The Forgotten Generation

            Like many of us, winter time provides me an excuse to curl up with a book and let the world go by. The feeling of the last few years in the publishing industry is that fantasy lit is no longer genre, it is now fiction but after spending ten years in the mother lode of the UK I have lost my taste for it. There's Tolkien and that's about it.

                     I picked up a copy of the Complete Grimms Folk tales the other day and must confess that I now read it in a new and comprehensive way. Folk tales are not so much didactic in the sense that they instruct us how to live, as they are logical. Bottom line – they make sense and their ultimate goal is to lead us from childhood to maturity. Anthropologically speaking the tales come across as case studies.

Also I tried ordinary adult fiction, which is mostly crime and mystery stories. The formula is recognizable right off the bat. Even Ludlam and Le Carre', both of whom I've read and enjoyed extensively, tend to stay in the same world for each novel.

                  Incidentally I tried Caleb Carr's new fantasy and was disappointed. He seems to be trying to emulate the dungeons and dragons books of Weiss and Hickman, but he doesn't have the gift for it.

And he's a fine writer as evidenced by his earlier novels. Without some sort of a moral message a book is just words. (The Message of the D&D books incidentally is that technology and magic are virtually indistinguishable.)

                     What I can read, if it's done well, is historical fiction. Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame is unfortunately known to most only for it's story of the doomed love triangle of the beauty, the handsome hero and the beast, but the actual novel goes in to great detail about 16^th Century Paris that add immeasurably to the impact of the story.

                         So I'm reading “The Silver Eagle” by Ben Kane and so far so good. What contextualizes the entire story is it is about a legion on the frontier that for various reasons, has not played a large role in the scheming that went on between Julius Caesar and his rivals.Apparently it's part of a series of books about  the lost legion - an imaginary legion that wanders about, keeping true to the codes of the vanished republic.

                 It triggered something.

For many years I've tried to come up with a phrase that would describe the people that grew up in the time and place I did. Twain invented “The Gilded Age.” Hemingway came up with “The Lost Generation.” In order for this to work, of course, others have to see the point.

What is more there has to be an opposition- a cadre of people who are vehemently and violently opposed to my interpretation. There were people who thought the long cycles of boom and bust that Twain called the gilded age were great and so the other name for the era is “The Gay Nineties” Likewise the era after the first world war, when mankind began to realize that he was part of a huge killing machine and that the killing machine was totally indifferent to it's victims brought about what we could at the very least call a vast disassociation.

                     The empires fought to preserve their status but it was no longer needed to cloak their ambitions in religious or moral garments.

                  As Claude Rains was to say thirty year later in Casablanca “Shocking, simply shocking”

                    The phrase “The gilded age” was to receive new life ten or so years after it was coined.

Two enterprising Broadway songwriters wrote “Only a bird in a gilded cage.” Which was about the sad condition of the beautiful young woman we know today as the trophy wife. The eighteen nineties mirrored the nineteen eighties closely. The yuppies of the day lived fast, dressed well and spent most of their time in the effort to impress a big shot.

                  The lost generation (1920-1940)  were so because it finally hit them; the first world war demonstrated that there was no rhyme nor reason to nationalistic politics other then “get the money up front.” The most concise explanation anyone ever came up with was to say of the leaders “they had to do something because they were afraid to be seen as doing nothing.”

                  I'm not sure I can even hold that against them. I'll let you in on a little secret, one gained by yours truly at no small cost. Remember I have some experience in this writing game. The secret is when sanity fails then try a little madness. When truth falls sloppy dead then try coincidence, because here's another secret. The guy next to you is no smarter then you are. They're bluffing - just like you. Truth is whatever you can get away with. An authoritative tone of voice, good posture and a clean suit goes a long way towards winning any argument.

               It might help, as well, to consider the greek idea of the daemon. It is that confidence that enables one to stroll forth into the lions den confident in the awareness that the lion is just an overweight pussy cat. Where does it come from? Who knows? It can come from madness and megalomania, as in the case of dictators, or, as Freud suggested, it can come from a loving mother.

Without it we are not even in chaos. We are simply lost. We are defined by our opposition.

