Perhaps Baby Boomers were earmarked to shrug off tradition in order to do away with the restraints that had sidelined many Americans for centuries. For all one knows though, it could it be that that remarkable epoch of the 20th Century, known as the 1960s, was merely one of many infinite calls to the man, if there is one, running the showboat we call creation. Whichever the case may be, scores of American children born since then have been stunted and swindled by their rather naïve and quixotic parents. Forty years ago, Joan Didion undertook the mission to demystify the offspring of the ever-growing American middle class. In her essay Slouching Towards Bethlehem; Didion takes the beatniks to task for immortalizing illiteracy. Her commentary on the Haight-Ashbury scene draws one in, and is at once, repellant. Didion could see the cost of maintaining so many freedoms back then, when the numbers of children abandoned for the charges of war and peace were fewer. People remain mired in the 21st Century because the cycle has not been broken, and what was once reserved for upper-middle class hippies, has become a problem for the world. Radical liberalism, the search for spiritual understanding, and the breakdown of the patriarchal values of yore are to blame for the luckless degeneration of the reputed free world. Perhaps in this case, America’s monotheistic enemies are anything but mistaken, and the relentless wrangling many of us only witness on television is of our own doing.
The first character we meet in Slouching Towards Bethlehem is called Deadeye. Deadeye hopes to mastermind a “groovy religious group” called ‘Teenage Evangelism’ where people of all ages can seek counseling for their problems. Deadeye plans to finance his church of sorts by dealing LSD. Deadeye has earnest, albeit callow intentions, but genuinely seems interested in helping depressed people. However, his mission is unmistakably flawed because his hopes, like many 60s era notions, relies too heavily on the use of drugs. Somehow, possibly due to his intoxication, the conflict between upright Christian values and drug abuse poses no great dilemma for Deadeye. This sort of false virtue runs rife. It is as if the dead eye Deadeye and his contemporaries were turning their backs to spot them first, and handed them a befuddled and fraudulent sense of power. Though recreational drug use is not necessarily problematic, excessive dependence frustrates development. Regrettably, anyone with access to power and narcotics is likely to create a rather dystopian atmosphere. Witness the Hell’s Angels at the Altamont Speedway Concert in San Francisco who killed a person and mauled dozens more at an “anti-war” concert in 1969. The fact is mind-bending drugs are a hell of a lot of fun. They can also lead to great insight for those who take them. But, actually practicing harmony or eliminating emotional pain is an impossible reality to manufacture. The late great Hunter S. Thompson was hip to this concept in his hilarious epic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He implies that Tim Leary was nothing more than a fool, peddling “consciousness expansion” to a bunch of halfwits desperate enough to believe in God. Whether or not he was right is anybody’s guess, but the fact is, LSD took Leary and his followers down, and they landed with a thud (Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 178). Unfortunately, quite a few people still haven’t managed to grasp this concept, Prozac being the contemporary cure for life’s ills. Though the numbing effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors like Prozac can be miraculous stress-relievers, they are no substitute for actual peace, no cure for perversions of justice, and a scant proxy for wisdom.
Max, a privileged East Coaster sees his life as a masterstroke over middle class values. He is proud to be unencumbered by the types of affiliations that keep society together, and boasts about his sexual savoir faire. Max spends the better part of his youth scoring drugs like pot and peyote, railing on about “middle class Freudian hang-ups” and the hypocrisy of the working class. Didion views Max and his ilk as victims of a society torn apart by war; innocent children left in the lurch to find new homes and communities without the support and guidance of their elders. According to Thompson, at the heart of the problem was a class struggle where an “…effort to reconcile the interests of the lower/working class biker/dropout types and the upper/middle, Berkeley/student activists” went awry (Thompson 179). Evidently, the difference between classes only becomes problematic when one group tries to over-power another. The sad truth is many Baby Boomers were painfully affected by the Vietnam War, and not only by their own choices but also by their equally ill equipped parents. All of who were themselves malcontent survivors of depression and global warfare. The difference is people old enough to have survived WWI were reacting against The Depression, and were still heavily dependant upon the rubrics of polite society and the old class system.
