Tuesday 18 September 2007

What Our Parents Taught Us



Thi post is really aimed at those in my age group.
The children of the late seventies and early eighties.
Thatcher's children.
The E generation.

The ones that are accused of throwing away the world we inherited.

OK. Let's look at what we learned from our parents.

And let's start by looking at what they did.

They were teenagers in 1962.
They heard about, but had not seen the horrors of the Second World War.
They saw the power of the atom bomb.
They saw the emerging freedom from colonialism, without the ideological baggage of Empire.

And for a few weeks, in 1962, they thought the world would end.



And they realised how precious life was. And how short it was.
Why not just experience it and enjoy it?
And if a rule was silly, if breaking it harmed no one, why not?

They saw War as the dangerous and nasty thing it is.
They saw sex as something that needn't be dirty.
They saw man as good, not bad.
They saw the world was small, the differences betwen people minor, but fascinating, that life was rich, if you aspired to more than the BBC offered.

And they stood up and said it.
And did it.

And yes, some of those values survive.
Some were sold along the way.



For the Yuppies of the Eighties, were the Hippies of the Sixties. My father, for example, went to the Isle of Wight to see Hendrix, but made it good under Thatcher.

They were bribed back to the system.
Ok, so they had made their point about Vietnam, The Deep South, Apartheid, but other social anachronisms remained.

The Third World got nastier.
The West got meaner.

Our illustrious parents supported a system, with no moral purpose.
Because they had rejected their parents values.
And now rejected their own.

And they tried to bring us up too, in a cold, pointless, emotionless, connectionless world, where making a visible success of yourself was all that counted.
The world of convention.
The world of the BMW in the drive.

They re-invented the archaic ideal of monogamy- which in their youth they saw as it really is- a kind of slavery, as another form of status symbols.

Where proof of Love is a fifty grand wedding.



So we rebelled too.
Because the world they offered us was plain nasty.
And cold.
And dead.

We believed in their values as little as they did in their parents' values.
But with better reason.

And we partied solid, as soon we were able to do so.
Why not?
They did.
We just didn't express it so politically.
We had seen how far starry-eyed principles got last time.



We just discussed it privately, as we still do.

Here's an interesting point.
The majority of hard party goers I know vote Tory- as I do.
Like me, they hate the principles, but see it works.

But we never really gave ourselves to any of it, the real bribes, the kitchen extensions on credit, marriage, decorating the home, all the signs of dead existence we'd swore we'd never do.

Except time is passing. People look at their own lives and say 'What the Hell, I'll sell, if you can't beat them, join them.'

This is what I really hate.
Because the time is coming for me to choose.
My third decade on Earth is drawing to a close.

I COULD make a packet out of servily bowing to every value I despise.
I could marry, raise 2.4 children in a five bedroomed showhome, spending my weekends on DIY, and never think about the rest of the world outside my cul-de-sac and my office.

Or I could reject self-lobotomy.

I think I've succeeded well in delaying the judgement, but everyday I see opportunities arise to get removing my frontal lobes and make a concerted effort to force a path to a pompous sounding job title.

I think this is the most important moral dilemma I will ever really face.
Because if I really do sell myself now, I really don't think I could ever look myself in the eye in the mirror again.
Not in the showhome.

Advice anyone?

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, really tough questions, especially since I'm one of the generation that sold out.

Anonymous said...

You said,
"Our illustrious parents supported a system, with no moral purpose."

Oh! Excellent statement!!!

And then you said,
"Because they had rejected their parents values.
And now rejected their own."

I got chillbumps reading that~

My advice- Keep breathing- and don't let anyone cut on your brain :)

sending you a note I think~

Anonymous said...

You don't HAVE to live in a show home, why not a derelict property on the railroad tracks? You could be really happy there. Or perhaps living on a boat. The point is that there are alternatives, other than the status quo. You have to think and live outside the box.

This post reminds me of Fight Club. If you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend it.

"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

~Tyler Durden

Anonymous said...

I don't think it is rejecting their values. It is a natural change. Do you want to go with nature and have your children and raise them the best way possible?

Or do you want to go with your nurtured logic and keep your values?

It is, at heart, a nature v nurture issue.

Anonymous said...

No one is forced to conform. In fact what are people conforming to exactly?

If you don't want an executive home nobody's going to judge you, are they?

Anonymous said...

Have the children - but raise them in a cottage or a tent! Give them a better start and better values than you think you got.

Mr Ingsoc - I have no money, no mortgage and no pension - but I am happy and I think my children don't believe that i made the world cold etc for them. Sure everything is a compromise - but like you I would never live in one of those horrible executive homes...

Anonymous said...

Crushed, I'm struggling with those same "selling out" and "moving up" decisions right now too, and you're right, we saw where idealism led, and we see many of our peers succombing to the siren song of conspicuous consumption. I don't need many things, but I do like to travel and I do like experiences. And when children come along...is my house to look like a Fisher Price museum? I cringe at the thought.

Anonymous said...

