DARK AGES 2.0

 

Humanity’s incredible advances largely resulted from the benefits of Specialization and, much later, the Scientific Method.  Especially in the US, a growing rejection of both threatens society.

Members of the first primitive Homo species of Eastern Africa some two million years ago (Homo rudolfensis) would likely have had no way to comprehend the lifestyles of their later kin Homo heidelbergensis.  By approximately 300,000 years ago, our ancestors such as H. heidelbergensis had mastered the use of fire and advanced hunting tools to increase their caloric intake and improve their chances of survival.  Larger brain sizes were one result, and they led to evidence of complex thinking such as art, religion, and language in succeeding millennia. 

H. heidelbergensis and its descendants Homo neandertalensis and Homo sapiens famously lived by hunting and gathering; hunting both small and the largest land animals of the time, and gathering a wide variety of berries, tubers, grasses, and nuts. Men, women, and children participated equally in these activities, as well as the preparation of food and (later) crafting clothes for protection from the cold.  But at some widely argued time – as far back as a million years, or perhaps only about 15,000 years ago – most Homo societies practiced the first version of Specialization: one based on gender.  Generally larger and more powerful males did the majority of hunting dangerous animals, while child-rearing females stayed closer to home and engaged in the safer gathering of foods from plants, along with food preparation.  Human populations, along with their ability to challenge Nature, consequently expanded because each sex was relatively more productive at their given roles. 

Fast forward to 10,000 years ago, with H. heidelbergensis and H. neandertalensis long gone and Homo sapiens literally the last man (and woman) standing.  By this time the domestication of both plants and animals was in full swing.  Hunting and gathering foods was gradually replaced by farming and herding animals, likely beginning in Anatolia (modern Turkey).  The need to move around in search of food declined, stable communities developed, and early civilization as we define it soon followed.  Egypt and Sumeria are credited as having the first advanced civilizations, complete with cities, pharaohs/kings, class divisions, and a much wider variety of Specialization.  Most people were farmers, but there were also builders, merchants, craftspeople, administrators, soldiers, priests, nobles, teachers, and others.  As in the earlier version, Specialization increased efficiency and the amount of goods available.  

It also increased knowledge and the free time to develop new and better ways of doing things.  Writing systems, inventions, and scientific discoveries ensued over the centuries in the Middle East and Egypt, but also in India and China, and later – in the Americas.  Civilizations overall became more impressive, life became more complex, and material wealth grew, though the benefits accrued mostly to a small majority: the ruling classes and priests. Progress ebbed and flowed for millennia, three steps forward, two steps back-wise, until the19th century, when Specialization took a big leap forward thanks in part to Adam Smith’s observations on the topic in 1776’s The Wealth of Nations.  The American system of manufacturing linked Smith’s division of labor with interchangeable parts and mechanization, causing production to sky-rocket and birthing modern consumerism.  

But hold up; we’ve bypassed the second great source of societal gains – the Scientific Method. 

Arising in Europe in the 17^th century, its roots actually go back as far as the earliest civilizations in Egypt and the Middle East, thousands of years earlier.  Discoveries and advancements in mathematics, astrology/astronomy, medicine, science, engineering, and government were passed onto, and improved upon, century after century by the Greeks and then the Romans.  Until the fall of the Rome’s Western Empire and centuries of intellectual regression.    

During Europe’s Dark Ages starting about 500 A.D., learning and functional government collapsed; former knowledge was forgotten.  In the former province of Britannia, Anglo-Saxons marveled at Rome’s ability to build paved roads and formidable stone forts that still stood centuries later, but which they themselves had no idea how to replicate. The ability to read and write disappeared, save for the nobility and priestly classes.  Science and logic faded into the mists of ignorance, with societies now guided by myths, superstitions, and whatever priests told them.  In Europe, at least. 

In the Middle East and N. Africa, Rome’s Eastern (or Byzantine) Empire lived on, knowledge intact and progress still possible.  Contact with Asian civilizations continued via the Silk Road between China and the Middle East, as it had since early Roman times.  The interchange of information and ideas naturally increased knowledge in those places, even as Europe backslid.  Islam’s conquests of the 7^th and 8^th centuries accelerated the area’s search for enlightenment and reputation for wisdom; Arab schools, scientists, and mathematicians became arguably the best in the world even while Europe flopped about as an intellectual backwater.  

