Love and Dope

Well, I was 14 when the Sixties became the Seventies, but what you wrote, Rod, jibes with my personal perceptions as well as my reading.

I do think that the Sixties-Seventies thing opened things up for a turn to radical traditionalism among young people, though. For example, when my wife and I decided to homeschool, in the late Eighties, I can't deny that we could feel able to invoke "Sixties-Seventies" kinds of rhetoric - - believing we could do it better ourselves than the Establishment could. The turning to Eastern Orthodoxy that many have made was, I suspect, a little bit "paved" for them by the earlier widespread interest that some young people took in Asian religions.

So the Sixties-Seventies thing could be crummy self-indulgence, but it could also be, or to some extent enable, a "doing something different with the self" and one's children than was available to most people in, say, the early Sixties and before.

This relates to why I think that the book Not of This World, the biography of Seraphim Rose, is such a great American biography/"Sixties" book. At least the earlier version of this book; haven't read the more recent one.>

Elderly stoners -- is there anything more pathetic?>

Anonymous: The comment window covered up the bottom half of your post, so as I read "The turning to Eastern Orthodoxy that many have made was, I suspect, a little bit 'paved' for them by the earlier widespread interest that some young people took in Asian religions", I was thinking to myself, hey, Fr. Seraphim Rose wound up in Eastern Orthodoxy via Asian religion/philosophy (more or less), and his biography is a fantastic narrative around that very journey--and then I scrolled down and saw you make exactly that point.

I've only read the rewrite (it was my Lenten reading this year), but I've skimmed the original to get a sense of the differences. I will say that the original comes across somewhat less as a biography of Fr. Seraphim and somewhat more as the musings and polemics of ex-Fr. Herman. The rewrite is very much worth a read.

Richard>

One of the most stirring critiques of the drug culture ever written was taken from a radio address in Berkeley in 1966. Henry Anderson was, among other things, a researcher and writer on farm labor from inside its movement (So Shall Ye Reap, co-written with Joan London, eldest daughter of Jack), host of a weekly 1960s radio show on the subject on Berkeley's listener-supported Pacifica station KPFA - and a contributor (1966-1971) to the Los Angeles-based philosophic weekly MANAS, discussing questions at the heart of human nature and the art of living provoked anew by the cultural provocations of the time, always from impassioned humanist conviction, moral acuity and cognitive discernment.

The rebuke of Shaw's Ancient, from Back to Methuselah ("Infant, one moment of the ecstasy of life as we live it would strike you dead") came to mind in reading the most famous of Anderson's MANAS essays ("The Case Against the Drug Culture"), from a 1966 broadcast on KPFA. It inspired much correspondence, much of it positive and from listeners and readers who felt that its "side" had been drowned out in its "countercultural" precincts by those counseling seekers of higher consciousness to "tune in, turn on and drop out" via hallucinogens. Like Anderson's other essays, it is chockablock with refreshing and unexpected turns of mind and word that can inspire us still, reminding us that, along with the dated and the meretricious, there was much of value issuing from Berkeley and like venues in the 1960s - more than their orthodox detractors and wooly-headed celebrants alike would have us believe.


THE CASE AGAINST THE DRUG CULTURE (reprinted in THE MANAS READER)

"I suppose I should say at the outset that I haven't been on any 'trips' other than those which come naturally. I am well aware that the tripsters will therefore write me off with the wheeze, 'If you haven't tried it, don't knock it.' I am unimpressed with that argument, if it can be called an argument. There are many things I have not tried, and feel that I am perfectly justified in 'knocking' simply on the basis of being human, and having had certain basic human experiences and feelings. For example, there have been other kinds of hippies, at various times, in various places, who thought they found fulfillment in killing or torturing or being tortured. I am quite prepared to abjure Sade's recommendations for consciousness-expansion without ever having tried them, and with the intention of never trying them. And I have no apology whatever to make for my lack of 'empiricism,' for empiricism, like almost anything else, can become a vice..."