The rejection of these principles by the beatnik generation has led to an informal lifestyle and the rather unfortunate vulgarization of America. Casual culture has spread far and wide, so much so that many people no longer find value in respecting themselves and those around them, or learning Standard English. Even the rich are exempt from the sort of behavior that in the past one only saw amongst the poverty-stricken. Words like fuck are so commonly used today; few people are actually capable of articulating the root of their anger, merely opting for the easy way out and a flippant f***k you. Ebonics, a commonly used African–American dialect now supersedes Standard English for the majority of black Americans. Acceptance of these other forms of culture is what our society is predicated upon, but such deviations from the old order prevent a lot of children from reaching their full potential, and from participating in many mainstream activities.
Didion moves on to describe the free-loving scene on the streets of San Francisco where hot bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane drew in crowds of adolescent groupies who were tuning in and dropping out en masse. She recounts an afternoon on the Haight where confusion and racial undertones softly pepper what was supposed to be nothing more than street theater. Several white kids in blackface poke a ‘negro’ with sticks and question his loyalty to Chuck Berry. Against the young man’s protests, a white girl suggests blacks should be getting freebies like white youths do from their parents. The implications of this brief happenstance are deeply emblematic of American ignorance and an infuriating willingness to thwart responsibility. This episode encapsulates how African Americans became the victims of drug-use, ignorance, and welfare; exploited by children who were foolishly trying to save them with meditation, macrobiotic food, and other Taoist principles. Few of which, unfortunately, have managed to save anyone from the hassles of hard work and responsibility. Yet, liberal Americans still have their hearts set to obliterate what is left of the class system, leaving the more noble professions like housework and farming to Latino immigrants who hang on to the same religious and patriarchal systems that many Americans are inclined to reject. This is no way forward. If displaced and jobless Americans living below the poverty level in places like New Orleans were supported by the conventional practices that the 60s did away with, perhaps they too would see the honor in the work immigrants do, while simultaneously lifting themselves out of poverty.
Behind all these ideological struggles, the feminist movement has in all probability caused a great number of the obstacles we encounter today. The disruption of the Patriarchal and Puritanical systems that America has long been governed by are slowly being dismantled, but female equality comes with a change men have not accepted with ease. Of course men have been deeply conditioned to maintain a dominant position, but most are still beholden to violent and macho principles (Gore Vidal, United States: Essays 1952-1992 586). President George W. Bush and his supporters seem to be operating under this very paradigm. Muslim nations, also governed by the edicts of priggery and patriarchy, have become our enemy because they are in competition for supremacy, and reject the practices that keep white American men in power. This conflict will certainly impede any advances America has made towards that elusive concept hippies call peace, Christians refer to as salvation, and Muslims worship to in Allah.
Though the peaceniks left a legacy of hope, little has changed since the 1960s, and the U.S. government continues to yield the sort of power reserved for dictatorships (The Best of Abbie Hoffman 419). In many ways, the hippies were right in protesting immorality, greed, and the multitude of sins affecting our country. They taught us that Americans have a duty to their country, and that when the citizenry take an interest in the country’s direction, they can influence its course. Alas, they failed to create everlasting peace because they were unaware of how complex the system actually is, and that a total rejection of the past is impossible. Now we must take into account that our responsibility towards others is not in changing the world for them, or conforming to a particular point of view, but rather it is to change one’s attitudes when things are not as they should be. As Joan Didion, and William Butler Yates point out, in its current state the “center cannot hold.” Or, more to the point, the center is lost. Total freedom has reduced us to a nation with few principals, and has brought about the sort of ignorant, and egocentric immorality that affects every person wanting to be saved from injustice. Even the man upstairs might doubt His own existence if He knew sin was outfoxing virtue in America’s quest for deliverance.
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