The first big crack in Europe’s wall of ignorance came in the year 1095, when Pope Urban II called for a Crusade to support the Byzantine Empire’s fight against Islamic forces.  Knights and assorted supporters from across Europe responded en masse, seeking glory and papal indulgences to exculpate their sins.  Upon crossing from Constantinople (modern Istanbul) into Anatolia, and then down into the Levant, Western warriors encountered their first Muslim resistance – and exposure to the advanced state of the Islamic world and the luxury products available there.  Those that survived the journeys and battles returned home and spread the word.  Subsequent Crusades, lasting until the late-13^th century, added to Europeans’ awareness of wonders of the East, and the benefits of learning, open-mindedness, and trading.  

Nicolo and Maffeo Polo were among the merchants who became wealthy from accommodating new European tastes by trading with Middle Eastern Muslims.  That led to the famed travels of their son/nephew Marco Polo along the arduous Silk Road between 1271 and 1295.  Word returned with Polo about the riches of China and nations along the Road, sparking dreams of easier, cheaper ways to access Asian treasures.  Constantinople finally fell to the (Muslim) Ottoman Empire in 1453, which ended Europe’s access to key trade routes, and sparking an Age of Exploration to find alternatives.  Its initial objective was to find oceanic routes to Asia, but of course voyages such as those by Bartolomeu Dias, Christopher Columbus, and Ferdinand Magellan ultimately resulted in additional consequences that changed the world forever.   

Besides exposure to Asian knowledge in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, other caused added to  the rebirth of art, learning, and an overall renewal of interest in the world around Europeans that arose in the 15^th century: The Renaissance. This rebirth was centered in Italy, where wealthy families that succeeded Venice’s Polos - such as the Medici, Visconti, and Sforza - funded great artworks and supported centers of learning such as the University of Pisa, where Galileo Galilei eventually studied.  Greek and Roman philosophy and scholarship were again the guiding lights, as critical thinking replaced the model of sheep following the blind.  The mechanical clock, microscope, and telescope were invented, Earth was disproven as the center of the universe, as growing knowledge spread aided by eyeglasses and the printing press – to name a few of the age’s new contributions. 

Building on the early work of those such as Persia’s Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni, England’s Roger Bacon had already set the foundation for what became known as the Scientific Method in the 13^th century.  It guided a better understanding of the world through 1) scientific inquiry based on 2) rigorous skepticism of assumptions, then 3) creating a hypothesis through inductive reasoning, 4) testing it through experiments and statistical analysis, based on facts and logic, and finally 5) adjusting or discarding the hypothesis based on the results.  Former false beliefs were disproven, replaced by new natural laws and verified truths, creating a new Scientific Revolution in Europe.  Francis Bacon (no relation to Roger Bacon), Galileo, and Isaac Newton were in the forefront of this movement, which gained momentum as the 1500s led into the 17th century. 

The Church and royal authority were the losers, as their word alone was no longer enough to establish truth, leading to the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason.  This Enlightenment period featured an intellectual and philosophical movement focused on a range of social ideas based on knowledge learned by rational thought and empiricism. 

It basically applied the questioning and attempts to prove/disprove ideas in much the same way as the Scientific Method had been applied to physical constructs.  Political ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, and the separation of church and state were its primary bailiwick.  The publication of René Descartes’ famous maxim, Cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am") of 1637, and Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica of 1687 are often credited as kicking off this new Age, inspiring the thoughts and writings of those such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the rights of men and the best forms of government. 

The new United States of America was built on those ideas, as was the French Revolution a few years later and countless other rejections of the absolute power of kings and colonialism throughout Europe and Latin America in the 19^th century.  An Industrial Revolution evolved out of the Scientific Revolution, as steam power drove factories and then railroads and steamships.  Internal combustion powered by gasoline engines followed, expanding possibilities even further. In the United States, blessed with immense territory and resources thanks to Manifest Destiny, the heady mix of the freedoms from an Enlightened government and the Industrial Revolution drove production and prosperity to unimaginable heights.  The US ended up with the world’s largest economy by the turn of the 20^th century, and was soon to usher in the Age of Consumerism.  American men and women, educated and specializing in distinct fields, continued to innovate using the Scientific Method, producing marvels one after another: automobiles, radios, televisions, computers, the Internet, time-saving and leisure products beyond count – all affordable for virtually everyone – along with weaponry to protect the homeland and American democracy.  These all existed side by side with the highest standard of living ever known. 