Remove the opposition and there's, as the expression goes, “hell to pay”

As I said, much of the most interesting stuff by Hugo is edited out of the abridged editions of his works. If and when you read what I am about to say, or hear of it somehow, I have little doubt that the first few paragraphs here will be tossed aside. Well, don't blame me! I tried. I really did.

Hemingway’s lost generation, between the big wars, seemed to be having a lot of fun but nevertheless for the average people, suffice to say it was business as usual. The poor got shafted and the rich got richer. It was the roaring twenties after all. Do the Charleston! Do the Black Bottom! Shake that black bottom for me Mamma!

The fact of the matter is that soon artistic hegemony would shift from east to west over the waters. A salient moment was “The King of Jazz”, an early color film staring Paul Whiteman and Bing Crosby. It was by no means jazz, but like the confidence man it suggested it was and the Europeans had lost enough faith to believe it.

It's easy to say that American culture is an oxymoron, like military intelligence. The great American art form however is not Jazz – it is advertising, which can be defined as “the art of telling people what to do.”

Finally then we come to my bid for immortality. We are not the lost generation. We are the generation that seeks escape from being found. Being found means being controlled. The art of telling people what to do has come round to it's eventual origin – the art of telling people when to die.

Reagan, of course, was the AntiChrist. No one can argue with that. And to see through the devils whiles we must first of all forgive him. He who hated his father. He who hated his children. They must firstly be forgiven for it is not them to blame but circumstances.

Before we can forgive the devil we must see the greatness in him. We must face the fact that his promises were not lies – not in the true sense of lies. He, like the devil, delivered what he promised. As to the side effects, the destruction of the American way of life, well that's another story.

So, for his generation, or many in his generation who were old people between 1980 and 2010 you won – you won the lottery big time. Taxes were slashed and entitlements expanded. We know this. It is not rocket science, and as well the questions as to what to do now are not going to go away. But I ask you to take a moment and consider not the future, which is unknown, nor the past, which is subject to interpretation, but the recent past.

It is a curious (read, “malevolent”) fact that pure hatred is not the best way to do harm to those we would destroy. As Frank Herbert said, “To make something stronger, attack it.” Overt hatred alerts our allies. More to the point it alerts us that we are threatened and must take counter measures.

True evil is far too wise to allow this to happen. It shakes our hand as we enter the house of death. It commiserates with us as we sadly explain our state. It would like to help us, but it has a better idea – it will allow us to help ourselves!

So I consider that legion of roman soldiers wandering around the empire. Many of the members are well trained. The thing is to consider that when the Gilded age came to an end it was done by Teddy Roosevelt, who was not a businessman, and not a politician. He was a law man. Any man with sufficient resources can, as the Romans would say , “hire Greek Brains” to do their publicity work. What was needed was to see the opposition not as businessmen, but as criminals, and there was and remains a strong desire in us not to do so.

What the criminal values above all is loyalty to himself. The problem with capable people is that they do not become capable by being loyal to petty tyrants. So what is to be done with them?

They must be cast aside. Recall a good percentage of why Napoleon was so successful against central European armies at first is not only that his armies were good, but that the opposition was terrible, and especially terribly led – primarily by people who gained their commissions via bribes

In order to give strength to my definition I have to limit it. I am talking about the generation that came of age between 1970 and 2000 - yup the baby boomers. At the same time they were at the front of every advertising campaign – the heart – the actual people – was lost. They were and are the Forgotten generation. Nixon's cannon fodder.

The lost generation was bewildered. The Forgotten generation was, some would say, intentionally befuddled. Whatever the case, whether abdication or coup, for a comparatively small amount of silver they have squandered their birthright and handed their futures over to others who have little interest in the good of all.

It is odd. Like it or not we have moved on and what is done is done. A great deal of writing gives hints of portentous events just around the corner but in this case the die is cast.

It is agony to watch one's future slip away. I won't kid you. I saw it happen, or felt that was so. The long days and nights in the wasteland. “Get a life” shouts the clown. “ha ha I'm dying”- the teardrop explodes “good for you, good for you. Good for you,” says the broken doll.

