The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

romanticized love of the old order; the young conservatives of the
1960s were just as preachy, fanatic, and idealistic in their reverse
values as the majority. The generational mind-set inevitably dominates
everyone from within, no matter how they personally try to react
against it. We cannot step outside the historical moment that we are
born into.
In considering this mind-set, we must try to think in terms of a
collective personality, or what we shall call spirit. Our generation has
inherited from our parents and the past certain key values and ways of
looking at the world that remain unquestioned. But at any moment,
people of a new generation are searching for something more alive and
relevant, something that expresses what is different, what is altering in
the present. This sense of what is moving and evolving in the present,
as opposed to what is inherited from the past, is the collective spirit
itself, its restless and searching nature. It is not something we can
easily put into words. It is more a mood, an emotional tone, a way that
people relate to one another.
That is why we can often best associate the generational spirit with
its dominant musical style, or an artistic trend for a certain type of
imagery, or a mood captured in the literature or films of that

---

generation. For instance, nothing better captures the wild spirit and
frenetic pace of the 1920s than the jazz of the period and the brassy
sound of the saxophone, which was the new rage.
This spirit will tend to alter as our generation passes through the
various phases of life. How we collectively relate to the world will not
be the same in our fifties as it was in our twenties. Circumstances,
historical events, and the aging process will modify this spirit. But, as
with any individual, there is something in the generational personality
that remains intact and transcends the passing years.
The famous lost generation of the 1920s, with its flappers and wild
jazz, had certain noticeable obsessions and traits during this decade—
wild parties, alcohol, sex, money, and success, as well as a hard-boiled,
cynical attitude toward life. As it aged, its members tended to drop the
pursuit of some of these pleasures and manias, but in their later years,
they remained rather tough, cynical, materialistic, and brazen in
expressing their opinions. The baby boomers who came of age in the
1960s displayed an intense idealism and a propensity to judge and
moralize. They tend to retain such qualities, but their ideals and what
they moralize about have shifted.
If our generation has a particular spirit to it, we could say the same
for the time period that we are living through, which generally
comprises four generations alive at the same time. The blending of
these generations, the tension among them, and the clashing that often
occurs create what we shall call the overall spirit of the times or what is
commonly known as the zeitgeist. For instance, when it comes to the
1960s, we cannot separate the mood of the powerful youth culture of
that period from the antagonism and dismay it stirred among those
who were older. The dynamic and spirit of those times came from the
dramatic interaction of two clashing perspectives.
To see this in your own experience, look back at periods in the past
in which you were alive and conscious, at least some twenty years ago,
if you are old enough. With some distance, you can reflect upon how
different those times felt, what was in the air, how people interacted,
the degree of tension. The spirit of that period is not only in the styles
and clothes that are different from those of the present, but also in
something social and collective, an overall mood or feeling in the air.
Even the differences in fashions and architecture, the colors that

---

became popular, the look of the cars speaks of a spirit behind them
that is animating these changes and choices.
That spirit can be characterized as wild and open, with people
hungry for all kinds of social interaction; or it can be rather tight and
cautious, with people prone to conforming and being hypercorrect; it
can be cynical or hopeful, stale or creative. What you want to do is to
be able to gauge the spirit of the present moment, with a similar sense
of distance, and to see where your generation fits into the overall
scheme of history, giving you a sense of where things might be headed.