Scientists argue that we are now living in the Anthropocene Epoch.  Most believe that it started in 1945, with the first use of atomic power, or 1950, with the start of a dramatic increase in human activity affecting the planet (a.k.a. the Great Acceleration).  https://education.nationalgeographic.org

The televisions, computers, Internet, and cell phones of our current Information Age are a key subset of this Epoch.  For better and for worse, we live in this world thanks to centuries of advances provided by critical thinking, science, Enlightenment ideas, and specialization. 

SOURCES OF AMERICA’S GREATNESS

A belief in education to produce citizens who could make intelligent decisions, and experts who could be relied on in specialized fields. 

A belief in science and the Scientific Method to guide personal decisions and the nation’s path. 

Adhering to the Constitution, with its three equal branches and separation of church and state. 

Rule by the majority, with protections for minorities. 

A belief in social progress, away from outdated ideas and toward a fuller realization of the Constitution, where ALL men (and women) are equal; not just white landowning men, or just white men, or just men, or just straight men and women. 

 

America’s foundation is fraying, however, endangering the country, its people, and its place in history.

•  The highly-educated are being devalued, mocked and sometimes threatened.  Book bans are back.
•  The opinions of trained scientists and other specialists are brushed aside, some even being made illegal to express.  (Think: Climate change in Florida)
•  The ability to think critically and make sound decisions is being replaced by relying on deceptive social media and public figures who spread irrational claims and proven falsehoods.  We are told to believe a pathological liar rather than what we see or read, and 100 million Americans do.
•  All three branches of government are being attacked: Congress has become polarized and ineffective; the Supreme Court is unabashedly partisan as never before; a President fights the peaceful transfer of power, and three short years later is poised to be voted in again - this time as basically a dictator. 
• Hard-earned progress on individual freedoms is reversed, e.g. reproductive and civil rights.  One of two major political parties seeks to create an unconstitutional “White Christian-Nationalist”  government, and meanwhile threatens revenge on, and even violence against, opponents.
•  Minority views on a variety of critical issues are imposed on the majority, via wrongfully appointed judges and unconstitutional restrictions of voting rights. 

All of the above are more than partisan claims.  All can be fully documented using proven facts and proper logic – pillars of the Scientific Method that took the West out of the Dark Ages and eventually into the modern world.  Similarly, those with specialized knowledge in crucial fields are being ignored if not outright attacked, rather than being heeded.  These assaults, if not sufficiently countered, threaten to reverse social structures that trace back to our Enlightenment roots, and undermine the benefits of principles that initiated the Scientific Revolution.  Enlightenment-spawned principles of government, key freedoms and rights, defenses against deadly diseases, and the ability to minimize the catastrophic consequences of Climate Change – these are among the catastrophes we face. As a result of rejecting what made the West and our country great, America risks backtracking into something akin to a Dark Ages 2.0. 

The Luckiest Generation

 

What are the odds?  Born in the greatest, freest, wealthiest country in the world.  But also at the best time.  

The Lost Generation; the Greatest Generation; the Silent Generation; Baby Boomers; Generation X; Millennials; Generation Z – they covered the entire 20^th century and into the 21^st.  I was born in 1952, a third of the way into the Boom that followed World War II.  

People tend to think the best music is the kind they grew up with as teenagers and young adults.  So the Greatest and Silent Generations loved jazz, bebop, and Frank Sinatra, while for Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Zers it’s grunge, pop, and hip hop.  Along those same lines, we Baby Boomers think we were the best generation overall, growing up with, it goes without saying, the best music of all time.  We were, in other words, the Luckiest Generation.  Here’s why:

THE PEACE BENEFIT: Start by considering that Boomers lived during mostly peaceful times.  Yes, there was Vietnam, and many years later the mess in Afghanistan and Iraq.  But context matters: In the US Civil War 612,000 soldiers died, about 1.7% of the country’s population at the time.  In WWI, the toll was much lower: 0.12% of the population; WWII deaths totaled nearly 419,000 or 0.28% of Americans, and the Korean War a relatively modest 0.02%.  By contrast, the Vietnam War claimed some 58,000 precious American lives, 0.03% of the country’s population - basically in line with the Korean War.  1990’s Persian Gulf War?  Only 219 US dead.  During the mess in Afghanistan and Iraq, 15,000 US military and contractors perished, or 0.005%. 

