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Every generation has its moral foibles. The silent generation (or the one before them) might have been worse, since their contemporaries are the ones that gave us fascism. They may have glorified the state over the individual, the strong over the weak. Eugenics was more fashionable at that time, for example.
That doesn't absolve the boomers of their own moral failings, which I would say is an elevation of the pursuit of self gratification as the only duty of life, and a casting off of social and familial responsibilities.
But isn't the moral of that meme that you can't really get to the great men without the weak men?
The meme is descriptive, not moral. Even if the cycle feels inevitable, that doesn't necessarily mean we should desire it. And the cycle can be postponed if weak men somehow learn to be strong. I don't know what would trigger that besides a crisis, but if the generation who inherits post-crisis wealth (i.e. boomers) had been less decadent and more careful about preserving the social institutions that created that wealth, then they wouldn't be receiving so much scorn right now.
Maybe the moral principle that doesn't get enough attention is calibration.
If glorification of the state over the individual gave us fascism and world war 2, then it makes sense that the next generation will run away from that and turn to radical individualism. But radical individualism has problems too, and I would argue is not consistent with biblical morality (which I subscribe to).
So part of the responsibility of each generation is not to overreact to the failings of the previous generation, but rather to have a calibrated response.
I don't think the boomers did well in that. And now we also see extreme responses, with the rise of the alt-right, Christian nationalism, white supremacist groups... again, probably as an overreaction to the liberal excesses that the boomers gave us.
I actually wrote about this in a book review here: #933342
from the Great War generation? or do you a pre-existing higher morality that existed further back than this?
I used to spend quite a lot of time reading histories (journals, first hand accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries). I'm not convinced that there was some widespread morality back then that can be objectively considered better than what we have now.
It's not that I see human morality as some unchanging baseline (see Ch 9 of C S Lewis's Preface to Paradise Lost) but I do think humans often act like animals, responding most to what they perceive as hard physical realities.
The boomers may be a decadent generation, and the weak men make weak times meme probably applies. But isn't the moral of that meme that you can't really get to the great men without the weak men?