Having worked in my generation's homes and gardens for the past thirty years I had an epiphany last week -- Debbie's (not her real name) bamboo chaise lounge is a foul, dangerous piece of furniture. It's beautiful -- with great lines, really cool texture and color, and fabulous upholstered floral cushions. By Debbie's own admission, "... it was obscenely overpriced, decadent, and luscious in a subversive sort of way. I'm using a lot of Bamboo now you know because it is renewable and you know how me and Bill (not his real name) are really into recycling and all things green."
Debbie and Bill live in a fantastic five thousand square foot home with almost every cutting edge, renewable, green building material, landscape accessory, and decoration on the market today. It's an upper crust, suburban, green, renewable Versailles. And sadly for the ex-1960's hippie, activists it screams, "Let them eat wheatgrass!"
There are approximately seventy-two million baby boomers living in America today. For discussion purposes, let's say that ten percent of that number were socially and politically aware and active during the 60's and early 70's. That could be 7,200,000 once enlightened and consciousness raised individuals. Where the hell are we? We're buying renewable bamboo chaise lounges. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for renewables and green building practices. However, "renewable" and "green" have become my generation's new tie-dye - statements of protest and solidarity.
We're not consumers, we're pioneers -- pioneers in a new age of enlightened purchasing. Our stuff is not just stuff anymore - it's groovy stuff. This sure as hell ain't my Dad's Ford or my Mom's chaise lounge.
The kids in the Occupy Wall Street Movement are the inheritors of the social movements of the 60's and 70's. They are the children and grandchildren of the followers and admirers of Dr. Martin Luther King, Abbie Hoffman, Ralph Nader, Jerry Rubin, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Daniel Berrigan, Howard Zinn, Daniel Ellsberg, Dick Gregory, Russell Means, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, E. F. Schumacher, Edward Abbey, Dee Brown and many others that widened our vision and profoundly whisked us away from our parent's world. We were like a huge bomb loaded by these folks with new thought, action, flowers, love, respect, vision, song, dance, Justice, art, creativity and power. When it went off it blew the lid off American society -- it changed things irrevocably. Or did it?
Where are the 7,200,000 boomers? I don't see us in the streets with our children and grandchildren. Oh, we have to decide whether to put the chaise lounge on the front or back porch.
P.s. I agree with David Brooks on very little but I love his word "Bobo" and most of its connotations.
