First, there were the baby boomers who came of age in the 60s when no one over 30 was to be trusted, the establishment was the enemy, and peaceful revolution was the general goal. Then came the 80s, the "Me Decade" when disco was king and Wall Street woke up to the machinations of Ivan Boesky and Barry Minkow.
The ideals of the 60s and 70s died with the murder of John Lennon, the hell of My Lai, the killing fields of Cambodia, and "Midnight Express." Royal marriages unraveled, Middle East violence was only intermittently stilled, and the drug warlords of Colombia took over the streets of U.S. inner cities. Generation X moved to the forefront, fighting wars in Bosnia, Kuwait, and Somalia that were acceptable only because of their dissimilarity to the mire and mayhem of Vietnam.
Who will first engrave their generation's stamp on the Twenty-first Century? Generation X is still young but already assimilated into the broader American culture. Will it be the young right-wing born-agains with their willingness to condone murder and punish women in their goal to give life to unplanned and unwanted fetuses in a world where overpopulation is the root cause of so many evils: famine, pestilence, war, genocide? Will it be the clean cut, patriotic military reservists and guardsmen who despoiled the entire American culture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo?
It has been 15 years since presidential candidate Bush spoke of a kinder, gentler, world. It has been 30 years since President Jimmy Carter tried to cool the Middle East through logic, compromise and good faith. It has been 40 years since we sang "Let's give Peace a chance." It has been 5 years since we all thought that decapitation with a sword had died with the middle ages.
In the most recent past, there have been explosions in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, murdering and mutilating thousands. 800,000 individuals were hacked to death in Rwanda within 10 days, while the world watched and waited. In the Sudan, the killing, raping, and torturing continues unabated. Natural disasters numb the senses and expose our powerlessness over nature.
As children, we saw the pictures and heard the stories of the Nazi Holocaust and wept in disbelief, guilt, and shame. The entire world swore that it would never happen again even while the Soviet Empire was killing millions of its own citizens. 60 years after the megalomania of Hitler was crushed, the world is still filled with hate and violence. Barbed wire festers across too many bloody and doomed landscapes.
Where shall we find a new and better generation to carry our torch into a brighter future? We look to our children, busy playing violent video games, listening to hate rock music, and watching destructive films where carnage and the will to power reign supreme. Are these to be the world's saviors?
Mankind falters along the evolutionary road that brought us out of the swamps and created a world of luxury, knowledge, and immense creativity. Our goal must always be to stamp out the evil destructiveness that seems to be an integral part of being human, while nurturing the civilization, the intelligence, the willingness to give and take, and the love and forgiveness that is also part of our complex nature.
On January 1, we moved 5 years into the new millennium. It has not been an auspicious beginning. It is up to us to stand up and be counted. By our lives, by every act we do, by every word we speak, we must bear witness to the beauty, creativity, and altruism of mankind and forever disavow the base part of our beings which has held sway for far, far too long.
Happy 2005.
Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology and politics. She has performed therapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied the effects of cultural forces and employment on the individual. The author of an interactive workbook, The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a monthly ezine, The Worker's Edge, she can be reached at http://www.virginiabola.com