Baby Boomers

Impressing professors: Take your moment

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When I was in college I made a lot of weird blunders, especially for being the academic nerd that I am. I was not judicious in the words I chose, occasionally speaking out when I should not have, while failing to speak out when I should have, not taking advantage of many opportunities to broaden my horizons, so to speak. I never really tried that hard. Something I have written about before. Sometimes it doesn’t really matter, but when it comes to learning, it does. To say I was “lazy” does not mean I did not learn or that I did nothing. It just means that I could have learned and done and achieved so much more, had I not been in such a hurry, had I not let myself be influenced by others, had I known myself better, had I applied the full measure of intellect and drive I had to something. But I didn’t.

Still I had my own moments, few and far between, when I would stand out. I never wanted to stand out, certainly not verbally or visually, where people might let their eyes rest on me for more than a moment or two. Professors noticed me more when it counted (in writing). But still, yes, there were those moments, when a question was posed, and it seemed mind-numbingly simple what we were being asked, and yet the classroom sat in dumb silence.

A professor in my master’s degree program posed the question: “What was the main priority of American foreign policy in post-war America?” No one. Silence. “Come on, people.” More silence.

I raised my hand, wondering whether it could be as simple as I was thinking, “Containing Communism?”

“YES!” The professor looked at me gratefully, and with a respect he’d never once afforded me before. In fact, I am entirely sure I had been both nameless and invisible to him up until that moment. He favored me in a new way thereafter. It was strange: my comparative youth and silence in that course (everyone else was wading into their 50s, and I was barely in my 20s) had made me both stand out and be invisible at the same time, and he, perhaps relating better to the majority of students, closer to his age than mine, never glanced my way once before I uttered this stunningly basic reply to a basic question. Suddenly I had a voice when all my duck-and-cover-generation classmates, who should have eagerly yelled out the answer to that question, being Boomers, so close to it and the “Communism containment” directive, sat, mute, probably expecting that the answer had been something deeper or more complex than that.

I learned then that it’s not the quantity of what you say – it’s the quality. And, perhaps most of all, the timing – taking your moment.

Photo (c) 2010 EdTech Stanford University School of Medicine used under Creative Commons license.

Likenesses and the unseen hand

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“To read is to dream, guided by someone else’s hand. To read carelessly and distractedly is to let go of that hand. Superficial erudition is the only method for reading well and being profound.” – Fernando Pessoa

An unseen hand (not Adam Smith’s invisible one) guides my reading choices from one thing to the next and each is a link to a mighty, unbroken, infinite chain – coincidental mentions of concepts I had just been contemplating. Thinking and writing obsessively about mirrors and suddenly I decide, “Now is the right time to read Vonnegut” – and woven throughout is the concept of mirrors as “leaks” – “holes between two universes”. But even in the book I improbably read on teeth, dentistry and oral health, what springs off the page? “A “photograph is more than a mirror. In the face of mortality, it offers hope for a permanent self.” Or in a contemporary Japanese-German short story by Yoko Tawada:

“Eighty percent of the human body is made of water, so it isn’t surprising that one sees a different face in the mirror each morning. The skin of the forehead and cheeks changes shape from moment to moment like the mud of a swamp, shifting with the movements of the water below and the footsteps of the people walking above it. I had hung a framed photograph of myself beside the mirror. The first thing I would do when I got up was to compare my reflection with the photograph, checking for discrepancies which I then corrected with makeup.”

And perhaps more deeply than mere reflections in a mirror, reading Vonnegut’s work and rereading Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, their warnings and observations about American and/or totalitarian societies provide obvious parallels:

“It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.” -from The Handmaid’s Tale

“Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.” – from Breakfast of Champions

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. … They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.” – from Slaughterhouse Five

At no time is this more timely – in these works of fiction, or as a red thread sewn through much of modern non-fiction, such as other books I’ve recently read, such as the incisive Age of Anger, White Trash, Teeth and even the books on addiction.

