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The Making of an Elder Culture

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The Mak­ing of an Elder Cul­ture: Reflec­tions on the Future of America’s Most Auda­cious Gen­er­a­tion by Theodore Roszak

If you are old, intend to get old, or are related to an old per­son, I strongly rec­om­mend that you read this book.
When I became the state net­worker for the New Age Cau­cus in 1979, I was given two books to explain the cau­cus’ phi­los­o­phy–New Age Pol­i­tics by Mark Satin and Per­son Planet by Theodore Roszak. Roszak is not a boomer, but one of the wise elders of the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion who men­tored me and many oth­ers over the years. He knows what the world was like before the boomers, and he knows the effects we made on it up to now. He strongly encour­ages us to make even more rad­i­cal changes to the way things are to bring about a more ideal, sus­tain­able, envi­ron­men­tally friendly way humans can live on this frag­ile planet in har­mony with its other inhabitants.
Hav­ing taken early retire­ment myself, I can attest to the won­der­ful free­dom gained by not hav­ing to strug­gle to make a liv­ing, but rather hav­ing every day free to do the things I want to do. I look at this free time as a gift, and I use it for the well-being of my wife and I as well as to cre­atively work for the well being of all. As Roszak explains, our well-being has many facets. He helps us under­stand where we fit in the big pic­ture and what this time in his­tory calls us to do.
This book inspired me to take a renewed inter­est in pol­i­tics and make my voice heard. I joined the Gray Pan­thers Action Net­work online to fur­ther this, and I encour­age oth­ers, young or old, to do likewise.
The Sum­mer of Love. Viet­nam. Wood­stock. These are the mile­stones of the baby boomer gen­er­a­tion Theodore Roszak chron­i­cled in his 1969 break­through book The Mak­ing of a Counter Cul­ture. Part of an unprece­dented longevity rev­o­lu­tion, those boomers form the most edu­cated, most socially con­sci­en­tious, polit­i­cally savvy older gen­er­a­tion the world has ever seen. And they are prepar­ing for Act Two.
The Mak­ing of an Elder Cul­ture reminds the boomers of the cre­ative role they once played in our soci­ety and of the moral and intel­lec­tual resources they have to draw upon for rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion in their later years. See­ing the expe­ri­ence of aging as a rev­o­lu­tion in con­scious­ness, it pre­dicts an “elder insur­gency” where boomers return to take up what they left undone in their youth. Freed from com­pet­i­tive indi­vid­u­al­ism, military-industrial bravado, and the careerist rat race, who bet­ter to forge a com­pas­sion­ate econ­omy? Who bet­ter posi­tioned not only to demand Social Secu­rity and Medicare for them­selves, but to cham­pion “Enti­tle­ments for Every­one”? Fus­ing the green, the gray, and the just, Elder­town can be an achiev­able, truly sus­tain­able future.
Part demo­graphic study, part his­tory, part cri­tique, and part appeal, Theodore Roszak’s take on the immi­nent trans­for­ma­tion of our world is as wise as it is inspired—and utterly appealing.
Theodore Roszak is the author of twenty books, includ­ing the 1969 clas­sic The Mak­ing of a Counter Cul­ture. He is pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of his­tory at Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­sity, and lives in Berke­ley, California.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 at 16:46 and is filed under Our Bookstore and tagged with , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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