Excellent post.Yes, the 1960s counter-culture was about gaining freedom from the tacit rules of commercial culture. It was about celebrating diversity and rejecting long-held values and the dull conventionalism of the 1950s.The counter-culture looked into the future in hopes of finding a place where the "madness"could end and an age of unrestrained human freedom could begin.They failed.
What began as a healthy skepticism toward authority degenerated into a generalized contempt for all authority: religious, political, social, moral, cultural, parental.
That failure was inevitable for a simple reason: the Sixties ethos if taken to its logical conclusion, is unworkable. That's why the hippy communes all broke down.You can't combine group solidarity with total personal freedom. The result would be chaos.Human beings can't live together in peaceful social groups without moral rules.
But it is certainly the case now that more people (at a time when everything is commercialised and commodified at the speed of light) need to develop clear-cut moral and ethical convictions. Too many of us are selfish—self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-serving and indifferent to bettering the human condition.
We should ask ourselves: What has shaped our standards and morals, our values? Do you feel a sense of responsibility to others? Do you recognize there is a cause and purpose much greater than you?
It does seem that too many of us intend to leave no imprint—no positive imprint, that is—on the sand of time. And that's a matter of choice...

Anonymous said...

Nessa- Obviously, I don't blame YOU, as in individual.
You personally don't seem to have sold out.

But we, the succeeding generation, must see it as part of the human learning curve, understand why your generation sold out, and what we CAN do to change the world, the way your generation wanted to.

Mayden- Yes, I think I opt to keep my lobes.
I think the trick is not to watch too much TV.
It fries the brain, I think.

Alexys- I LOVE Fight Club- That film really spoke to me.
Yes, I thouroughly identify with the main character- In fact, you could argue that this blog is to my life what Fight Club is to The Ed Norton character.

It's very interesting viewing the film as making a sound Marxist analysis of the role of the modern male and the exasperation he feels, if his mind still works.

Phish- I don't think the Nuclear family is necessarily a great model, in spite of what we are tld- it just preserves a social structure.
Most people are lousy at bringing up children, I think.
I think MOST parents, are bad parents really.

No disrespect to mine, but they did a bad job.
And they were well meaning people.

Ed- They aren't forced to conform, but they accept the bribe to do so.

Those who contriol the respources and distribution of rewards (Your salary, basicall) control the form of our social structure.

Andd most of them are ruthless, avaricious, unpleasant people.
Who think 33 billion unused dollars in their bank account, an unused ability to distribute human happiness, is acceptable.

Yes, you can choose the alternatives.
And live in misery.

Mutley- I have faith Mutley.
Maybe not us, but maybe our children will be lucky enough to acheive it.
When the world economy collapses, when all money just becomes useless figures on screens, when the capitalist edifice grinds to its bitter end, maybe our children will do better, without the shackles of the corporations around their feet.

Anonymous said...

Helen- I get criticised when I say that I don't want my kids believing in Santa.

People say it's a wonderful magic to believe in, but I don't think we ever recover from finding out that our parents deliberately eceived us in such a way.

Stan- True, we need moral rules, but there's nothing moral about sexual repression, thinking women who sleep around are 'dirty', and that people should be possessive over the bodies of those they purport to love.

Or that greed is good, or that Africa's problems will be solved by them- er- becoming heavily industrialised and selling us the crap we now sell to them.

Anonymous said...

I think Stan! means me ... oh dear!

Anonymous said...

Crushed, I'm not as concerned about myths and archetypes as long as they are taught as stories. There's no reason the fantasy and the truth can't co-exist. I was never taught to believe in Santa, although I remember appreciating the visual imagery and fantasy.

Rather I'm concerned with the notion of "good parenting" through "good providing" of material things, that is. I don't think most parents are bad parents, we're all humans, and I think that recognizing that perfection is not possible that frees us to better ourselves in ways not possible if we're striving to behave perfectly.

Stan, your comment was brilliant, will have to ponder that further.

Anonymous said...

Well, my generation, as you say, were brought up on tales of "the war" although we had not experienced it. But we never wrote Bin Laden into the equation in the days of "peace and love" - which really weren't that great, you know. I sometimes wonder what we did to create "Thatcher's children" or rather SHE created them - a generation of "What I want I will get and sod everybody else". I don't mean you here, Crushed, but numerous children of that era whom I taught. They were not from middle or upper class homes but they wanted the same as everyone else and got exceedingly nasty when it couldn't be got easily. Why you vote Tory is beyond me. I can only assume it's because you were too young to really experience the ill that T and her cronies did to a nation. On your own choice, sadly I can only tell you what a man I worked for told me: "You cannot live by your principles totally in a society founded on differnt ones". How sad that is, but true.

Anonymous said...

Mutley- He does?
You think?

Helen- It's a hard one. It worries me I'd make a bad father, because lets be honest, we aren't given any training, except what we experience ourselves.
In my case that wasn't the best teaching ever.

Welshcakes- On my mate's stag do the other week, I gave him the challenge of answering twenty questions- truthfully- yes ot no answer.

Number one was 'You vote Tory, as do I. Is this ethical?'

He answered No.

Like me, he does it for personal reasons. In a selfish society, we vote selfishly.

It's Pragmatic Marxism. Vote for whoever runs the Capitalist Economy best, so its runs out of steam quickest.

Anonymous said...

I'm grateful to my mum who was an activist in the 60s, remained an activist through the 80s and raised me as an activist myself.

Her perspective gave me the freedom to think outside the career/mortgage/monogamy paradigm and discover for myself what really makes me happy.

I hope you can do the same.

There are still activists, there are still idealists, and our learning curve has incorporated the experiences of those who were active in the 60s. Seek it out, get different people's perspectives, bounce ideas off it and contribute to it.

I too believe that corporate capitalism will eat itself one day soon. I find it harder to believe that you actually VOTE TORY!!!

In a selfish world, at least behave with some integrity yourself.

I do love your blog though...