Other parallels are not as obvious – in Atwood there are the “Marthas”, ominous-sounding household servants, and in Breakfast of Champions, “Marthas” are large designed-for-disaster buses converted into ambulances.

It fascinates me to no end that despite dipping into and reading from the broadest range of disciplines, there are connections between all of them: Virtually everything can swing back around to this perverted idea of uninterrupted “progress” and the selfish, perverted definitions society gives to the word “progress” – in the individualism described in Age of Anger, embodied by the Boomers, leading to the hungry ghosts and spiritual emptiness Gabor Maté discusses and diagnoses. And then the effects – ranging from the dismal and often fatal results of the healthcare and dental care system in the US as described in Teeth, to the “long-term losers” described in Age of Anger, such as the degradation of any hope for a country like Congo (about which I also recently read a book): “In Dostoyevsky’s view, the cost of such splendour and magnificence as displayed at the Crystal Palace was a society dominated by the war of all against all, in which most people were condemned to be losers.”

None of these overlaps should be a surprise. It should also not be a surprise that Dostoevsky is cited in almost every book I have read no matter what discipline, time period in which it was written or what genre, fiction or non-fiction. Dr Gabor Maté quotes Dostoevsky in his book on addiction; Dostoevsky figures prominently, as quoted above, in Age of Anger. And even in Vonnegut.

“Rosewater said an interesting thing to Billy one time about a book that wasn’t science fiction. He said that everything there was to know about life was in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. “But that isn’t enough any more,” said Rosewater.

Seeing and making the connections is gratifying, but much like an alcoholic seeking long-term sobriety, just going to meetings (or in this case connecting the dots) is hardly enough. The addict needs to commit to engage with all the steps to make progress, and the reader must start to process and form her own ideas about the connections identified.

From looking up to hooking up

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Reading such an extensive diatribe against the Baby Boomers, and daily hearing and seeing the battle lines drawn between entrenched Boomers and Millennials trying to gain a foothold, I have wondered where the comparatively ‘diminutive’ middle child, Generation X, fits into this fraught landscape. A negotiator? Invisible as always? Luckily I am not the only one asking the question.

Apart from asking the questions about intergenerational politics and warfare, it’s interesting to consider that Gen X is the last generation with active memory of a pre-digital world, when the “looking up” mentioned below, as the writer meant, looking at the world and people around you, face to face and eye to eye. Or meant “looking up” in the phone book or library card catalog. And hooking up? Well, there were no apps for that. (And oddly now that we have apps to make ‘hooking up’ easier, there seem to be fewer real connections than ever.)

“We all need to remember what was important in the pre-digital world, and before the toxic smartphone culture. I’m as guilty as anyone of that, it’s alluring and addictive, but it’s important to look up.”

Douglas Coupland, who coined the term “Generation X”, discussed this point in the article cited above:

“Though the fact that Gen X straddles the analogue and digital eras is, he says: ‘A sacred trust. Once we go, there’ll be no living memory of the analogue era.’

So does he think that algorithmic culture has surpassed or will surpass human intuition? ‘Actually, yes. I know you’re supposed to say ‘no’ and cheer, ‘Yay humanity!’ But intuition is doomed.'”

Lower the boom

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“The body politic rests on the slab because boomers put it there, because decades of boomerism produced the problems and disaffection of which 2016 was merely the latest expression.” –A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America by Bruce Cannon Gibney

Stinging, blistering indictment of the Baby Boomers – I ended up highlighting so much of what’s in this book that it would be foolish to try to reproduce or quote at length, but if you are curious about how the country (the United States, that is) came to be … well, the nightmare that it is now, the book makes a compelling argument (or many arguments, really) that the Boomers are to blame. In every failing segment of society, from taxation to education, from finance to regulation, from infrastructure and the environment (a Boomer himself, Al Gore* – self-appointed, once it became clear that he’d need a second act in public life, environmental ‘champion’ – describes the current state of the environment as: “…a nature hike through the Book of Revelation”, an issue which is arguably one of the most pressing and about which the Boomers have been most selfish/blind) to voting rights, Boomers have poked their fingers in virtually every pie and flung the filling everywhere once they were sated, i.e. ruined it for everyone else. Meanwhile they live out their last days – either denying that their end is coming, or, as the book describes, demanding historically unprecedented “long and pleasant retirements”.