So while American men (almost exclusively) fought in one or sometimes two horrific worldwide wars a mere 23 years apart, and/or in another major war just five short years later, we Boomers faced only one serious, but nevertheless much smaller military action.  Between the end in Korea and the present day, that’s seventy-four years with only two relatively minor wars – while recognizing they were anything but “minor” to those involved.  Again, perspective:  0.03% dead in Vietnam, 0.005% in the Middle East over a period of 74 years, vs. 0.12% in WWI, 0.28% in WWII, and 0.02% in Korea over a span of 35 years.  Baby Boomers were blessed to live in generally peaceful times that, apart from sparing them and their loved ones the agony of going to war, granted them huge additional benefits compared to those of their elders.  

HIGHEST STANDARD OF LIVING: One such benefit was the greatest real (adjusted for inflation) standard of living ever known.  Baby Boomers’ parents lived through the Great Depression and the scarcity years of WWII, when food and consumer goods were severely limited by a general lack of income in the first case and lack of supply in the second.  But by the mid-1950s, Americans increasingly had both the income and availability of goods to buy houses, cars, appliances, plentiful food, and just about everything else.  A common way to see the improvement as Boomers were growing up is by comparing Real GDP per Capita (RG/C), or the amount of goods and services the average American could buy in a year, adjusted for inflation.  

At the bottom of the Depression in 1933, RG/C was $4,800.  By the end of WWII, the economy was booming and RG/C stood at $12,100.  Things only slowly improved from there until 1960’s figure of $13,150 and then 1970’s $17,450.  The trend continued, to $21,600 in 1980, $26,900 in 1990, and then $32,600 in 2000.  And remember – those figures are adjusted for inflation and show vast growth in material wealth between 1960 and 2000, the time most Boomers were growing up and then building families.  Since 2000, however, improvements in material well-being have slowed, with 2005’s $35,380; 2010’s $35,390; 2015’s $38,000; and 2020’s $39,200 – up 20% in twenty years, vs a 51% gain between 1980 and 2000.  

So Baby Boomers enjoyed vastly higher standards of living than their parents or grandparents had at the same ages.  At the same time, the generations that followed Boomers saw notably smaller improvements in their standard of living.  Except in three key areas, the Achilles Heels of modern American prosperity, where they were much actually worse off: Health Care, Housing, and Retirement. 

In the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, working Boomers didn’t worry about having health coverage; virtually every job provided it to their workers with little or no deductibles.  Few employed people worried about whether they could afford to have a baby, get that operation, etc. The same goes for retirement plans; virtually every employer offered a way for workers aged 55-65 to retire and live a reasonably comfortable life in their golden years.  Obviously, neither of those benefits have been widespread for the past couple of decades, thus taking away any small gains in RG/C since the turn of the millennium – and then some.   

As for housing, we can look at both Home Ownership levels, and the ratio of Rent to Income, or what percentage of the average American’s earnings go to renting a place to live.  With the country still mired in Depression in 1940, only 45% of American families owned a home.  By 1955, that number had zoomed to 60% and for the next decades held mostly in the mid-60s, peaking in 2005 at 69%.  Since then, home ownership levels have wobbled a bit, most recently standing at about 65%.  In the past few years, however, things have gotten much tougher, with rising demand for housing far outstripping new homes coming on line.  Recent home owners are as likely to have achieved that status by inheriting their parents’ homes as by buying on their own; lower-income Americans, whose parents rented rather than owned a place?  Well, they are mostly stuck on the outside looking in. 

Rent to Income (RTI) rates are even worse, as they tend to affect middle- and lower-income Americans, already disadvantaged by extreme and growing income inequality. Their incomes are growing, sure; but rents have soared, far outpacing income gains.  Here we’re confronted by widely different statistics that make it hard to see just how bad renters are being hurt these days.  One source says that RTI has surpassed 40% “for the first time in many decades.”  Another writes that 2023 saw RTI “top 30% for the first time in two decades.”  Meanwhile, RTIs for the decades of the twentieth century are generally unavailable, and the state of Washington claims that the nationwide RTI stayed at 19-20% between 2005 and 2020.  So how much of their income do renters pay now?  20%, 30%, 40%?  

