The Cliff Walk: A Memoir of a Job Lost and a Life Found 
by 

Don J. Snyder

 

Baby Boomer Bust

This is a religious tale, a tale of white, privileged, presumptuous, self-serving religion. That it doesn’t appear overtly religious is a consequence only of its vocabulary; it wants us to believe. The religion it represents is one of a certain kind of middle class order in the universe, a force which ensures that the righteous - that is, those who worship and serve this force - will be vindicated. This is the religion of the Boomer Generation, those who rode the wave from working class to professional status in the latter half of the 20th century. Like most religions, this one often eats its adherents.

The biblical book of Job is Snyder’s template. Success is achieved, lost, and recovered. And like the book of Job, someone (probably at an editor’s insistence) messed it about by adding a prologue and an epilogue that ensure its devotion to cosmic orderliness despite the intermediate humiliation and suffering. The world is just and beneficent; we simply have to await it’s working out. Blessed be the name of the force.

Snyder’s fast track academic career is cut short by what he portrays as bureaucratic incompetence. His prayers to the force go unanswered. He rages; he demands justice; finally he seeks the inner wisdom, the hidden logic of his situation. One door closes, another opens, you make your own luck, when the going gets tough... etc. What he has lost in professional prospects, he more than gains in familial intimacy. Order has been restored. 

Here’s the truth of the matter: there is no assured connection between competence and achievement, between integrity and reputation, between virtue and happiness. This is so as a matter of principle and is not dependent on the structures of organisation, sociology, psychology, or spirituality we might establish. It matters not whether one is engaged in the pursuit of corporate advancement, entrepreneurial innovation, or merely a quiet life. Life does not conform to the promises of the religion of orderliness.

Disorderliness, chaos, entropy, the unforeseen always get us. This is empirically observable. Yet according to the religion of orderliness, these are manifestly evil. They are also universally apparent. So, paradoxically, the religious beliefs we hold most dear are precisely those which prove the irrationality of those very beliefs. The presumption that the world is benign and wants to be understood, even in our very small part of it, is a conceit which disappoints everyone from the most eminent scientist to the newest infant.

Snyder’s religion is based on the anthropic principle, that is, that we have evolved to understand the cosmos, essentially that it is our rightful home and that we can expect certain privileges as a consequence. Entitled to a secure job; entitled to have children, as many as we want; entitled to respect for our superior intellect or wealth or unremitting drive; entitled to feel sympathetic solidarity with those who have failed to benefit from advanced education and a continuously expanding economy.

As I said: white, privileged, self-righteous. Also deluded. It is the realisation of the delusion of entitlement not the reality of life itself that causes anger, resentment, and the various neuroses of modern society. One of those neuroses is sentimentality. Sentimentality, too, is an entitlement. When the rest of life goes down the tubes, I’ve still got my family, or my self-respect, or my memories, or some image of an idealised past. Nope. That may be the cruellest part of the delusion, that relationships, including the relationship with oneself and one’s history, are inviolable. 

In any case, even if you win, you lose. There are an infinite number of cares, duties, goals, and responsibilities that one could have attended to but didn’t. So regret is inevitable. Human life involves zero-sum economics - doing more of X means doing less of Y. But the Boomer faith is in the free lunch. Everything is possible. The force will provide; it is on our side. Like Job, we just have to rail at it enough until fortune is restored.

But as I mentioned at the outset, the epilogue of the book of Job is probably fraudulent, added by some editor concerned with establishing the fairy-tale nature of divine concern. Literature, too, is part of Boomer religion. For some, it is the religion’s central tenet. It gives comfort and hope and, most important, reasons for why things are as they are. But literature, including the biblical, is just another name for the delusional redemptive force. 

Snyder thinks he’s found another name for the force - hard physical work, work with hammers and nails and saws. Manly work. One of my younger brothers tried that religion. High steel and wilderness house-building. It worked really well for him. But physical work has physical cost. He died on site of a heart attack aged 43. No free lunch.

Postscript: For more on the peculiar psychology of Boomers, see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...