The mere mention of the phrase “Forgotten Generation” however does not in an of itself give you reason to care about, or consider the ramifications. One of the better ways to do that is to consider an example from what I call “intermediate zen.”

Zen is well known as a primarily wordless method of enlightenment. Masters look askance at so called zen cook books. If such pronouncements are paths to omniscience then what is poetry? Nevertheless if it is your calling to write pooetry then by all means – write away!

Another paradox is the term “mystic”. The word itself sounds like mist and the practitioners often surround themselves with obscurities while the goal is always to attain that clarity of mind that allows for true perception of reality.

The danger and difficulty of the above two misunderstandings is that they attempt to apply a qualitative analysis to something that resists it. To apply a quantitative analysis is also impossible – (How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.) - but at least with a quantitative description the absurdity is more obvious.

Right, well, lets's jump to it. The Lost Generation and the forgotton generation are two diffirent things. There's a teleoplogical aspect at play here – meaning where ddo the terms com from and where are they going. To use our old friends I'll give the example of the void and nothing.

Nothing is that which once had thingness” whereas the void never did. In that sense the “nothing can be traversed, reverse engineered while the void, never having descended to form, cannot. At the risk of sounding absurd nothing therefore can be understood whereas the void cannot. In the same way confusion can theoretically be straightened out whereas chaos cannot. If it can changed to order then it is not chaos in the first place. One might suggest that the difference between the two states of reality is the presence of a foothold in both confusion and the “not thing”.

Nevertheless the two, like being lost and being forgotten are in daily life, similar.

The first world war was not the first to kill tens of thousands of soldiers a day, but it was the first to allow the killing to be done, aided by technology, by a handful of men. This had to raise questions in mens minds as to whether it was actually a determinant of correct rectitude, or the will of God. The early novels of Aldous Huxley bring out , for the first time, the sense of uselessness in the individuals confrontation with organized society. His world presented a different outcome from that of H.G. Wells.

Wells was famous for his deus ex machina – the hand of God that appeared at the last moment to save the day. Huxley had no such illusions.

My use of the term “forgotten generation” for the upper middle class between 1970 and 2010 is not perfect but it has several justifications, which I will describe.

Although I am an American the era and effects happened across much of the industrialized world. Beginning with the revolutions and slogans of the seventies – the cohorts marched in similar ways, through indifference, to the neo-conservatism of the 80's and 90's and finally to the economic collapses of the end of the era. What I describe then, like the economic world had transcended borders.

This era also coincided, roughly with my adult working life. I was born in the tail end of the baby boom and hence got little benefit from it. It was sort of like knowing a woman who was free with her favors and courting her for awhile only to discover that she had repented of her previous ways and was now saving herself for Mr Right.

As well there is no denying a generational role' in what transpired. Much of America lived on credit cards for decades and when the bill came due – it was someone elses problem. The same held true with the welfare states of southern europe.

In the nineteen twenties, prior to the depression of the thirties there were plenty of indicators that all was not well in Happyland. Even in the isolated sinecures of Wall Street there were plenty of people who were able to avoid the disaster by getting out in time. This situation replicated itself almost exactly in the first decade of the twenty first century. Call it a propensity to gamble if you like. More cynically one would have to suggest that it was necessary to perpetuate the myth that the Stock Market was functioning as it was intended to do and was not a criminal enterprise. That too remains with us today.

There's a question theologians have asked for thousands of years. When the Israelites

were freed they went back to Israel, a walk, even with women and children that ordinarily would take a few weeks at most. It took them forty years.

Little explanation is given and so the theologians suggest the reason for the long walk was that after their sojourn in Egypt the Jews had lost the ways of freedom – they had become used to letting others do their thinking for them and they to learn to think for themselves before they could return to the promised land.

God was aiding them even as it appeared he was holding them back.

In our story however there remains a critical difference between the lost and the forgotten. The Lost generation after the first world war knew not where to go. Their Gods had been broken on the altars. They split apart. Prohibition was righteous allegedly , yet it led to gangsterism. The Stock market led to the depression.

There is wide consensus that the great flaw of America is racism, and yet one wonders if not in a nation of so diverse a population there is not an ongoing desire to find and identify the low man on the totem pole. Like in professional boxing where one can trace the history of immigration from Germans to Irish, to Italians and finally to blacks who were effectively place out of order due to racism.