I suppose we could point the finger to some degree at the Boomers’ parents, who reared them to be this way – gave them everything and wanted them to grow up believing that they could have everything without sacrificing or suffering real consequences. I would not relieve the parents of Boomers from responsibility as day-to-day caretakers, but the book delivers a particularly scathing review of pediatrician, Dr Benjamin Spock, whose (in)famous, best-selling 1946 book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, guided parents of Boomers to permissive parenting that put the child(ren) at the center of family life rather than letting children orbit the family life, focusing on the Boomer children’s wants rather than needs – creating what critics have called an undisciplined, self-involved generation hell-bent on instant gratification and self-interest. (That’s boiling it down to a very simplistic understanding of course – but supports the thesis of this book.)

With each chapter prefaced by a part of the clinical definition of sociopathy according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the parallels between the sociopathic behaviors and Boomer actions are clear.

The sociopathy that characterizes the entire generation overrides the prudence of previous generations, who by and large seem to have tried to enact public policy and law that benefited the greater good (or at least aimed to). It remains to be seen what later generations will do (even if trends indicate that they are less self-involved and more civic minded than their Boomer parents and grandparents) because the Boomers, stubbornly afraid to age and not able to afford retirement, are still such a massive force in the population.

Their influence still dwarfs that of subsequent generations – not just by sheer numbers but because they have, during their ‘day in the sun’, stacked the deck in their favor. It’s going to take a long time to undo it – and the slog will be slow because the Boomers are still standing in the way. Likewise, the Boomers were/are (many of) our parents – we might not have liked their parenting styles, but did we learn to do any better? Are we any better? Will we have seen the destruction their policies and actions (or inactions) have wrought, absorb the lessons and influence things to go in a new direction?

One passage suggests that we may have gone too far in the other direction. Addressing the crumbling, unsafe state of American infrastructure, which received a “D” from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1998, Gibney practically exclaims: “If GenX parents received a similar report card regarding their children, the whole war machine of upper-middle class Helicopter Fathering and Tiger Mothering would swing into action: money, tutors, apocalyptic lectures, pedagogical investigations, and marches on the PTA. The Boomers, devoted practitioners of latchkey parenting, simply shrug.” It’s a lot like a passage in a rather comical article I read not so long ago:

“Back when I was young, an athletic season either ended abruptly, without fanfare, or the Phys Ed staff threw some crappy banquet with paper bowls and food service-chili where the superior athletes got a lousy plaque. We had one of these banquets once for my seventh grade soccer team. I think it was the first time all season the parents actually showed up. I recall hearing a bunch of dads snort: “My kid played soccer?” And then they all laughed and stayed inside to smoke.

If you tell this story to a Millennial, they think it’s sad. “But my dad came to EVERY game,” they gasp. “AND every practice. AND he brought his zoom lens.” If you tell this to a Generation Xer, they stare and say: “You had a dad?”

(I don’t know what happens if you tell this to a Boomer. Probably: “Ahh, yes. Smoking.”)”

Side notes:

The book echoes other threads of scholarship and documentary evidence, ranging from recent documentaries like 13th about the 13th amendment to the US constitution and its effect on the US prison system, or something as seemingly benign as Al Jazeera’s presentation on the Federal Reserve. Every focal point of the author’s hypothesis is documented in the book but further borne out in other sources.

“Medicare covers any number of expensive medications consumed by Boomers, and, in the case of tax-advantaged plans, can even end up subsidizing Viagra. There is something decidedly off-putting about indebting GenXers to pay for their fathers’ erections.”

*Full video of Al Gore on how the ‘immune system of democracy” – a free media and open public discourse guided by evidence and facts – has eroded and arrived at a place where “false belief collides with physical reality” to create an “assault on reason”. Gore, too, is sufficiently gored in this book.