Read Anderson's entire essay at

http://www.manasjournal.org/pdf_library/VolumeXIX_1966/XIX-46.pdf

For an equally stirring "countercultural" blast against the sexual "revolution", *avant la lettre francaise* (as it were) - once more from MANAS the Magnificent, (he tub-thumped yet again) - don't miss the installment below in the magazine's superb department - always at once philosophic and down-to-earth in its Ortega-like grasp of the phenomenology of everyday life - "Children...and Ourselves", from its issue for July 5, 1950, proving, like the Henry Anderson essay above, that, contrary to the reductionist entertainment-industry (aka the corporate "news" media) snapshots of the time, there was no more one unitary monochrome monolithic "counterculture" than there is (or was) one monolithic "western" culture - just a glorious profusion of often buried flowerbeds, from Plato to Goethe to Blake to Milosz to Wendell Berry, constantly struggling toward the sun amid a forest of weeds threatening to choke them - in the world at large and in the individual soul...

MANAS

CHILDREN. . . and Ourselves

http://manasjournal.org/pdf_library/VolumeIII_1950/III-27.pdf

CONSIDERING a subscriber's problems encountered in discussing "questions about sex" with a youth, we endeavored to show that indoctrination is as poor a method of education in this area as it is in all others. The general trend among adults has recently been toward recognizing this; there is less use of the "frighten them off" method of preventing adolescent indiscretions. A good example of this constructive tenor of thought is found in a
Reader's Digest article by Margaret Culkin Banning, entitled "The Case for Chastity" (reprinted in last year's Reader's Digest Reader). Mrs. Banning orients her argument around the contention that youth is most susceptible to suggestions which help them to distinguish immature and unintelligent actions from the mature and intelligent ones. As far as generalized psychological approaches go, this seems thoroughly sound. The child does not want to know what is bad, but rather wants to discover what is good. And he will listen to opinions concerning the nature of intelligent behavior when he will not allow himself to be frightened by bogies.

Yet Mrs. Banning still uses modified bogies percentages. We really cannot persuade youths to accept a conventional morality by presenting them with imposing statistics about what presumably happens to those who deviate. One of the strongest motivations in human behavior is the desire to disprove statistics in other words, to be the exception. This is a good desire, and not a bad one. It is rooted in the urge to transcend the ordinary. When you tell a person not to do something because it is dangerous, with the odds against him, you are not necessarily restraining him. You may be challenging him.

We should like to suggest an improvement on Mrs. Banning's otherwise commendable approach. There is no compelling case for "chastity" in the terms she chooses, for chastity is considered a physical condition, and her argument for keeping this condition is mainly statistical. What is needed is a re-definition of the word chastity, one which will expand its meaning to include attitudes of mind. Chastity of the mind freedom from those obscenities and perversions of attitude which coarsen human relationships is what is most important, and fully as important in marriage as before or outside it. One reason, incidentally, why young people who really think will find it difficult to accept over-simplified categories of good and evil is because they instinctively realize that many relationships within marriage are about as hopeless as anything can get. A relationship unsanctified by marriage might seem to them better by comparison and might actually be better.

The modern adolescent, too, confronts a different kind of problem today, such as is presented by the psychological influence of the
Kinsey Report. The major influence of the Kinsey publication on the average person is, as has been argued by a Harper's commentator, "Justification by Percentages." The Kinsey Report tells us a lot about a lot of sexual deviation; the problem of individual right or wrong in sexual affairs seems relatively inconsequential if one reasons that nothing he does will do more than change statistics by a fraction of a per cent. And this, we think, gets people far off the track. We do not find the truth by taking a vote; if we did we would still believe that the sun and the planets revolve around the earth, for this is what most people thought at the time of Copernicus. We are even less likely to discover the best sort of behavior by reviewing the sex experiences of men who don't mind telling about them. The Kinsey Report is of no help whatsoever to the inquiring youth, except in establishing the suspicion that if what Kinsey implies is true, the adults he knows are a pretty hypocritical bunch. And not only does it fail to tell him anything important about the procreative instinct, and how its accompanying emotions may best be expressed it even forgets to mention procreation, except once, briefly, and in passing. The Kinsey Report focusses attention entirely upon the physically sexual, or sensual, proclivities of man, and leaves entirely out of account the most important thing of all, the relationship of romantic and procreative feelings to the responsibility for children.

