This is one of those introspective, naval gazing type articles that tend to go viral easily Old Boomers Never Die
Are boomers constitute a culture? I’m not so sure. Culture is something that is more specific than merely being an American between the age of 50-70 years old. Intellectualism culture, which is a culture I have defined, is composed of high-IQ people, which is more specific and unique. Democracy, sports, commercialized music, and sitcoms could be considered ‘American culture’, but other other have those things too, but in their own languages and with different themes. Although pundits may decry how society is becoming more atomized, internet culture and intellectualism culture are bringing millions of people, particularity young people, together through shared narratives, that as recently as a decade ago didn’t exist. Look at how the /r/The_Donald and r/r/Jordan_Peterson have forged common ground despite the latter often repudiating the ‘extremism’ and ‘ideological possession’ of the former. Even though the former is more extreme, they can both agree that leftism (as opposed to liberalism) is a blight on the free exchange of ideas and civil society. Or the coming together moment between the high-IQ left and the high-IQ right after Trump’s surprising win, and how the left realized that they were done-in by their overconfidence and arrogance in assuming that Hillary was preordained to win. The whole post-Trump centrism boom could be considered a cultural movement, is related to the rise of intellectualism culture. The weird or unexpected thing is, after Trump’s win, which one would have assumed would have made things more polarizing, at least my observation is there has been this huge upswing of centrism…Quillette, Steven Pinker, Dave Rubin, Jonathan Haidt, Mark Lilla, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, etc. (I can easily list a dozen more) and a common theme of the repudiation of identity politics.