[FoRK] Bring on the robber barons. Oh, wait...

[Ian Andrew Bell]

On 4-Feb-08, at 5:10 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:

> Their parents, "The Greatest Generation," largely did not have this  
> problem.  They had a deep-seated appreciation for minding your own  
> business.  In large part this explains our late-ish entrance into  
> WWII.

Or rather it's explained by cowardice, isolationism, indifference, and  
self-centeredness.  Greatest Generation indeed!  In contrast, Canada  
entered WWII fully 26 months before America, and over the course of  
the war sent 10% of its population into harm's way in Europe or over  
the Atlantic -- practically every male who was of warfighting age.

> But not their kids.  While their younger and wilder days were  
> devoted to "ME" they have, in their later years, decided that  
> everybody else's business was just the business they wanted to be in.

Agreed though that the Boomers indulged in the wealth and prosperity  
that their war-wealthy progenitors "created", largely thru debt- 
financing, and essentially spooned up all of the planet's resources  
without a care for sustainability.  They couched their generation of  
self-indulgence in their much-ballyhooed effort to end the war in  
Vietnam, as though that activism of an obviously stupid and inevitable  
withdrawal excuses the rest of their waste.

> And their kids -- Gen X (like me, barely), Gen Y, gappers, etc. ---  
> well, fuck, we've never even hardly heard the phrase "MYOB" --- much  
> less had it instilled in us as a "value."

We're trying to live in a world where those who are self-centered  
generally prosper at the expense of others.  That is the fundamental  
struggle in the book entitled Generation X, which anyone who throws  
the term around should most certainly read.  Gen Y, well, they just  
don't fucking care.  Party on MySpace!

The root cause of problems is those who mistake FREEDOM OF CHOICE to  
mean HUMAN RIGHTS, and abuse the shit out of the unwritten rules of  
human coexistence.  Sure some folks try to overcompensate by writing  
all those rules down, but it's way easier than kicking the shit out of  
the (increasing number of) assholes who feel it's their right to  
endanger, disturb, and inconvenience others (which I am increasingly  
reticent to do) for their own benefit.

Three days a week for the last 5 months I am awoken at 7:30 in the  
morning by some Yoga Bitch who, when she leaves her Bikram's session  
across the street from our townhouse, uses her key fob's Panic Button  
to locate her car by the sound of its alarm -- which is generally no  
more than a few steps away from the entrance to the yoga studio.  I'm  
very near to disrupting her Chakra in the most dramatic way possible.

-Ian.

___
www.ianbell.com