Women (“…only like me for my mind”)

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I don’t really want to be told by old-guard “feminists” (or anyone for that matter) that my support for anyone other than Hillary Clinton is wrong. Or why it’s wrong. The voices of feminist leaders, such as Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright, trailblazers and leaders in theory and practice, are normally so measured and reasonable. While they have taken on the mantle of speaking for many in the past, which has been appreciated, co-opting the voices and choices of other women now is inappropriate. It is no wonder that women of all ages are angry. The idea that we should be told for whom to vote under any circumstances is egregious and over the line. To be told we betray all women by not voting for Hillary Clinton is feminist apostasy.

In defending Hillary Clinton and her candidacy for president, both women have pulled out the generation card and slammed the younger generation of women in what can only be called a sexist way by claiming that younger women’s support for Bernie Sanders stems from following the path where they might find boys at the other end. Not only does it imply that young women’s only concern is meeting, impressing and gaining the attention of boys – it discounts the well-reasoned support women of all ages have for other candidates. (And couldn’t the same have been argued so long ago when Steinem went to work at the Playboy Club in the service of getting an undercover expose? She was going to bat for true feminist causes but was doing so by “going where the boys are”.) I am not discounting the value of this work, but if looked at only on the surface, which is about how Albright and Steinem looked at young women’s political choices right now, they look about equal.

At a recent Clinton rally, Albright reportedly said, “We can tell our story of how we climbed the ladder, and a lot of you younger women think it’s done.”

I think anyone alive today knows that it is not done – not for women’s equality, not for racial equality, not for economic or social justice at all. We know that Roe v Wade is never a done deal. We know that there are still massive strides to take in getting equal pay. We know, in fact, that families – men and women both – are struggling with the consequences and sacrifices they have to make to have families. Women end up struggling more, on the whole, because of the inequalities at work and because of the biology of their having to be the ones to carry and give birth to children. That is not going to change, but society’s approach can.

So no, no one imagines that the work is finished. Yes, we may take for granted the work that has been done – for example, no one demanded that I get him a coffee when I entered the workforce. I took for granted that no one could have such an expectation of a professional woman (or man). An older colleague who worked in a technical capacity since the 1970s schooled me on my obliviousness and ignorance (she and her few female colleagues were often maligned this way or saddled with extra “women’s work” like fetching coffee or something that had no formal place in their work description). Perhaps it is good that people my age and younger grew up completely ignorant of the fact that it was once acceptable to make these kinds of petty demands of you just because you were the female employee in the room. But forgetting may, in fact, lead to complacency – and I suppose this is at the heart of Albright and Steinem’s argument.

But being complacent about how far we still need to travel to get to gender parity is not the same thing as making a conscious, well-informed decision not to support Hillary Clinton.

By not supporting Hillary, are people somehow not supporting all other women (as Albright implies, saying there is a “special place in hell” for women who do not support other women)? Are we obligated to support Hillary just because she is a woman, particularly when she has let her views, her talking points, her votes, her perspectives, shift casually to suit her purposes at any given moment – sometimes in ways that damage equality and grant favor to corporate over human interests?

Other than “Hillary fatigue”, the urge to fight against the sense of inevitability and her attitude as though it’s “her turn” now – I have to ask, “Does she deserve the support?” At this stage, no. If she ultimately gets the nomination, I will support her. She will still be better than whatever the alternatives are. Hillary is not my first choice because Hillary feels insincere, insubstantial and untrustworthy. It is not that she cannot get the job done. It is not because her views change because in fact, if someone’s views change and grow more nuanced, that is one thing. But changing to pander to the rising voices of the day – that’s disingenuous. Her time on the world’s stage has been so long and public that we have a very clear view of just how disingenuous she has been over the course of time.

