Family Matriarch Passes On

My aunty passed away last night. In our family, she was the last survivor of her generation that was born in the decade 1910's to the 1920's. This generation gave birth to the baby boomers... so lets call them the pre-baby-boomers. As a baby boomer, what do you think sets apart our parents generation from our (and succeeding) generation?

It's a struggle to pinpoint the charm of the pre-baby-boomers society... but let's generalise. They were less mercenary... willing to give you more of their time... more willing to trust you at face value... less ready to be critical... at least in public... less likely to draw attention to themselves... more likely to know the neighbourhood in which they lived. They spent more time in their homes... knew their children and neighbours... looked for opportunities to help. Is this a 'Pollyanna' view of 1950's society? (Definitely yes!)

Do you remember the last time you saw a man walk around the car to open the door for a lady? Ladies, when was the last time you wore gloves, a hat with artificial flowers pinned to the side... a freshly pressed floral dress... pointy sun glasses... hairspray that gave your hair the strength of steel... called your neighbour by his surname (hello Mr. Surname). Some of these customs and fashions now appear juvenile but strangely comforting for those of us who grew up in such surroundings. There seemed to be a little more 'us' in their values and a little bit less of 'me'.

You wouldn't want to freeze societal change... we need change to allow each generation to own their society. The pre-baby-boomers created lots of change. They saw aeroplanes take to the sky... saw other forms of transport transformed into mass efficient systems that radically changed the shape of our economy. They saw wireless enter the domestic home, followed by television and YouTube and computer games. They saw real family incomes more than double... saw the two income family become the norm... and saw families sacrifice their leisure time to chase the almighty dollar. They saw politics become front page news almost every day (it used to concern them only one month before the triennial election) ... they saw political leaders move from revered to ridiculed. They saw the art of entertainment shift from developing personal skills (music, storytelling, comedy, painting, etc) to the skill of being able to buy the best seats at the cheapest price. They saw theology and the church shift from being our prime moral compass to being held accountable for crimes committed by their rogue element.

The pre-baby-boomers should be criticised on a number of fronts. Largely, they took cigarette smoking to every household all over the world. They created the atomic bomb... discriminated on the basis of religion, skin colour, sex and sexual orientation... cleared a lot of old growth forest... polluted a lot of waterways.

But putting aside the hard facts, to my mind, they were nice people... really nice like my aunty.