The Apology: From baby boomers to the handicapped generations.
by David Holmgren
Re-posted from Holmgren.com.au
Editor's Note: Despite my mixed feelings with regard to this piece by David Holmgren (one man cannot apologize for an entire generation, nor shoulder the responsibility for all its sins) ultimately it unfolds many of the cumulative socioeconomic ills plaguing our society and culture.
Twenty years ago, maybe even ten, I might have used the word "Western" when speaking of the cultural corruption, as if to hold harmless "Eastern" countries for the infection that was beginning to ravage and overwhelm their civilizations. I am much less inclined to do so now, for they too are welcoming with open arms the mass insanity of Wetiko.
Please, suppress any cognitive triggers you may encounter when reading this piece and allow the overall information to permeate your mind and soul.
Cognitive Dissonance
David Holmgren is an Australian environmental designer, ecological educator and writer. He is best known as one of the co-originators of the permaculture concept with Bill Mollison. - Editor
It is time for us baby boomers to honestly acknowledge what we did and didn’t do with the gifts given to us by our forebears and be clear about our legacy with which we have saddled the next and succeeding generations.
By ‘baby boomers’ I mean those of us born in the affluent nations of the western world between 1945 and 1965. In these countries, the majority of the population became middle class beneficiaries of mass affluence. I think of the high birth rate of those times as a product of collective optimism about the future, and the abundant and cheap resources to support growing families.
By many measures, the benefits of global industrial civilisation peaked in our youth, but for most middle class baby boomers of the affluent countries, the continuing experience of those benefits has tended to blind us to the constriction of opportunities faced by the next generations: unaffordable housing and land access, ecological overshoot and climate chaos amongst a host of other challenges.
