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?