Alexandria, VA – “Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person’s mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Kim, would you stop taking pictures of yourself? Your sister’s going to jail.”
Kris Jenner
Greetings from France! The Paris Olympics have wrapped up. Some 16 million sports visitors found their way to the City of Lights for the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics. Approximately 50 million visitors are projected to visit Paris throughout the whole year. And for the entire country of France, over 101 million international visitors are expected this year.
We attended the Opening Ceremony events, and the streets were full of happy, energetic, excited people from all over the globe. Parisians themselves were particularly aglow, and rightfully so. When the games closed, Team France had brought home a record number of medals.
Team USA also enjoyed a terrific showing! It was great seeing so many USA athletes across the city. We even waved to three USA Women’s Basketball Team members getting into their van heading to the Olympic Village.
Paris was wrapped in beauty (despite the Opening Day rain), and all the young ladies were out in force. I saw hundreds of them bedecked in summer dresses, slacks, shorts – everything screaming “FASHION” –in front of every monument, statue, building, street corner, park, formal gardens, fountains, palaces, along famous streets and landmarks. Some were positioning themselves for that all-important “selfie” to transmit across the globe confirming to everyone they “were there.”
Some even had their entourage holding lights, reflectors, and shooting with their phone or with actual photographers setting up the shots. Nearly all these high fashion wannabees affected that new, young, Haute Couture Fashion POSE complete with glossy, pouting lips, late-night eye make-up, tilted head, and all with that all-too-trendy kiss.
So, let’s get right to it, right now. I don’t get it.
I’m from a completely different generation than today—a member of that strange “Boomer” generation.
“OK Boomer.” We hid under our desks and covered our heads during Civil Defense drills in the event of a nuclear attack from what was then the Soviet Union.[1] People dug and built out bomb shelters in their backyards. From the air, whole suburban 1950s neighborhoods looked like prairie dog colonies.
In the 1960s, our generation became “socially aware” and radicalized trying to stop the Vietnam War. Most of those serving in Vietnam were poor and unable to obtain a deferment from the draft by attending college. Few had any idea where Vietnam was on a map. Those who did go to college wound up protesting, participating in “sit-ins,” joining communes, turning on and dropping out, going to Woodstock and Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, attempting to reshape American society out of the old 50s way of thinking and into a whole new world.
Boomers became obsessed with protecting the Earth. “Give a hoot – don’t pollute!” posters were the rage. TV public service ads like “Keep America Beautiful” with the crying Native American[2] appeared and were on everybody’s lips the next day. Peace activist John McConnell proposed a day for the Earth’s preservation at a UNESCO Conference, and when “Earth Day” was declared in April 1970, nearly every student at my Alma Mater, Fairfax High School, wanted to save the planet.
Our National Week assemblies always featured an environmental speaker. Posters and clean-ups became the standard. That first Earth Day effort was the beginning of the environmental movement that mobilized the Boomer generation to action and may have motivated former Vice President and Alexandria resident Al Gore to get into documentary filmmaking in a big way.
We Boomers may seem a bit out-of-touch with what’s “trending” today, being behind the power curve on understanding and accepting new technology. But here’s a quick reality check: Boomers created the personal computer, the internet, the cellular phone, the microwave (oven), the laser, and Rollerblades. We shot human beings into space, and we even put men on the moon.
At work, I have difficulty downloading the latest software or “app” dictated to me by the IT department. I frequently have to have a younger person help me operate my mobile phone – or what I prefer to call my “communicator,” since it’s more than a phone anymore. Anyone under 30 who comes to the house, we have them reprogram our TV to stream half the channels we pay for but can’t figure out how to find and watch.
Today, I’m a bit of a lost soul. Trendy phrases escape me. I don’t, for example, “share” with someone — I talk with them. I don’t “reach out” to a friend. I call or write to them. I don’t “provide input” in meetings – I tell people something.
As a whole Boomers tended to focus on the social and political ills of the world – war, poverty, disease, politics, and tried valiantly to fix things that vexed the world. Or so we thought.
Today’s young people are bright, fast out of the blocks, energetic, excitable, and multi-dexterous. But there is perhaps one major flaw in young people today that clouds today’s generation – “It’s all about me.”
And it’s not their fault. Today, it’s a self-focused world. It’s in everything we see and do. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, Snapchat – It’s all about “Me.”
We have swapped an externally driven society for an internally focused one, and it’s on steroids. What we’re doing, where we are, what we wear, what we drive, what’s our music, what we believe, who we’re with, how much money we’re making, where we live, where we’re traveling, our new toys – all these things we send out on the ethernet, all are all about us. We broadcast it to the world to define ourselves – to showcase who we are.
Social media has become the demigod of our society. The volume of “hits” on our website, the number of “friends” we have on Facebook, or subscribers on Youtube, a recent post going “viral,” all these have spawned the new “career” field of “Influencer.”[3] Selfies capturing yourself before Michelangelo’s “Pieta” or DaVinci’s “Mona Lisa” have become more important than capturing the original Renaissance masterpiece itself. Kylie Jenner fittingly once said, “I take, like, 500 selfies to get one I like.”
Is it time we changed the national motto from “E Pluribus Unum” to — paraphrasing Alexandre Dumas here — “All for One — and One is ME”?
Like many Boomers, I’m on Facebook, too, so I’m not wholly absolved. I joined it to keep in touch with family, friends, and contemporaries since snail mail has become just another government agency on life support, being slowly driven into obscurity by corporate America.
I’m not saying that the Boomer generation was/is any better than today’s. But maybe it’s time we took a step back from our selfie-focused life and looked around. There’s a whole world to be experienced, not just selfied. Art, sports, literature, theatre, music, other states, other regions, national parks, historic sites, other cultures, other countries –- there’s a world around us that you have to experience – and not through a lens. You don’t always have to put yourself in the picture to prove you were there.
So, forget about blowing a kiss at the camera standing in front of the American Cemetery in Normandy, France. That ain’t about you.
Endnotes:
[1] Civil Defense doesn’t even exist as an agency anymore. Their missions were divided and handled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) both of which have received mixed reviews on success of late.
[2] Native American, Indigenous American, American Indian, please select your choice. When the ad first appeared on American television sets, we all talked about ‘the crying Indian’.
[3] “Influencer” – What does that mean? Marketer? Sales? Professional propagandist? Cultist? Or just plain Narcissist? You be the judge.
ICYMI: We Honor Our Airborne Troops
