One thing that becomes clear reading blogs here on the stream is that we are a battered generation.
The Boomers being the first generation of youngsters to look back objectively at how we were raised and how kids had indeed been raised for generations exposed a picture of emotional neglect and spiritual failure. My entire childhood was riddled with the thought, "I'm not going to treat my children this way..." Granted, my childhood seems extreme in retrospect; but I've met way too many people over the years who have even worse memories that I am convinced child abuse is the norm in our culture. Our disrespectful and disdainful attitudes towards children are so deeply ingrained we don't even identify the behavior as abnormal.
The last generation did a pretty poor job in childrearing, as did their parents before them...and so on. However, in defense of the last generation, I'd like to point out that the parents of the boomers started out their lives in a major economic depression. Their parents were frantically working at any job available just to provide food for their families. All they could do was make sure those kids were fed and housed (and remember..there was no birth control then either) and they had no time for playing. As soon as those children became of age, they were shipped to war where thousands and thousands of them...17 years old and up, gave up their lives in a violent upheaval that encompassed pretty much the entire world. When they returned from that holocaust they had one thought in mind...enjoy what life remained to them. They did not instill certain moral attitudes within their children because they were wounded...wounded by a situation created by adult men that robbed them of their youth, their health and their ability to reason soundly.
Think about the people who were in Manhattan on 9/11 and how that traumatic experience has influenced their lives since. Many of them suffer from PTSD; they can't sleep, they can't concentrate, they can't focus on the life that is right in front of their eyes, because they are still reliving that day. Now multiply that times an entire generation of kids to the tune of constant traumatization for what, four or five solid years? And what did those kids do during the next ten years following the world war? They made children...lots of em...tons of em! So here we all; a couple hundred million wounded parents, raised by wounded parents, now raising wounded children. Where is it going to stop? How many generations do we have to send to war before we realize it's even killing the survivors? It's madness.
That is all that can be said for it. We are a schizophrenic world.
Now, I ask you to consider George Bush. This man is a boomer. He was raised by parents who contributed their youth to a major world war. What many people do not know about G.W., is that he had a younger sister. That little girl suffered from some disease that eventually took her life. The information I read said that she had been taken to the hospital where she'd died, and that George Sr. and the Mrs. never mentioned her again - not where she had gone, or what had happened to her..nothing. And the next morning they went golfing.
Assuming this is a true recounting of that situation: how could a child like little George..who was not as bright or as handsome as any of his brothers, who moved to the other side of the country at the highly formative age of 12 or so...how could this kid grow up with a clear vision of reality? No wonder he thinks God is talking to him..his parents never did!
George thinks those of us who disagree with his policies are "wrongheaded". My opinion is, George needs serious psychotherapy. His own unmet childhood needs have become so confused with his world policy that we have a bona fide Napoleon or Mein Kampf in the making. Not to mention his message is being heard by millions, thousands of other wounded people who's own needs were unmet and who now feel compelled to greedily horde every good thing to compensate for the fact mommy and daddy were emotionally unavailable. They call it mental illness; but it's not. It is a culturally induced psychosis that has been self-propelling for so long it has become a national institution.
Self awareness folks. It's time to stop and look and listen..to our selves. We have to stop running from the pain...hiding from the responsibilities of an out of control world and figure out what the best thing to do is. Re-prioritize. Don't we all have to re-prioritize every so often? I think we need to as a country. Speaking completely as a mother; we need to concentrate of these kids. One does not need look too far beyond their own nose to realize our children are in big trouble...their world is crumbling. And unfortunately or fortunately, the days of being able to close our eyes to what's happening in the rest of the world are over. The very food on our tables is being raised by other families far across the oceans. Are we so selfish that we refuse to consider what kind of life those people are living so that we can brew their hand-picked coffee beans every single morning of our lives? Or wear their substantially cheaper 100% cotton clothing that may or may not be produced in a sweat shop where we would never allow our own children to work ...
These may be the questions of wounded and foolish mind, but my heart tells me they are important and my spirit tells me I must act.
My desire to act brings me here to you, the Stream. Here we have not only a national forum; we have an international forum with access to information gathered by every civilization on the planet. We have world-wide problems...we also have a world-wide forum, right here at our finger tips.
My point is to encourage you to write about the inner mullings of your minds...as you already are. Ask the questions, be brave and state your ideas regardless that there are people, and always will be, who will try to bully you into accepting their point of view no matter what it is. We don't have to bully back...we can state our opinions politely and then excuse ourselves in the face of unwilling compromise to discuss openly and freely, and retire to more important pursuits.
But I say to myself..infront of all of you, we have been too quiet for too long. "The meek will inherit the earth", but it doesn't mean we have to go quietly. The meek also have a voice...and a mighty big one when all the meeks are added together!
I am inspired by all of you...by the people everywhere that I care about, and even the people I don't much like, (there are a couple but not necessarily here in the stream) to stand up and speak. This is what I think...maybe it's useful, maybe it's not, but we'll never know unless we say it! So..I'm saying it.
I'd like to thank you for your support of free speech and your encouragement on a personal level to use it.
I dedicate this post to a person who has greatly influenced me in my quest to know myself...Carl Jung.
