Many years ago people lived under a constant fear of all things almighty. The fear came with a long list of values, traditions and authoritarian figures. Church on Sundays, no meat on Fridays, the list goes on, and no one dared to question it. Now days the picture is very different, people question everything, science is the almighty truth, and nothing seems to stand higher then our collective belief/trust in the values of democratic society.

This week I decided to ask myself,

“Is this a good thing?”

The answer has eluded me thus far, and I’m beginning to see that it will continue to do so until something much more profound happens to me. Never-the-less I have been fortunate enough to stumble along a very interesting point of view on the matter.

It all starts with the idea that we are currently in the middle of the last of a three stage process. The first stage being a time when society was governed ruled and judged by what ever religious institution was in place. God was almighty and the bible was the law. Simple! In this first stage religion was the value while also being the authority; IE. Do good or God will send you to hell!

Then along came the 60s, when for the first time, and one might say because of the disillusionment of post war parents, people started to question religion as an authority.

“Why should I believe in something that science can explain in numbers and figures?”

Was, I’m sure, a common quandary of the times.

The important thing to note about this stage, is that it was only the authority being questioned, not the values. Killing and stealing remained in the eyes of society, as wrong! Society now placed its belief in the common good of humanity.

Today is to me the most interesting and relevant stage of this process. Today’s generations have been raised by their ever questioning Baby-Boomer parents, who since the 60s, still haven’t seemed capable of definitively answering any of the big philosophical questions they asked themselves at Woodstock. Meaning the question of “who and what” do I believe in, has now become “do I believe in anything at all anymore”?

So I’m left asking myself;

“Do I?”

Although Albert Camus died before baby boomers took charge of the world and placed their redoubtable imprimatur on the political scene, he foreshadowed their eventual devolution in this prescient statement: "Conformity is one of the nihilistic temptations of rebellion which dominate a large part of our intellectual history. It demonstrates how the rebel who takes to action is tempted to succumb, if he forgets his origins, to the most absolute conformity. And so explains the twentieth century."

Camus was right, of course. As a baby boomer, it doesn't make me happy to say this; however, how else does one explain the "absolute conformity" (not to mention hypocrisy) of my once-rebellious generation?

We have to look inward. We're the ones who created this mess. We're the ones who abrogated our political idealism and slowly but surely conformed to establishment power and corporate materialism. And we're the ones who allowed George W. Bush, a baby boomer of the worst sort, to slime his way into the American presidency and bankrupt the country both economically and morally. No wonder young people and Europeans hate our guts...

Lucky for us, no one reads Camus anymore. After all, he was French and an intellectual and a left-wing radical; everything Americans despise and distrust. They would never have a beer (much less a glass of wine) with someone like Camus... Perhaps Barack Obama can change this paradigm. The young seem to like him, and so do the Europeans. And at least he's not a baby boomer. [More]

Things can go in forward or reverse. Is the young generation lost?

Also known as the Entitlement Generation, these are the upstarts at the office who put their feet on their desks, voice their opinions frequently and loudly at meetings, and always volunteer, ­nay, expect ­ to take charge of the most interesting projects. They are smart, brash, even arrogant, and endowed with a commanding sense of entitlement. And since a new crop is graduating from high-powered universities every year, chances are, one maybe heading to your office soon.

Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, says that this includes virtually everyone born after 1970. These young people were raised on a daily regimen of praise and flattery from their baby boomer parents and from teachers who embraced a self-esteem-boosting curriculum that included activities like the Magic Circle game. Never heard of it? In this game, one child a day is given a badge that says "I'm great." The other children then take turns praising the "great" child, and eventually these compliments are written up and given to the child for posterity. This constant reinforcement, argues Twenge, is largely responsible for those young co-workers who drive you nuts.

In a standardized test called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). The NPI asks subjects to rate the accuracy of various narcissistic statements, such as "I can live my life any way I want to" and "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place." Foster has recently given this personality test to a range of demographic groups around the world, and no group has scored higher than the American teenager. For more.

John Mayer's attempt at a generational anthem, Waiting on the World To Change. Explaining why 'Generation X' doesn't get off its ass to protest as much as Boomers did.