As I leaf through the last issue of The Economist, I notice a red ad with white lettering emblematic of the mighty newspaper. Unusually, I start reading it: “Self-doubting, fearful of the future, increasing in size. Is the EU just like any other fifty-year-old?” Quite irked, I check the smaller print at the bottom of the ad. It is about their upcoming report on the changing state of the European Union, to be published next week. But then I return to the two lines of the ad itself. Self-doubting? Fearful of the future? Like any other fifty-year-old? I am quite incensed by all this. What is this crap? Although I will be sixty-one in about a month, none of the above has ever crossed my mind. Ever. But then I turn to my own generation. And the one following in its footsteps. Is it possible that the indomitable spirit of the babyboomers has evaporated just ten years after World War II?