http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2402937
What was old is new again...
My parents generation (pre-baby boom) recycled everything because there wasn't this level of gross consumerism that was foisted upon the American public until the post WWII years.
The babyboomers exploited the worlds resources on a much grander scale that could have never been imagined before. In the 19th century, resources were squanders, exploited and torn from nations via robber barons and the ultra-wealthy. It was only after successive panics that corporations came to the forefront to replace the Carnegie's, the Vanderbilt's etc.
WWII allowed corporations to suddenly exploit all the worlds resources under the guise of "we need to win a war" and the post war mantra, "we deserve it because we won a war". Out went much of the "old fashion" concept of recycling and in came "new is better" because if people are recycling how on earth are you going to convince them to buy more new stuff?
I was born on the tail end of the baby boom generation (1963). I missed most of what was considered the "golden age" of Post War America. I came of age during Watergate and when the first Earth day occurred April 1970.
We had all sorts of programs going on in elementary school to become "Ecologically" minded. But frankly, not much really occurred after that nationally for many years. Don't get me wrong there were protests against nukes and the national news of the Love Canal disaster, etc, but it really didn't catch on fire until, in my opinion the late 1980's.
My parents being of the depression era generation and of the "greatest generation" (a term they both hated), had always taught my brother, sisters and I to try and be creative about reusing things and fixing things instead of buying new. As a result, I used that same skill set when I renovated my home (built in '72) and reused much of the old growth timber 2 x 4's in the walls. (which still smelled fresh when I cut them a few years ago)
No one owns the concept of recycling, no one generation is better than the last. It's all a matter of perspective. The baby boomer generation gets a lot of well deserved guff for a lot of todays problems, but on the flip side of that, it was the "greatest generation" that gave birth to them and raised them. So who is to blame?
Whether you are a gen X'er, Y'er, etc. We are all a victim of marketing, propaganda and group think.
Castigating one generation because of their problems as the cause of another generations problems is just ridiculousness. Because not everyone is the same and blanket statements serve no one other than to inflate ego.
While this chain email has been around for a while and reeks of the "get off my lawn", it's only purpose is nothing more to demean the current generation for what? I don't know, because while the older generation did in fact recycle many things they also left us with a very much polluted world that is still being polluted via out modded thinking, but yet is still, for the majority of the world, still encouraged.
The bottom line is this: we all can learn from each other. I learned from my parents and am choosing to pass on that which I have learned and at the same time, keeping a very much open mind to new ways of doing things.
While the older generation did recycle a lot of things, todays generation has made recycling a part of life as it once was long ago.
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