I noted this morning that there are still folks who haven’t run into the OK Boomer meme, so I thought I’m ruminate on it a bit. I’m not a fan of the whole demographic ‘generations’ thing, but I do know Boomers are people who are roughly my age, say 55, on up – nominally, I’m on the tail-end of a generation for which I’ve never felt any kinship. The top end of the boomers are in their mid-70s.
If you look at the political and theological fields, the members of the leadership class are dominated by Boomers.
Since it came out of the niche in which it evolved, OK Boomer has been causing some screams of outrage, since the folks to which it is applied, or potentially applied, tend to be occupying positions of importance in the power hierarchy. I see one dude considers it to be the ‘n-word of ageism.’ So what’s going on?
Understanding the usage of OK Boomer requires understanding who is using it, and that usage is typified by the recent incident which brought it to the attention of everyone outside of the social media platform Tik-Tok and one other, which escapes my memory. This happened during a speech by a New Zealand MP on the topic of climate change, 25 year old Chloe Swarbrick, when an older MP interjected a remark, and she retorted “OK Boomer.” In essence, those folks who are in age range of Swarbrick, let’s say 30, and younger, are using it. Wikipedia tells me these are the Millenials and the GenZ folks. (whee-ha. Generation names. Nevermind.)
So what’s going on? Let’s first admit that the outraged boomers, when they make claims about experience trumping youth, have a surface point: yes, experience matters.
But when experience is overshadowed by irrationalism, it becomes immaterial. The Western Civ Millenials are growing up in a world of technology of unprecedented levels. It’s everywhere. And technology is the child of rationality, of the imperfect but generally improving study of reality.
What do the Millenials see? Climate change, pollution, rising costs, falling salaries, greed, greed, greed, coddling of elite classes (see France’s attempt to raise taxes which reportedly didn’t impact the elites and led to riots), and overpopulation, and while Western societies are seeing birthrates slowly falling, other countries are making up for those falling birthrates, with the end result being minor wars breaking out, such as the Syrian Civil War.
And what do the Millenials see in the political class these days? Not much engagement with reality, at least on the conservative side. Trump joins with fundamentalist religious leaders to call climate change a hoax. Some UK or Aussie Minister with a technology portfolio demanding that the government have access to encrypted private communications, and pouting when told that it’s not currently possible – we’ll be needing a mathematical miracle for that one, boomer. A battle royale over the funding of health care in the United States, when the rest of the Western world has more or less socialized it – successfully, in their eyes. Even calls for a higher birthrate by such figures as Rep Steve King (R-IA).
The political and religious class Boomer leaders did not grow up in a world of constrained resources and technology everywhere they looked. Sure, things were changing quickly, but nothing like today – and add in over-population, another quickly-denied reality by many of our Boomer leaders, and the situation is becoming critical.
The problem – an inevitable problem in societies in which individualism and greed are considered to be unalloyed goods (see libertarianism, a wing of the GOP, in the United States), and the practice and improvement of the communal good, the responsibility of government, atrophies – is the investment in rigid ideological & theological positions divergent from reality. I use the word investment almost literally, because for those who have bought into such philosophies, many, even most, have literally put time and wealth into those ideologies order to acquire & solidify wealth and prestige.
Tell them they’re wrong to have done so, and they’ll squall and scream and wiggle and cry out No! But I have respect and power!
OK, Boomer.
Because of these investments, the Boomers in question continually fight wars with their opponents that are slowly – or quickly – becoming quite surreal.
Here’s a snowball, the world is not getting warmer. Really? Why do all our measurements disagree with you?
Abortion is evil. In an over-populated world of scarce resources? Should I permit this fetus to mature into a child and then bring it up in poverty, or die in war?
God gave us stewardship of the world and therefore strip-mining, pollution, and other forms of ruining the environment is ok. Really? How will the Millenials live in such an irremediable world?
Guns in the hands of everyone makes the world better. Let’s ask those folks in Las Vegas who cowered and died from the shooting from on high.
Profits before humans. And how does that lead to a better world?
These are all statements I’ve run across from our purported leaders, and there are many more. The Millenials are quite right to dismiss those who’s propagate them as right with OK, Boomer.
OK, Boomer.
OK, Boomer.
It’s simply a polite way of saying FOAD, Boomer, from forty years ago. Fuck Off And Die Already, Boomer. The Millenials will have to clean up after the Boomers, after all. It’s time to start stripping power from them so the mess isn’t quite so large.
But not all of them. Not all Boomers are stuck in their ideological foxholes, shooting at those who’d tell them that they’re wrecking the world. In a sense, everyone invests in ideological positions, if only by default, and those investments grow stronger as they age; it’s a rare person who flits from ideology to ideology, although some will change the window dressing frequently. It’s just that some pick a scalable ideology, a phrase I just made up. They select ideologies that retain their validity as conditions change, as knowledge grows and changes and matures.
In the end, OK Boomer selects those political and religious leaders who haven’t kept up with realities on the ground, who pursue their outdated dreams and stick to their now-irrelevant ideological and theological positions, and thus are damaging the future for those who come after them.
It’ll be interesting to see how often it’s misused to label all Boomers as misguided and not worth listening to. Personally, I hope I have the wherewithal to return fire with OK, Boomer, and let them puzzle over it.
