The problem with self help books, besides the fact that most of them could have gotten their point across better as magazine articles, is that while their points may be good, there’s no follow through or follow up. You can read the book, get some fabulous, life changing insight, and six weeks later you’ve forgotten everything and you’re back to your same old thing. Things like therapy or good support groups work better, because you have ongoing support when you’re trying to make changes.

Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done was life changing for me, though. Or at least career changing.

You know that Reagan/Thatcher and that generation weren’t boomers, right?

Kerouac wasn’t a boomer, and the book was published when the oldest baby boomers were 10 years old, so none of the characters in his book were boomers, and he wasn’t writing for a boomer audience.

Second, he was describing a small counter culture, not the mainstream culture.

Third, every generation has problems with its elders. It was the baby boom generation that used the phrase “never trust anyone over 30,” although the phrase itself was coined by someone born before the baby boom.

Every generation has selfish idiots. Kerouac’s, the baby boomers, mine, and yours. The environmental movement and most of the civil rights and social movements that we consider mainstream today didn’t have legs until the baby boomers came along and did the work. This whole “the boomers ruined everything” thing that pervades Reddit and elsewhere is just a bunch of whining. If you want things different (and you should), stop complaining, get off your ass and make things different.

If you’re not tired of that genre, add The Great Santini.