The Top 40

But of course.

This point segues nicely into the conversation I've been having lately with my closest friend. She's 4 years younger than me, and hence came through the culture essentially one generation later. To wit, while I was 22 years old and married and trying to re-create the '40s in a let's-try-this-again spirit, she was starting college in the fall of 1967. What I was mystified by decades later, i.e. What The Fuck Happened in the '60s, she was puzzling out face-to-face.

One thing clear to us both is that overnight, there was a generation to whom essentially nothing was serious - "None of this counts, we can always do it over, somebody's always gonna be around to rescue my ass." And therefore hippies, and "feminists" and "Whatever I do is art because it's important to me."

What I think neo is driving at is the deep sense within the Boomers and their progeny that they missed something. They feel guilty and project it onto everybody else because there's a gaping crater where their self would have been if they'd given it the opportunity to develop. Because they've never taken the chance to find out what's worth being afraid of, they're afraid of everything.