Baby Boomer Influence

When prompted to describe a conservative member of the Baby Boomer generation, younger people from America often imagine a senior citizen with a distinct intolerance for the youth. America’s Baby Boomers are thought to view Millennials and the Generation Z as “entitled”, “lazy” and “self-centered”. Phrases like “back in my day…”, “today’s misguided youth…” and “the downfall of society…” get thrown around as well in such conversation. This general outlook seems to be applied to all of the world’s elders; a trope that older individuals never “understand kids these days” nor wish to. However, when delving into specific cultural reasons behind the seemingly inescapable disparities between the old and young’s beliefs, striking differences in the world begin to arise and the unique reasons for the generational attitudes become clearer. …show more content…
Though both were born immediately after World War II, America raised its youth with a firm sense of patriotism towards a country viewed as winners, while American occupation and societal reconstruction shaped the next generation of Japanese. Like Germany, Japan’s sense of nationalism as they had known it was fragmented at best and destroyed at worst following the war. Before World War II, much of Japan’s nationalistic views relied on a revised form of the ancient religion Shinto, a faith revolving around the worship of thousands of deities that make up the forces of nature. The revamping of the age-old practices produced what is known as State Shinto. The basis of its creation was not only to promote nationalism, but reinstate the full authority of the Emperor whose was thought to have divine