11 June

Germaine Greer was one of the only prominent boomers who saw through the emptiness of the 60s 'peace and love' movement. This looks a miserable quote, but it's not at all, and matches what Proust for example saw about love - that it's so often a projection onto another person of yourself. There is a real love, but it's easily lost in the sentimentality view of human relationships. The other aspect of the emptiness of the hippification of the world was how it masked the dismantling of centuries-old human institutions, the big anti-establishment push. These same boomers went on to become the richest generation in human history, by a country mile, largely by cashing in on the breakdown of existing institutions for which they offered cash-generating alternatives. And they let institutions such as school, church, public transport and public services, wither to the point that today the cost of providing even basics in these areas has become almost impossible to meet. In stark contrast to the rhetoric of their youth, leaving the next generations substantially poorer, with enormous social problems to solve. Most of the mess we think the world is in today had its origins in that smashing of human institutions. All in the name of 'peace and love'.