While I very much support Bernie Sanders’s aims and like the idea of the US moving toward “democratic socialism”, I am a bit burned out on the whole idea that there are not more of Sanders’s ilk among younger politicians. I will vote for Sanders or Clinton, whichever gets the nomination, but the idea that we can be carried forward by the oldest of the Baby Boomers (in fact Sanders was born at the tail-end of the previous generation) is a sad commentary on the state of American progressivism. Clinton is a tired reminder of the old guard, and the Baby Boomers in general need to start handing over the reins already. I feel as though we took many steps forward with Obama in handing over responsibility to a new generation of leaders, but the only reasonable voice we have is an old man. (And the young politicians are snake-like zealots and anxiety-riddled, almost-human robots. Nothing remotely presidential… or sane.)

 

 

 

Lunchtable TV Talk: Longmire on Netflix

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Damn that Gerald McRaney! Evil as the late Branch Connally’s father – and we’re pretty sure he killed his own son to save his own skin as Longmire came to its cliffhanger ending on A&E last year? (Does anyone disagree that A&E makes dumb programming decisions?) Hard to see McRaney be evil (although he is pretty convincing as a scheming, conservative businessman and/or politician later in his career – earlier as Major Dad and one of the Simon brothers in Simon & Simon, he usually played someone else – usually someone else who had been a US Marine).

Happily, thanks to Netflix, we do not have to live with that eternal cliffhanger. A&E cancelled Longmire after three successful seasons – not because it had a small audience or because it was critically panned but because they did not like that the respectable audience Longmire attracted skewed too old. Are you fucking kidding me? The biggest population with the most money (to which advertisers should be catering) is the Baby Boom generation – and who is the coolest cat of this generation than Sheriff Walt Longmire as played by Robert Taylor? (Or Gerald McRaney’s character for god’s sake!).

There’s a bit of something for everyone in Longmire – Baby Boomer characters, a rich variety of characters with interesting back stories, mystery without being a standard cop/law and order show, wry and understated sarcasm and humor alongside some light cowboy-in-Wyoming goodness as well as some focus on contemporary Native American issues. And Wyoming itself – America’s least populated but an undeniably beautiful state, and almost entirely invisible apart from the fact that a tiny part of it touches Yellowstone National Park. Do we ever hear about Wyoming on TV except in Longmire, which is set there, or in Hell on Wheels, which tells a wild, wonderful tale of the westward building of rail lines?

I really wanted to focus on some work and other projects but Netflix had to taunt me into binge watching – once again. I reluctantly waltzed several years ago into watching the first season of Longmire. Like everyone else, I didn’t assume I was the target demographic – and a “cowboy cop show” theme didn’t hold much promise for me. But, if you know me, you know I check out a lot of things to which I initially declare “never”. A stellar cast sucked me in – this includes Lou Diamond Phillips (someone my brother, in childhood, once claimed he’d like to invite over for Thanksgiving?!) and Katee Sackhoff (and let’s face it – as a Battlestar Galactica junkie in withdrawal, I kind of watch anything with any of the former cast, which is usually very much a waste of time – see Killer Women with Tricia Helfer or much of what Jamie Bamber has done since, while Sackhoff has made some solid choices. And I started watching Hawaii Five-0 for Grace Park but stay for the Danno and McGarrett love story). Then the writing in Longmire has been swift, clever and engaging. It’s hard to find something not to like, even if you don’t find a passionate affinity for the show.

But I found my affinity and will binge my way through season four tonight. I suggest to anyone in doubt to do the same (or at least sample it and see). A&E might have abandoned the show because the people who watched it were too old for their liking, but luckily Netflix is not as biased or short-sighted.

Lunchtable TV Talk: The Following

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The Following is the best show on television! Just kidding. April Fool’s Day!

I have written many times about TV’s worst show, The Following. It makes law enforcement look like bumbling idiots (thanks, real law enforcement does that quite enough on their own). It leads viewers to believe that the diabolical cult leaders/serial killers are geniuses – but they are not particularly smart either.  They are just conscienceless and usually a step or two ahead of the law. And not even charismatic! Sometimes I ask myself if maybe I have been conditioned by too many police and legal procedurals and somehow imagine that investigations and catching bad guys is easier than it is. Maybe Kevin Bacon leading this team of FBI field operatives is exactly as murky as FBI investigations get. I don’t really know. But I know that it is not really entertainment, except for a self-torturer like myself, who watches weekly to find out what new level of stupidity and depravity the show will fall each time.

