The Individual Boomer

When Winston Smith in Orwell’s 1984 asks an old man in a pub if life was better before the revolution, the old man is simply incapable of giving an answer. Ask the next boomer you see the same question, and you’ll get the same response.

It’s hard to blame boomers for their myopia. The parents of this generation had no idea what the new technology of “television” really was, or how much power it could wield over a human mind. The parents of boomers assumed that the weapons-grade propaganda systems would be switched off after World War II, but instead, they were redirected at the innocent brains of their children.

If there was one key insight to come out of the war period, it was that brainwashing must be the central task of a modern democratic regime. The rulers of the world agreed that people cannot be trusted to think for themselves or to teach their children. Either we all think the same, or the wolves that are always on the prowl may take control of the herd, just like they did in the first half of the 20^th century. They really, truly believed this. The result was that, sometime between 1946 and 1964 (the boomer generation), the post-WWII rulers of the world created a Year Zero.

Year Zero is the founding myth. The past before 1945 is misty and dreamlike, a dark haze. If you’re a boomer, the millennia before this period are to be condemned as the before-times, characterised only by racism and prejudice. All history leading up to Year Zero would now be seen as a linear story of “progress” leading humanity out of the dark times to the present era of goodness and light. All narratives after Year Zero explicitly separate the past from the present.

But notice that the past wasn’t being separated from the future. In Year Zero thinking, there can be no future because a future implies change, and no change is possible after the Year Zero. There is only the eternal present. After Year Zero, nothing can grow, nothing can become, nothing can be exciting, because to do such things would be illegal. Year Zero is not about “starting again”; it is the end of starting.

To the rulers of the world who had just emerged from WWII, history itself was the cause of all wars. In every generation, young children are taught by their religions, parents and communities to hate “those guys.” Each person grows up hearing vague stories of atrocities, expulsions, theft and rapacity, although no one can quite remember how the suffering started. Children, not knowing any better, absorb these stories and begin to hate, leading to war. This is what the rulers of the world truly, honestly believe, and they worked hard to interrupt this process with the boomers.

The first step was to split all boomer children from their racial, religious or ethnic histories. The earlier this split could occur, the better. The maths was simple: If a child never heard any fearmongering about “those guys,” then the child could, theoretically, make up his own mind about “those guys.” It would be Year Zero at age zero, for everyone.

But how could such deep brainwashing be achieved at scale? No one was willing to abduct all the boomer children from their parents, send them to giant warehouses and feed them deracinating propaganda until they reach eighteen years of age. That wouldn’t work. And since there were millions of different ways that people justified their hatred of “those guys,” it would be a mammoth task to create customised deracinating propaganda for each group. So, what was to be done?

The answer was as clever as it was effective. Boomers were told to be individuals.

After all, if every person is an individual, then their loyalties can be easily shifted away from their parents, religions and communities. The neat thing about individualism is that it is, in fact, a kind of crushing conformity since all the routes are laid out for you by the system. In other words, anyone who offers a pathway to success through individuality will control the populace. But real independence is never allowed to exist. Hollywood subtly taught boomers to worship the “maverick” hero archetype, who also paradoxically sacrifices his life for others.

Except this isn’t a paradox. If you recall, the entire goal of this regime-approved individualism was to redirect the gene-deep desire to protect other members of the tribe from “those guys.” The careful programming of Hollywood fiction was to reframe heroism away from being an act of a person who chooses to sacrifice for a tribe, because the group is “who we are,” into the act of a person sacrificing themselves because that’s “who I am.” The shift was subtle, but it ruined an entire generation.

Deracinating boomer children at scale with individualism was astoundingly successful. Being told you could be a secret Superman, a maverick hero archetype, short-circuited any identification with a child’s own ancestors. In Europe today, it is still common for men to proudly claim they are related to a great-great-great-great-grandfather who did something cool 200 years ago. But in America and New Zealand, most people don’t even care what their father does for a living, let alone their grandfather’s profession. We are four generations deep into “go your own way,” and it shows.

Individualism is a recent phenomenon. It is not a permanent and aboriginal feature of Europeans, much less Indo-Europeans. To think that Indo-Europeans were individualist, or even proto-individualist, is quackery pure and simple. Whenever individualism emerged among Europeans, especially in Northwestern Europe, it was seen as a peculiar lifestyle and regarded with heavy suspicion. Only the very wealthy or the extremely poor could “afford” to adopt individualism, yet even they knew that individualism came with a high price, because it is only the group that can offer protection from an unforgiving and cruel outside world. No man is an island.

Indeed, another insidious trick of Hollywood is to display friends as little more than sidekicks to the main character, the individual, who performs all the actions with all the agency. Movies rarely show friends being a critical part of the main character’s success. The trick is that you can be successful on your own. The system wants you to believe that a tribe is not only useless, but that your friends will only stab you in the back and steal your girl. The shift was subtle, but it ruined an entire generation.

This reframing trick wasn’t limited to Hollywood. It has been used to great effect in the Christian story, too. Ask yourself why, for example, a main thread in the Jesus narrative is the betrayal of Judas and the denial of Peter. Jesus was a man, but also a god, just like Superman. His friends were sidekicks who were along for the ride, but who betrayed him when he needed them the most. But it turned out that Jesus didn’t need his friends to be successful. He died alone on the cross. He also sacrificed himself for all humanity because he didn’t “belong” to a tribe. He was above all that nonsense. Jesus was reframed as the ultimate boomer individual.

This trick has even been extended to other religions. In Islam, the concept of “jihad” pivots on the idea that the Dar al-Islam (house of Islam) is in permanent conflict with the Dar al-Harb (rest of the world). It is all Muslims pitted together against “those guys.” But sometime after 2001, a new idea was seeded into the Islamic world that depicted “jihad” as an inner struggle, a personal conflict in which all pious Muslims were encouraged to fight their individual passions and vices. The shift was subtle, but it popped the bubble of “jihad” as an act of real warfare. That’s the power of propaganda.

It wasn’t just the boomers who fell for these tricks. Individualism successfully spawned multiple generations of deracinated narcissists, detached from all history and living in the eternal present. To their credit, the brainwashing helped to achieve the post-WWII goal of avoiding any major wars. But nothing is free. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be converted from one form to another. In other words, all debts must be paid in full. You can buy peace using the credit card of individualism, but tomorrow is coming whether you like it or not. Year Zero is the ideology of kicking the can down the road and hoping there’s more road.

I’m pretty sure the boomers knew in their hearts that their individualism was civilizational suicide. They just didn’t care. But everything starts again, even history. And all debts must be paid in full.