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Silent Generation Finally Speaks Out
I'm a member of the Silent Generation.
A charter member, really, so dubbed by
Tom Watson, Jr., then-president of IBM, when he admonished my DePauw
University graduating class of 1957 to "speak out, take chances, and be
daring."
Life Magazine picked up Watson's sobriquet and, because it was so
right on, the term stuck.*
Today 49 million of us - born too young to have struggled through the
Depression or fight in World War II, and too old to ally ourselves with
the free-spirited ‘60s - are sandwiched between the much larger GI
"Greatest" Generation (63 million) and the Boomers (79 million).
We Silents were considered bush-league. Politicians and advertisers
trivialized us like some cosmic flatulence that loomed when no one was
looking. Our war was Korea. Who's heard of that? Our generation didn't
even rate a US president.
Though you couldn't prove it by me, we are credited with starting
the sexual revolution. (In the 1960s, anthropologists say, it simply
became publicly respectable to talk about it.) We're also the folks who
brought the world incomparable national wealth and unimaginable progress
in technology and science.
We even produced a few activists - Gloria Steinem, Martin Luther King,
Malcolm X, Betty Friedan, and Ralph Nader come to mind.
But most of us went directly from school to risk-averse work and
marriage without ever waking our human spirit and inviting it out to
play.
Safe. Silent. And boring.
Conformity
was success. Author William Manchester observed that we were "withdrawn,
cautious, unimaginative, indifferent, unadventurous and silent." Even as
teens, few of us ever rebelled, a common rite of passage for other
generations.
In part, it was economic fear. The taste of financial hardship still
lingered from our childhoods. (To this day, I won't eat tongue, our
family's only meat dish for years.)
Postwar prosperity promised economic security. Those of us lucky enough
to get jobs with Ma Bell, Sears, IBM, and other enlightened employers of
the era buried our fear under profit sharing, lifelong job security,
fair annual raises, and retirement plans. All they asked in return was
not to rock the boat.
And part was political fear.
The assault on America‘s political liberty by the witch-hunting House
Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in tandem with Senator Joseph
McCarthy‘s unscrupulous inquisitions scared the hell out of us. McCarthy
whipped up anti-communist sentiment to such fervor that it was dangerous
to express an opinion anywhere about anything.
Fearing future retribution, I chose not to join a college political
club. Who knew? People were going to jail for beliefs and affiliations
held 20 or 30 years earlier. Free speech appeared doomed. And many of
our elders, including would-be employers, considered the junior senator
from Wisconsin a hero of the century.
We became apolitical. Safe. Silent. And boring.
But life was good. We were Organization Men in our Grey Flannel Suits.
We did as asked, show up on time, and never questioned authority. It was
all so easy. Our mothers had taught us well.
Now,
as we hit our 70s and beyond, many of us Silents are panicking.
We were going along, and getting along, doing that which was expected,
when BAM! Lightening-like, we realized that we only go around once and
we'd better start living life on our own terms.
Today, in our autumn, we are following our bliss. At last!
Redefining retirement, a judge I know is now handcrafting beautiful
wooden chests. An ad guy I worked with treks the world, paying his way
with the occasional travel article. Another sails the globe. Alone. Yet
another, now in her mid 60s, is in medical school.
We've finally reached the teenage rebellion stage!
1935: Just One Great Year
We Silents have been extraordinarily
fortunate. Arguably, we've lived in the world's most fascinating era.
The year I was born, 1935 brought us Elvis, Woody Allen, Mikhail
Gorbachev, the Dalai Lama, Social Security, Alcoholics Anonymous, and
the DC-3, perhaps the most noteworthy and enduring aircraft ever built.
That's just one year.
We've
survived more changes than the earth normally sees in millennia. Don't
believe it? Try explaining to a 20-something what life was like in the
pre-TV 1950s.
Today we dare to be truly alive, to reach for our potential and grasp a
world of realization and fulfillment, of spirituality and serenity that
we never knew possible. And all on our own terms.
This may be our generation's greatest achievement.
* "Silent Generation" was first
coined in a November 5, 1951, Time Magazine cover story. IBM's PR
guys - of course they were all guys at that time - must have missed
reading that issue.
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