Kevin Bacon at his best…

The only remotely interesting part, which has been the case all along, is questioning how all these different people have been brainwashed to follow along with the cult of Joe Carroll – and now Carroll (the main baddie) is in prison, and the people pulling the strings … well, I don’t know where loyalty for those guys comes from. And the whole thing is scary in that you have to wonder how the world could possibly sustain this many psychopaths. The show constantly introduces new characters – hard to keep it all clear. It has taken the focus off “mastermind” Joe Carroll, who seems less crazy all the time given the cast of characters to appear since he exited the stage. (Michael Ealy is the latest, and it’s a pretty weird role for him. This is no Sleeper Cell.) There are a lot of echoes of far superior shows, such as Dexter and Hannibal, mixed in here, and even a tinge of the recent The Fall, in which Jamie Dornan is a serial murderer but also turns out to be a “normal family man”, like Ealy’s new character – but it’s like retreading old ground and treading water. Nothing remotely original here.

In light of viewing the recent HBO documentary on Scientology (Going Clear), I am not as inclined to doubt that insecurity and longing for belonging drive people into the arms of predatory cults and endow these followers with a sense of superiority (before stripping them down in the same way an abuser does with his abused). A cult around a serial killer is not really any different. Even in particularly gung-ho corporate environments, you get a lot of people who subsume their own identities and personalities and go beyond even “enthusiastic corporate cheerleader”.

I wrote earlier to a friend: “I wonder, being an antisocial non-joiner of anything myself, how people get so caught up in anything – whether it is a political party, a religious dogma, a corporation, a fraternity – whatever it is. And having this sense of self (as an antisocial, non-joiner) would I even be aware, or conscious, if I did join something? We have such powerful ideas about who we are that I wonder if we even see who we are.”

I find myself freaked out by things like crowds of people who start out applauding randomly and without any rhythm but end up clapping in a frightening group-mentality unison. It is not a big leap from there – people’s tendency toward sameness and wanting some kind of belonging and harmony – to see how people end up tethered to something insane through a combination of blind devotion and sheer lack of ability to think for themselves. Is that what compels people to watch and love The Following? That people fool themselves into thinking they are immune to brainwashing?

Forgive me in advance; this will be a sweepingly generalized observation. And it is a bit off topic, but I did think about the fact that the adults I knew as an adolescent – people like my parents and others their age (40ish middle-aged people) – always seemed to be on some kind of spiritual search. Some discovered religion, some New Age guru stuff (which hit a peak in the late 80s), some Scientology – but whatever they did or did not discover, I wonder if people of my own generation are as inclined to the midlife crisis and this hunt for greater meaning. All humans, I think, hunt for greater meaning, but I also feel there are generational components at work. The Baby Boomers seem to have invented the midlife crisis (maybe life in the western world was actually too difficult for these kinds of “identity crises” prior to the post-war generation – people were just busy with the business of surviving). My generation, the so-called Generation X, has never enjoyed a long period of success and prosperity (economically, societally), so we kind of just expect to make back-up plans for our real plans and just ride out whatever the outcome is. In that sense, as we are all in the throes of or entering middle age, we might yearn for some kind of connection, but I don’t see people en masse (and it might just be because there are fewer of us) looking for answers in an organized way.

Back to the point, though. I don’t know why The Following is popular or why it keeps being renewed. Was I poisoned by misguided expectations? My mother had been watching the first season and told me she found it “disturbing” and “chilling”. I expected to be somehow spellbound by this show, but it’s just stupid. By extension, I am stupid for continuing to watch.

