking leads people    
   to overlook problems and do foolish things. Self-esteem encourages the wrong   
   set of incentives. If you have higher standards for yourself, you will find it   
   harder to feel good about yourself than if you have low standards for   
   yourself, and self-esteem    
   therefore rewards low standards. As for believing in yourself, the most   
   successful people I’ve known did not believe in themselves; they believed in   
   something greater than themselves. If you believe in something greater than   
   yourself, you will be more    
   likely to do difficult and dangerous things than if you believe only in   
   yourself.   
      
   Were baby boomers, as some claim, a bad crop? I do not think so. I have known   
   a number of admirable baby boomers. However not all their influences have been   
   good, and it is important that such be scrutinized. That being done, good   
   things about baby    
   boomers stand to gain greater currency, and that generation will have stronger   
   legacy in the world.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)