Generation Betterthanus

Not long ago, I came across a posting on social media in which a young(er) person went off about how my generation has ruined the world and it’s up to the younger generation to save us from our folly by getting behind Bernie Sanders’ candidacy. (I will refrain from pointing out that Ol’ Bern is a member of the generation being slammed and widely supported by my own friends, also of the target generation. Oops, I said it!) What made this posting come to mind again today, since I saw it some weeks ago is that I observed some protesters in their usual place across from my office building this morning and they were similarly opining as to the worthlessness of generation mine.

I guess we’ve been the worst thing since smelly toe jam. Dang, and just when we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. We’ve messed up the world and the youngsters wish we would just melt away and let them get on with the task of repairing the mess we’ll be leaving behind.

Fair enough, but I wonder if the current generation of young adults will give us any credit for all the things that were created prior to their arrival on the scene that make it possible for them to pontificate from the comfort of their computer chairs.

I was talking to a friend and colleague today who spent a significant portion of his adult life running a plant that made large moldings – think stackable chairs but on a much larger scale. This guy’s duties involved coordinating all the purchases of ‘stuff’ they needed to make their products. Everything from the smallest rivets to billets of aluminum, plastic resins to paint, operating manuals for huge machines to copier paper. Most of those items he purchased on a just-in-time basis, to arrive just as they were about to be consumed, so when I say coordinating, I really meant he spent a lot of time frantic running back and forth to keep the plates spinning. And I surmise that he did his job well.  

It made me think back to a couple of my jobs as a plate spinner for manufacturing startups. My point here is not about the job of coordinating all these inputs but rather about the sheer number of different inputs and inputs to the inputs that went into making the products that we rely upon and take for granted every minute of every day. You see, each of our upstream vendors – the makers of polyethylene beads and the ink formulators and the paper mills and so on – had their own list of vendors, who in turn had theirs. And all of these inputs worked together to create the world in which members of the next generation find themselves so uncomfortably ensconced.

Some of the things we made we would have been better off without, no question. We know now that asbestos is a killer in the long term but when I donned my ‘Hot Papa’ proximity suit aboard ship in the early 70s, I was glad that it would protect me from flames or from spills of liquid nitrogen. In those days, I was frequently elbow deep in asbestos while lagging a pipe in the machinery spaces. I wish we hadn’t used it and it may rear up to bite me yet but at that time it was what we had and we viewed it as a miracle material. So now we’re paying in spades for our ignorance.

I wish we hadn’t developed many of the weapons systems of the last century, not least among them nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. I look back and wonder how we could have been so misguided. Thalydomide was a horrid mistake as are assault weapons for the commercial market. Drones – that one is yet to bite us but trust me, it’s coming. For every technological generation, I’m sure there is something that we would have been better off not developing.

And we haven’t always been exactly prescient when it came to lending our support and casting our votes for politicians. You can be forgiven your screeds about how hopelessly hopeless my generation is as to politics, given the Klown Kar of candidates with which we have provided ourselves during this electoral cycle. Damn, wouldn’t mind a few do overs in that sphere.

This is not to be taken as apology. It’s not. I am not guilty of wrongdoing. Wrong deciding, maybe, I’ll own that. But here’s the thing about politics and about life, for that matter – you vote where you are, when you are, with the information then available to you. More than once, subsequent developments have proved the folly of my choices. But they were (usually) made in good faith and if you can’t accept that, I’m not the only one with a problem.

So continue to post your screeds if you must. If you want to feel superior, that’s probably the way to go. But if you want to avoid the condemnation of the generations that follow you, stop posting and get to work.

Do better than we have. I readily admit we’ve left room for improvement.