Volunteering

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The idea of volunteering may exist to some degree everywhere but, in the US, volunteering seems to be in the blood. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics even publishes an annual report on the state of volunteerism in the US. It reports that more than 25 percent of Americans actively volunteer in one capacity or another. A 2013 Gallup poll puts the numbers even higher, with 65 percent of Americans claiming to volunteer and more than 80 percent practicing some form of charitable giving. The tendency to think that voluntary organizations/charities will take care of everything seems to be a uniquely American (and sort of puritanical/conservative) way of looking at things. I suppose it comes down to the American obsession with doing things for oneself and the desire to pay the least amount of tax possible as well as the tendency for Americans to be quite active in church/religious activities, which are often charitable in nature.

Volunteer organizations and efforts spring up as a result, and there is a value placed on volunteer experience. Not just internships that are often required when a person goes to university – but just volunteering as a separate endeavor from one’s work or personal life. The volunteer mindset and philosophy is ingrained. When I was in school and later when I was just living and working, the idea of volunteering time at organizations that needed unpaid help somehow appealed to the part of me that obsesses over continuous learning.

Many of the volunteer functions that are seen as voluntary or charitable matters are not seen that way at all outside the United States – many of the services provided sit squarely on the shoulders of the government (what else are taxes paid for?). Americans are apparently a “nation of givers” (an article that’s a few years old puts some statistics on it, comparing charitable donations and volunteer time Americans give against the money and time other countries’ people give). Sure, the US tax code makes charitable giving a way to avoid paying as much tax as one might otherwise, which is why corporations often give so much. But for individuals this is not a driver of their giving (only about one-third of Americans apparently itemize their taxes, meaning they don’t get the deductions to which they are entitled).

I had this discussion many times in particular with French people. My ex-boyfriend (a Frenchie) could not comprehend why I was volunteering spare time – my own free time – to basically donate labor to organizations that should be supported, in his mind, by public funding. While I might have agreed with him about what functions governments should provide, in the absence, I saw nothing amiss or “wasteful” about giving my time to further some cause or help someone else. Granted, some volunteering is not necessarily a tangible “help”. Being a volunteer art-museum docent does not have the hands-on, immediate value that cooking in a soup kitchen or building housing for low-income families does. But it’s not always about that kind of obvious help. It’s also about education, culture and getting something from what you give. When I volunteered at an art museum, for example, I gained experience, knowledge and skills that I would never get elsewhere. In those situations, the volunteer is not just giving – aside from the general sense of “doing something good”, there is always some kind of payoff.

Volunteering for Americans encompasses a kind of pride and mutual promise of giving and getting. A nation that has major federal programs, entirely based on volunteering, such as the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and Senior Corps, must be at least somewhat driven by the idea put forth by John F Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

It’s not only in America that volunteering exists – it’s just not woven into the fabric of everyday life everywhere else. Recently I applied to be a volunteer board member for a few public entities in Glasgow, Scotland. This is yet another kind of volunteering – I thought the experience would be quite valuable and I knew I would provide a very different perspective to the boards to which I applied (I was invited to interview for one of them but then my situation changed, and regrettably I could not attend). This was not a lowly “scrub-the-floor” kind of volunteer experience but instead one in which experienced professionals were expected to bring expertise and ideas to the table – and still voluntary (with some travel costs reimbursed). I regret not being able to do it because I actually thought it, like most of my past volunteer experiences, would be enriching.

On a similar note, in a relatively recent Forbes article, Baby Boomers were in focus as not volunteering as much as they should or could – or as much as other parts of the American population. Volunteer organizations, apparently, are finally starting to catch on that they need to target the retired and retiring Baby Boomers to capture their experience and skills. The contention is that Boomers want to do something meaningful and results-oriented with their volunteer time rather than something like stuffing envelopes or making phone calls.

“According to the Volunteering in the United States survey, “providing professional or management assistance, including serving on a board or committee” is the second most popular form of volunteering for Americans over 55, after “collecting, preparing, distributing or serving food.”

I suppose, aside from that stubborn “we can do it ourselves” kind of attitude, there is also a “we’re in this together” attitude that leads to volunteering and the types of people who put themselves out there as volunteers. We don’t have to wait for some official entity to qualify our idea as worthwhile – we can start our own initiative (or join one we believe in and want to give our time to).

Nine Inch Nails – “We’re In This Together”