Super Tuesday solidifies a revolutionary generational trend that has been in the works not only since Obama’s win in Iowa, but since the beginning of humanity. From the social scientist’s point of view, the struggle between Obama and Hillary is a sign of a healthy society regenerating itself organically.
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Viewed through the scholar’s lens, the Obama youth vote indicates that young people are feeling empowered as they flex their muscles at the doorstop of real power. But ironically, these events are actually also a vindication for baby boomers, accused of every self-centered sin from ego-driven entitlement to the selfish refusal to move gracefully aside for the next generation of political leadership.
The key to understanding why boomers should be applauded for Obama’s vote and Hillary’s tears is in what adult development pioneer Erik H. Erikson decades ago termed “generativity.” Generativity means that in healthy societies, it is the parental generation’s role to guide their offspring into adulthood, believing that the universe is basically trustworthy and meaningful. Without this, there is only apathy or rebellion.
Rather than represent a generational failure, those boomer parents whose children turned out for Obama, succeeded in raising offspring who are mentally and emotionally equipped to regenerate, revise and renew the worldview to which they have been born.
For the next in our series of trend reports issued by FH Boom—this one on the subject of Generational Politics 2008—please follow this link.
Carol Orsborn