It’s not clear.  But the reality is: Renters such as Millennials and Gen Z’ers, along with many middle-income and most low-income Americans, are being mercilessly squeezed when it comes to housing costs - in direct contrast to most Baby Boomers, sitting pretty in their all- or mostly-paid for homes.  That underscores a dismal shift from the past: Baby Boomers were the last generation that could count on a standard of living higher than their parents.  Due in part from Boomers abandoning their “peace, love” values of the 60s and 70s to become poster children for excessive materialism, their progeny are too often left to their own (insufficient) devices.  

BEST EDUCATION: Another way that Baby Boomers were the luckiest generation was in terms of education.  Black and brown minorities admittedly didn’t benefit as much as their white peers, yet overall American students enjoyed the world’s best K-12 public schooling in the 1950s and ‘60s.  And U.S. universities were widely acclaimed (as they still are now) as among the best in the world. 

Quoting www.econlib.org , “In the 1980s, economists puzzled by a decline in the growth of U.S. productivity realized that American schools had taken a dramatic turn for the worse (a cause of the aforementioned slowdown in improved living standards). After rising every year for fifty years, student scores on a variety of achievement tests dropped sharply in 1967. They continued to decline through 1980. …Although achievement levels began to recover in 1980, the recovery has been weak and student achievement has yet to regain 1967 levels.” 

That source dives into the multiple reasons for the decline in U.S. educational quality, but the bottom line is that most Boomers got a better education than the generations that came both before and after them; one more life advantage they enjoyed over everyone else.  

GREATER PERSONAL FREEDOM: This is a broad category encompassing a great many improvements Boomers came to enjoy (and in many cases, create) relative to earlier generations.  Starting with improvements in Civil Rights, begun in the mid-1950s, kicked up another notch in the mid-1960s, and gradually improving further from there.  Black and Brown Americans still trail behind whites by most metrics, but the spread has narrowed substantially – most notably between 1954’s Brown v. Board decision and the 1971 legalization of school busing: prime Boomer years. 

Women’s rights improved substantially as well, starting with the FDA’s 1960 approval of “the pill,” and steadily progressing through the likes of 1963’s Equal Pay Act, Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique, 1972’s Title IX, and 1973’s Roe v. Wade.  While those advances benefited both previous and subsequent generations of American women as well, it was the Boomers whose lives were the most different, the most improved, in terms of their personal freedoms and well-being. 

Gay rights advanced significantly too.  1958’s Supreme Court One, Inc. v. Olesen was the first case to advance homosexual rights, but the movement really gained traction following 1967’s Black Cat Tavern raid in New York. The 1970s saw more gains, with openly gay people being elected to high positions, and clawing back more and more previously withheld rights in succeeding decades.  After Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in 2004, most others soon followed.  

Recreational drug use is obviously a double-edged sword, but nevertheless an example of increased personal freedom of choice.  Whereas before the mid-1960s virtually no self-respecting American wanted anything to do with marijuana or other drugs, in the mid-‘60s Baby Boomers (mostly) were pushing hard against that image.  By the end of the 1970s, eleven states had decriminalized marijuana while most others had reduced their penalties.  The trend continued, with California legalizing weed’s medicinal use, breaking down the door that by now makes marijuana’s use legal for any purpose in nearly half of all states.  

Greater personal freedoms are literally visible in other ways as well, such as in the type of clothing that’s permissible in public and the workplace.  Along with hair length and styles, and facial hair.  Short skirts, puffy sleeves, psychedelic patterns, bell bottoms, going braless – all those and more were on the menu from the mid-1960s on, in glaring contrast to the previous strict social mores.  Today virtually any clothing, any styles are OK for both men and women; even top CEOs go tie-less and just as often suit-less.  Like recreational drug use, that’s not always a great thing, but in any case this other type of increased freedom is thanks to the Boomers. 

TECHNOLOGY: Oh boy!  Let’s recap what people had back in 1960, a time when most Boomers were kids of one age or another:

 - One or maybe two cars with manual transmission, manual windows, low gas mileage, AM radio, no air,  

   no seatbelts, no Bluetooth, and no cruise control.

- One or maybe two phones; corded, rotary dial, with no free long-distance. 

- One or maybe two TVs; black & white, 26” or less, low resolution, 3 or 4 channels, no remotes.

- No personal computers, cell phones, Apple watches, DVDs/Blue ray or streaming services

- No home air conditioning, microwave ovens, electric can openers, pasta makers, juicers, etc.