The myth is that the market system finds the most capable people and rewards them. Is it not possible that it also finds the weakest and exploits them? We know how that's done. We simply look at those we wish to disappear and we look right through them!

The problem of course is that at the end of the day they are still with us – waiting patiently.

It makes us feel uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to do anything about it

As the case may be at some point however we have to take responsibility for circumstances as we allow them to be, and indeed , as we create them. The explanation that one was “just lucky” begins to wear thin after awhile.

One of the major problems that faces us today is the assignation of blame, or responsibility. It extents from the concentration camp keepers who were “just following orders” to the corporate lawyer that seeks to minimize culpability for the malevolent actions of his firm.

And in truth, should we reach even further beyond the mere legal contingencies that govern financial and social interactions and travel to those myths and preconceptions upon which life rests we must facr the daunting truth that Mickey Mouse, a creation loved far beyond that of any organic creature is not a living entity. The Mouse is a false god and those that die for it die for nothing.

It seems a trivial distinction yet it is a question that cannot be permanently solved for the simple matter that the false god, like the devil, pays us and the children of the real deity are a burden.

I for one have never consciously shirked or shied away from admitting this terrible truth – which is that doing good does not make sense. Logically it is the murderer, the rapist and the thief that are the superior ones in this world. Once understood though I find myself freed from the need to demonstrate any false truths about immortality, decency and justice. Not only that but I am not about to second guess god.

I had thought that it was only a temporary thing, brought about by technological change, that led to the delusions spread so completely in America. Now I doubt that.

In any event one of the truisms of systems is the systems reality becomes the only reality. The depth of the reality however can be astounding. I have suggested overtly and covertly that many of the American economies difficulties have their origin long ago in the pre civil war era and it was not for awhile until the actual motivations began to reveal themselves.

One can find it singularly amazing how long power lasts. In the north shore of Long Island where I lived for years there were many families that came to wealth in providing for the civil war, over a hundred years prior. Likewise when the two hundredth anniversary of the French revolution was celebrated the majority of the people in charge of the festivities where descendents not of the hoi poll oi but of the Aristocrats!

I have worn peoples ears down complaining about that horrible day when Reagan was inaugurated, but other, older, and perhaps wiser heads point out that the processes that would weaken the northeast were already at world in for instance “the southern Strategy.” The thing is I was sort of on the cusp of event. I have been to the Carter White house but the Senatorial office I had best connections with, Damato, did not inspire confidence and indeed was soon removed from office.

They , and consequently me, suffered from a universally Long Island misconception, which is that it is the center of the world, which it is not. Plus the kind of local politics that had in some ways benefited the region was becoming outdated in favor of sound bites and international issues.

Realistically though there's no shame in admitting that in a football game the other guy beat the hell out of you – and that's what happened to us, with the caveat that wall street was given a free get out of jail pass. Realistically as well, my situation was not that of the majority of people in the region. As I've noted before nearly my entire graduating class in high school (The honors track) moved west as soon as possible. I had medical concerns that kept me from doing so.

For the people in the service industries, the contractors, the restauranteurs, the plumbers etc, there was basically little change since the owners of the houses were staying put. I did what I could to seek out opportunities, but there was, and presumably remains a predominantly illicit character to business on the island. ( Note I no longer live there.)

Churchill once again, brings us the far eastern adage of the man riding the tigers back who discovers that riding the tiger is one thing but getting off is quite another thing, This is the situation the local Republicans found themselves in the other week. I am searching for an analogy.

As a man this is the one that comes to mind first.

A young woman marries an old millionaire and insists she loves his sense of humor, his wisdom, his kind kindheartedness and so on. The man discovers her cheating and calls into effect the prenuptial agreement, which the girl challenges.

Under testimony in court the woman says that while she did love the hubby for his many good qualities, actually she married him for his money.”

So now, after decades of nonsense about the rising tide lifting all boats it's a fair cop, as they say in the UK – the southerners are gonna whup yo ass!

&    That will be the subject of the next article

Ps who are the forgotten generation?

Ask Micheal Moore