TIME - Man of the Year/CompactPublishing-TimeMagazine-TimeManOfTheYear-Win31MSDOS.iso/moy/moyfiles/1966moy.001

Text File | 1993-07-21 | 37KB | 677 lines

                                                                              ╚January 7, 1967

Man of the Year:The Under-25 Generation

The Inheritor



     The Man of the Year ran the mile in 3:51.3, and died under
mortar fire at An Lao. He got a B-minus in Physics I, earned a
Fulbright scholarship, filmed a documentary in a Manhattan
ghetto, and guided Gemini rendezvous in space. He earns $76 a
week with Operation Head Start in Philadelphia, picks up $10,800
a year as a metallurgical engineer at Ford, and farms 600 acres
of Dakota wheat land. He has a lightening-fast left jab, a
rifling right arm, and reads medieval metaphysicians. He
campaigned for Reagan, booed George Wallace, and fought for
racial integration. He can dance all night, and if he hasn't
smoked pot himself, knows someone who has. He tucks a copy of
Playboy onto his concerto score as he records with the Boston
Philharmonic. He is disenchanted with Lyndon Johnson, is just
getting over his infatuation with Jack Kennedy -- and will some
day run for President himself.

     For the Man of the Year 1966 is a generation: the man --
and woman -- of 25 and under.

     In the closing third of the 20th century, that generation
looms larger than all the exponential promises of science or
technology: it will soon be the majority in charge. In the U.S.,
citizens of 25 and under in 1966 nearly outnumbered their
elders; by 1970, there will be 100 million Americans in that age
bracket. In other big, highly industrialized nations, notably
Russia and Canada, the young also constitute half the
population. If the statistics imply change, the credentials of
the younger generation guarantee it. Never have the young been
so assertive or so articulate, so well educated or so worldly.
Predictably, they are a highly independent breed, and -- to
adult eyes -- their independence has made them highly
unpredictable. This is not just a new generation, but a new kind
of generation.

     Omphalocentric & Secure. What makes the Man of the Year
unique? Cushioned by unprecedented affluence and the welfare
state, he has a sense of economic security unmatched in history.
Granted an ever-lengthening adolescence and life-span, he no
longer feels the cold pressures of hunger and mortality that
drove Mozart to compose an entire canon before death at 35; yet
he, too, can be creative.

     Reared in a prolonged period of world peace, he has a
unique sense of control over his own destiny -- barring the
prospect of a year's combat in a brush-fire war. Science and
the knowledge explosion have armed him with more tools to choose
his life pattern than he can always use: physical and
intellectual mobility, personal and financial opportunity, a
vista of change accelerating in every direction.

     Untold adventures await him. He is the man who will land
on the moon, cure cancer and the common cold, lay out blight-
proof, smog-free cities, enrich the underdeveloped world, and,
no doubt, write finis to poverty and war.

     For all his endowments and prospects, he remains a
vociferous skeptic. Never have the young been left more
completely to their own devices. No adult can or will tell them
what earlier generations were told: this is God, that is Good,
this is Art, that is Not Done. Today's young man accepts none
of the old start-on-the-bottom-rung formulas that directed his
father's career, and is not even sure he wants to be A Success.
He is one already.

     In the omphalocentric process of self-construction and
discovery, he stalks love like the wary hunter, but has no time
or target -- not even the mellowing Communists -- for hate.

     One thing is certain. From Bombay to Berkeley, Vinh Long
to Volgograd, he has clearly signaled his determination to live
according to his own lights and rights. His convictions and
actions, once defined, will shape the course and character of
nations.

     Obverse Puritanism. This is a generation of dazzling
diversity, encompassing an intellectual elite sans pareil and
a firmament of showbiz stars, ski whizzes and sopranos, chemists
and sky watchers. Its attitudes embrace every philosophy from
Anarchy to Zen; simultaneously it adheres above all to the
obverse side of the Puritan ethic -- that hard work is good for
its own sake. Both sensitive and sophisticated, it epitomizes
more than any previous generation the definition of talent by
Harvard Dropout Henry James as "the art of being completely
whatever it was that one happened to be." Yet is by no means
a faceless generation.

     Its world-famed features range from the computer-like
introspection of Bobby Fischer, 23, defending the U.S. chess
title in Manhattan last week, to the craggy face of French
Olympic Skier Jean-Claude Killy, 23, swooping through the slalom
gates in Chile. It is World Record Miler Jim Ryan, 19, snapping
news pictures for the Topeka Capital-Journal to prepare himself
for the day when he can no longer break four minutes. It is
Opera Singer Jane Marsh, 24, capturing first prize at Moscow's
Tchaikovsky competition. It is Medal of Honor Winner Robert E.
O'Malley, 23, who as a Marine Corps corporal in Viet Nam was
severely wounded by enemy mortar fire, yet succeeded in
evacuating and killing eight V.C.s.

     It is Folk Singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, 24, passionately
pleading the cause of her fellow Indians when she is not
recording top-selling LPs. It is Artist Jamie Wyeth, 20,
improving on his father's style while putting in some 200 hours
on a portrait of John F. Kennedy; Violinist James Oliver
Buswell, 20, carrying a full Harvard freshman load and a 44-city
concert tour simultaneously; Actress Julie Christie, 25,
shedding miniskirt for bonnet and shawl while filming Hardy's
Far from the Madding Crowd and denouncing "kooky clothing" in
the women's magazines. It is Sanford Greenberg, 25, President
of the senior class as Columbia, Phi Bete, Ph.D. from Harvard,
George Marshall Scholar at Oxford, special assistant to the
White House science advisor and friend of Folk Rocker Art
Garfunkel, saying: "You've got to live with the nitty-gritty,
man."

     Early & Earnest. The young have already staked out their
own minisociety, a congruent culture that has both alarmed
their elders and, stylistically at least, left an irresistible
impression on them. No Western metropolis today lacks a
discotheque or espresso joint, a Mod boutique or a Carnaby shop.
No transistor is immune from rock 'n' roll, no highway spared
the stutter of Hondas. There are few Main Streets in the world
that do not echo to the clop of granny boots, and many are the
grannies who now wear them. What started out as a distinctively
youthful sartorial revolt -- drainpipe-trousered men, pants-
suited or net-stockinged women, long hair on male and female
alike -- has been accepted by adults the world over.

     If their elders have been willing to adapt to the outward
life style of the young, they have been far more chary of their
inner motivations and discrete mores. Youth, of course, has
always been a topic of indefatigable fascination to what was
once regarded as its elders and betters. But today's young
people are the most intensely discussed and dissected generation
in history.

     Modern communications have done much to put them on center
stage. Returning from a recent rally on the Berkeley campus, one
U.C. coed reported that the demonstration had been a fiasco,
"Why," she lamented, "we didn't get a single TV camera!" A more
compelling reason for adult angst is that the young seem
curiously unappreciative if the society that supports them.
"Don't trust anyone over 30," is one of their rallying cries.
Another, "Tell it like it is," conveys as abiding mistrust of
what they consider adult deviousness.

     Sociologists and psephologists call them "alienated" or
"uncommitted"; editorial writers decry their "non-involvement."
In fact, the young today are deeply involved in a competitive
struggle for high grades, the college of their choice, a good
graduate school, a satisfactory job -- or, if