- No DoorDash, Uber, Sirius, eHarmony, etc. 

Unlike their grandparents, Baby Boomers grew up with reliable autos; unlike their parents, they grew up with TVs and a life full of most modern conveniences, even if primitive by current standards.  During their lifetimes, Boomers had the luck and the income to benefit from the steady improvements and outright inventions of all that we now take for granted.  Their quality of life, thanks to the incredible increase of technology, steadily improved. 

PLAY: But life’s about more than just having more things, better things, and Boomers lucked out here as well. They were blessed with the freedom to just be kids; to play outside all day long, chase pollywogs in the local pond, get hit in the lip during a rock fight, ride their bikes to the beach, or spend the day at a friend’s house, come home filthy - with none of it being a big deal.  Boomers spent time in Nature, getting fresh air with their friends, making up their own entertainment, and often being in Scouts.  But that changed.  Membership in the Boy Scouts of America peaked in 1972 at 6.5 million, for example; by 1998 it was 4.8 million; the most recent figures show only a bit more than one (1) million Boy and Cub Scouts.  Data on Girl Scouts isn’t readily available, but one imagines a similar decline. 

In the 1980s and beyond, though, it was increasingly about tightly scheduled “play dates” and other programmed activities.  But otherwise – inside most of the time, watching TV, then computers, then staring at their phones 24/7; building up little resistance to the bacteria and whatnot from playing in the mud and getting banged up outdoors.  Boomers commonly walked a mile or more to school; now parents drive their kids the three whole blocks to school.  They might get kidnapped, raped, hit by a car! Frickin’ bubble kids, absorbed by all their “devices.” But at least now they’re “safe”…  

ENTERTAINMENT             

Television was another defining Baby Boomer thing, with the 1950s considered the Golden Age of Television, and kids growing up with such great shows like The Mickey Mouse Club, Gunsmoke, and the Howdy Doody Club.  The ‘60s started out with Bonanza and The Flintstones, and ended with The Smothers Brothers, Sesame Street, and Laugh-In.  All of them, and early-70s shows like All in the Family – groundbreaking, high-quality television.  

Sure, later years brought other great shows: M.A.S.H., Cheers, The Cosby Show, and Law and Order among them.  But groundbreaking?  Not as much.  And what great things did the ‘90s and ‘00s give us – reality TV?  The Bachelor, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Keeping Up With the Kardashians?   All of them cheap to produce crap, mindless pabulum for the masses. So Boomers got to enjoy the best that television had to offer.  Better entertainment value, better for their growing minds than what followed.  And certainly better than what their parents and grandparents grew up with: no television at all. 

Now we come back to where we started, with the Baby Boom generation living during the most exciting time for Music, being blessed with the freshest and best music of any modern generation.  Starting with the mid-1950s and the first rock ‘n rollers, introduced by Hollywood via 1955’s Rock Around the Clock, then headlined by Chuck, Little Richard, and Elvis: a whole new teenagers-only music that set the stage for decades of the genre.  Round two kicked things up another notch between 1963 and 1965 with Motown, Girl Groups, the Beach Boys and the two incomparable, best-ever musicians of the 20^th century: The Beatles and Bob Dylan, with the Rolling Stones right behind and a whole passel of genre-boosting groups from both sides of the pond licking at their heels.  1967 led off the next and final stage of Classic Rock ‘n Roll, with the Doors’ Light My Fire that summer, quickly followed by Jimi, Cream, and the whole high-energy music that gave us Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, et al; mellower sounds a la CSN and the Eagles; and of course the ladies: Aretha, Joni, and Linda.  

By 1975, it was about all over.  Not that there wasn’t more great music to come from great groups in the late-70s, the ‘80s, ‘90s and beyond!  But nothing as good, as new under the sun.  Rap as the new Motown?  Grunge and techno as the new electric blues?  K-Pop?  You’re joking, right?  

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I sense a lot of “OK, Boomer!” out there.  Maybe so.  I’m biased.  But it really should be “OK, Luckiest Generation!”  And that matters, as the Luckiest/Boomers mostly run the world of today based on perspectives born of their extraordinary luck.  Their Not-As-Lucky kids and grandkids are quickly taking over the reins of power, with their dissimilar perspectives.  The success, or not, of this emerging paradigm shift requires that both groups understands where the other’s coming from.  And America in the 21^st century seems anything but a redoubt of respecting diverse outlooks.