Tag: Greatest Generation

Pass the torch

At 95, the founder of Peace Corps left us to figure out world affairs by ourselves.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/topic/sns-ap-us-obit-shriver,0,2461815.story

I used to shine my dad’s shoes, while he slicked his hair back. From where I sat, he appeared a towering figure.

Men from that generation ( like Burt Lancaster’s “From Here to Eternity”) stood erect,  principled and was willing to pay hefty price

(the costs of WWII got the US a deficit of 110%).

With GI bill, they went back to school, and from there, a two-front race (with Japan on the economic front, and Russia the cold front). We saw a shift to industrialization (and suburbanization and standardization, so sterile that the Flower Generation revolted by putting stickers on their Beetle’s bumper to “brand” themselves). With cheap fuel, we got drive-in movies, and McDonald’s drive-through.

Sinatra and Elvis the Pelvis first pushed the envelope, then the Baby Boomer gen questioned everything. Skepticism ruled the day.

(I still remembered one classmate’s comment that “they kept us in school to keep the unemployment rate down”).

Their legacy remains with us today (coffee-house, open source, social network etc..).

They would rather go overseas to teach ( Peace Corps) and to build (Habitat for Humanity), than to bomb.

“Ask not…”.

Have you seen “Special Olympics” just for disabled children?

The husband sent young American volunteers overseas, while his wife cheering “Special Olympians” at home

(son-in-law kept promising that “I’ll be back”). Bono who sang “I still haven’t found, what I am looking for” had a close-tied memory of them.

“Nobody does it better”. I often got a knock on the door just to see two guys in short sleeves and black tie (the Mormons). At least, they dedicated themselves to learn a foreign language (good enough to get appointed to ambassadorship in China). At the end of life (in this case, 95-year-run), what would be our legacy?

No longer with hair, boomers (born in between 46-64) are retiring en mass, but still with elastic age (male) and cosmetic surgery (female).

Hefner just got engaged again, while Demi Moore hooked up with man demi-age.

The Greatest Generation preceded Boomers’ and their strong stance gave rise to a Hegelian anti-thesis ( “the Kids are all right” or Elton John on the magazine cover again, this time with husband-and- baby to redefine the nuclear family). So, the Industrial revolution (itself anti-thesis to the agrarian past) is now winding down to pass the torch to the digital natives. Each generation must define their space, whether it is a cow barn or a cubicle, or caught in a smokestack or smokescreen. And when they are on the move, it’s in their own term and time-table. Many chose Peace Corps. Others simply back-pack on this Lonely Planet, a self-imposed draft. Louis L’Amour was right,

the problem with mankind is that he cannot stay in one place.

Today, people still want to study abroad, but not in Oxford or Cambridge. They are turning East, just as Harvey Cox predicted 40+ years ago (remember the George Harrison learning the sitar, which we will hear again in Norwegian Wood, the film).

It’s get too crowded, hence innovation by necessity. There aren’t that much room at the top, hence flat organization.

As a famous line from the sixties “what it is ain’t exactly clear”. But something is definitely happenin!.

The torch will get passed on. Time does the very best of us in. Stay hungry, stay connected.

 

Green Fields are gone

The camera panned jerkily (watch You Tube) as the Four Brothers sang away their classic hit, Green Fields.

The comments section was led by “I miss my papa, this was one of his favorites”.

The Greatest Generation, and now the Boomer Generation, are slowly but surely fading away. Gone with them are the many lessons and exhibition A-Z on leadership (WW’s), on innovation (Elvis), and on ethics (Woodward-Bernstein). Next Gen, however, gives us new platforms (digital) and new media (text and tweet). They are more racially tolerant (geek is geek), and digital media perhaps contribute to present declining crime rate and growing  gaming industry.

Mecca to them is CES now underway in Las Vegas. Everybody’s an Inspector Gadget. In “From Russia with Love“, Sean Connery was shown a high-tech brief case after receiving his mission to Istanbul. It was a concealed Swiss knife. To open the case, he needs to turn the two knobs half way (quite laughable even by those days’ standards).

Green Fields may sound like farm boys’ ballad, Yellow Submarine , an Industrial utopia, but Digital Generation has yet given us a defining theme (Detroit 2.0?). With User Generated Content (from 1 Billion and counting Facebook fans) and Earth growing population (7 Billion), Next Gen needs its theme song.

I understand the need to stand out, hence personal branding.

I understand the need to be relevant and collaborative .

And most of all, the need to innovate before Green Fields are gone. “I only know, there’s nothing here for me……”  Well, there have been floods in Chile, Haiti, and Australia.

Watch out world! There is nothing Buddhistic about living in harmony with living things. Or else, with biblical-size flooding, the Noah’s Ark in a Kentucky theme park might be real specie-saving act.

The larger-than-life generation

Tom Brokaw‘s coined it “The Greatest Generation” those who preceded the Boomer Gen.

This weekend we remember many who fought those huge battles.

The way they carried themselves: smoking, shooting and even kissing in the streets of New York (celebrating victory).

Subsequent G.I. Bill made possible their going to college (many were into

engineering and management, having been exposed to the world beyond their immediate borders and compelled by much needed infra-structure projects). They weren’t the “Deer Hunters” of the later war.

Instead, they hit the books and started families, despite Post Traumatic Disorder Syndrome.

I was born later, but the previous generation seemed to have left some trails, very gentlemanly ones.

People tilted their hats, held the door, and smiled at neighbors.

I used to shine shoes for my dad, prepared his coffee and watched him interact with peers.

(I remembered seeing titles by Somerset Maugham, Saint Exupery and Ernest Hemingway around the house.)

They way he carried himself, the romantic incline and how he responded to crisis (w/courage).

Those were the times. I even secretly wished I had grown up much faster then.

Maybe deep down, I knew those happy times would be short-lived.

And true to form, history pulled a quick dialectic turn on me: I was tossed into the seas (literally) to stake out my life and time.

I “imagined” (all the people, living for today) while my hair grew longer than generation, before or after.

My counterparts in the US fled to Sweden and Canada,

while my upper classmates to Australia, US and France.

The Greatest Generation secured an industrial base strong enough to spill over to the next century.

Just try to have breakfast at one of those 50’s diners, and you will get feel for what it was like back then: sturdy counter,

pleasant hostess and  full breakfast. Hate to say, but it was manly. Just like their days in war.

In French, it would be “le jour le plus longue”, whistling and marching to their destiny with bravery and grandeur.

Propaganda discounted, I would say, they staked  out their places in history by living, fighting and rebuilding a society worthy of men.

We are all inheritors of their war-rebuilding efforts, and the least we can do is to salute and keep our shoes shined. Oh, and don’t forget to hold the door.