Generations aren't seamless
McCarthy, Abigail
OF SEVERAL HIHPS Abigail McCarthy GENERATIONS AREN'T SEAMLESS ALTRUISM AMONG THE TWENTY-SOMETHINGS ome themes seem to be struck in the national consciousness all at once and variations on...
...Of late the theme I notice is the discovery of generational differences and generalizations about generations...
...Many were the first of their families to enter the professions...
...Getting rich was a good no matter how it affected others...
...Global competition has diminished the national economy...
...Certainly there are commonalities for those who live in the same time...
...And according to James Scheibel, who oversees VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), 4,000 VISTA volunteers serve urban and rural communities in fifty states, and with the help of the Clinton administration, may soon be joined by 1,100 more...
...Chalmers Roberts, former reporter and columnist, had something of a shock when he told a young newswoman that he began reporting on Washington when Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, "probably before you were born," and she replied that 1933 was before her father was born {Washington Post, May 1...
...In fact, they made comparisons between Nixon and Washington...
...Those who joined the labor force could own their own homes, cars, and boats as a matter of course...
...But the general will to do so is not there...
...According to Eli Segal, director of the National Corporation for Service, 60 percent of college freshmen engage in some kind of community work and continue to do so throughout their college years...
...He tried to tell them how it was in his college generation: '"The Vietnam War was everything,' I explained...
...But, as Vietnam became an overriding issue, cracks between the generations became deep fissures...
...The generation that succeeded ours (the so-called baby boomers) was mobile and homogenized...
...marked American politics to this day...
...Nixon caused enduring press bolshiness, congressional uppityness, and public cynicism...
...Certainly there are historical and economic factors—sometimes catastrophes— that affect them all, but it must be recognized that they don't all react in the same way...
...It defined everything...
...After Vietnam, with the arrival of Reagan and the "me" generation, the tail end of the baby boomers and their children entered a different world—a world of no vision...
...Our regional differences were marked...
...Talk of generations swirled around the death of President Richard Nixon...
...And in the same week nationally syndicated columnists Colman McCarthy and Mary McGrory called attention to the impressive numbers of volunteers to be found in the current generation...
...But doesn't this summary of the generations ignore the complexities of history and reality as well...
...OF SEVERAL HIHPS Abigail McCarthy GENERATIONS AREN'T SEAMLESS ALTRUISM AMONG THE TWENTY-SOMETHINGS ome themes seem to be struck in the national consciousness all at once and variations on them appear everywhere...
...It made everyone mistrust everyone old because everyone old just wanted to kill them'" {Washington Post, May 1...
...AIDS shadows their lives...
...The national debt burgeoned...
...The so-called underclass grew larger in every city...
...They were also the children of affluence, and affluence was available to them as they entered their own adulthood...
...And, in the aftermath of World War II, to most of us pride in country and belief in its mission to lead the world were givens...
...He was responsible for the general coarsening of public life...
...They were the "rock 'n' roll" generation, overwhelming popular culture by their sheer numbers...
...Government was bad...
...When he tried to find out what was important to them they talked of cultural diversity and date rape...
...This is the generation that, according to David Brinkley (Washington Post, April 3), is the generation of low SAT and LSAT scores, the generation that doesn't read (even the newspapers), doesn't vote, and doesn't believe in the work ethic— the generation to whom we must entrust the future...
...10...
...As one volunteer told McGrory, "We don't have any wars or large causes...
...We were people rooted in small towns or defined city neighborhoods—or, as in the case of George Bush, in the clan security of the dominant Waspdom...
...There were bridges initially between the baby boomers and many of their parents' generation in the movements—the civil rights movement, the nascent peace movement, the beginnings of environmentalism...
...Features columnist Tony Kornheiser, returning to his alma mater after twenty-five years, found, in talking to the university news staff, that they didn't know who Paul McCartney was, let alone who the Beatles were as a group...
...A New York Times reporter, scratching for unusual reactions, interviewed high school students and found that to them the Nixon presidency seemed as remote as George Washington's...
...Selfinterest was good...
...The latter, in their campaign, signaled their belief that the young could once again bring about change in public policy...
...I thought of that as I looked at the former presidents and first ladies sitting in line 9 / at the Nixon funeral, most of whom I had known from the time we were the generation just taking over...
...The baby boomers were united by television and the fads that swept rapidly across the country...
...Public service was for us a worthy primary goal until Watergate and the cynicism it engendered...
...Ours, the generation they epitomized, was a generation touched by and just emerging from the Great Depression...
...Are generations so sharply divided and so clearly identified...
...It overwhelmed everything...
...In zeroing in on health care, job retraining, housing, and loans to be repaid by community service, etc., they have been trying to remedy the effects of the recent rampant public neglect...
...There was indifference to, and general neglect of, those who needed help...
...Their reports encourage hope and run counter to the stereotype of the generation...
...According to the Economist (April 30), this handicap was accompanied by a collapse of trust in the institutions and conduct of politics at home: "...The deceptions and crimes that brought Nixon down have...
...And he coupled the war with the Nixon presidency...
...A doctor gave me an interesting instance of this: Only 11 percent of the children are immunized in prosperous Houston, and only 44 percent nationally, while the Indian Health Service demonstrates that 90 percent immunization can easily be reached with only a little public attention and expense...
...Chalmers Roberts, mentioned above, despite the double generation gaps, was able to see parallels between the young who came to Washington with Roosevelt and those who have come with Clinton...
...Job prospects are bleak...
...And now we have the twenty-somethings, the generation called "X"—the generation whose members feel they have missed the boat...
...Our society was stable...
...Everything...
...The disaster of Vietnam had affected the making of all foreign policy...
...We have to fix things up...
...As a result, the boomers sought to create their own communities, experimenting with drugs and with great communal gatherings like Woodstock...
...During the Reagan years selfishness became a public virtue...
...There are ways and ways of "fixing up...
...In that they connect with those like them in every generation before theirs...
Vol. 121 • June 1994 • No. 11