We should ourselves put the whole matter very simply, to an adult as well as to an adolescent: maturity is a state at which we arrive by equalizing freedom and responsibility. Mature expression between the sexes cannot be achieved if entirely divorced from some sort of willingness to bring children into the world. If men and women, or boys and girls, completely divorce sex experience from the thought of potential parenthood, they are playing at something, rather than living it and will not find anything really worth their while. They may find, instead, a growing dissatisfaction with their relationships, for nature has a habit of refusing to be disparted. Whether we are talking about natural resources or the affairs of the sexes, it seems to be a fact that the person who takes, and shows no willingness to give, is robbed of much that he might otherwise achieve. The wastelands caused by human greed and immaturity are far from beautiful, and so are those relationships between the sexes existing entirely on independent desires to indulge biological whims.... We sometimes wonder if all "moral problems" in the sexual field might not vanish if enough men accepted the belief that no interrelationship of the sexes is sufficiently rewarding and constructive unless accompanied by a willingness to bring children into the world with the partner. Would not this view lead an individual to eliminate involvements with those he cares so little about that the thought of sharing the responsibility of a child with them seems distressing? In any case, it suggests a constructive and effective approach to the minds of thoughtful adolescents. If they retain in their minds the question, "Would I ever like to share the responsibility of a child with this person?" they will often save themselves time and confusion by>

I've never understood how altering your brain chemistry and destroying in some cases your brain cells was supposed to lead to higher conciousness.

But you're right, Scott Walker, the music WAS good. Not that horrid Disco crap I had to listen to in my high school years. :-)>

Anonymous also, "The Doors Of Perception" and "Heaven And Hell" by Aldous Huxley lay out the rationale for so-called mind expansion via psychedelic drugs. I haven't looked at them in about thirty five years, but I imagine they would make great cautionary reading now. Sad, I think, that the man who wrote the most spot-on dystopia, "Brave New World", chose to die tripping. (Coincidentally enough, on November 22, 1963, the same day that CS Lewis and a well-known American president left this world.)>

smitten, that is; smitted is not a word, so far as I know.>

Tom,

Many of the social changes that took root in the 60s, as you put, actually had roots going back much earlier. Civil Rights is a good example. The Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s was in many ways the fruit of the labors of many people for several decades prior.

I think that, in some ways, the same can be said the women's rights movement of the 60s -- it was the fruit of the efforts of the suffragists, the extensive participation of women in the workforce during WWII, etc.. A big difference though, is that, in many ways, the women's movement of the 60s owes a great deal to the introduction of the birth control pill. And that was a scientific breakthrough that owed absolutely nothing to the political activists of the 60s.>

For anyone who's interested, on somaweb.org, there's a link that will take you to a link for Huxley's "Doors Of Perception" essay.

I read it, pretty much how I remember it when I first read it, but as for "Heaven and Hell", I don't know if there's a link for it on there, because it was almost midnight when I finished the essay, said "enough" and went to bed. :-)>

On campus, at least, the 1980's weren't much different. Very radical, in contrast to Reagan's America, which we loathed (and didn't understand). We were all anti-apartheid, as if everyone else was pro-apartheid.

We invited someone from the African National Congress (our heroes) to speak. He was drunk the whole time. He stayed at a women's coop and promptly tried to rape not one, not two, but three of the girls during the night. All of these poor girls were hard-core feminist-anti-racist-revolutionaries and worshipped the ANC. They were devastated. Only one (a lesbian) complained loudly, whereupon she was cornered by the local Black Student Alliance and informed any true revolutionary woman would consider it an honor to be chosen by [ANC member] for sex. She is now married with children and living the middle class dream.

Later the other two girls went prostrate to a Black Student Alliance meeting and asked how they could pariticipate in the anti-racist struggle (I guess being willing rape victims wasn't enough). They were told by a "community anti-racist activist" that they couldn't participate, because white racism was their fault, as they are "the one's that are bearin' all the white babies," the source of the problem.

The city recently named a street after this woman.>

Thanks for the link. That's a great Robt Hughes piece, no?

The thing that tends to surprise me most in online discussions about the '60s is the way many people seem to want to reach some Final Judgment on them. Is this really necessary? I mean, there were some cool and fun things about the '60s, and some awful, over-the-top, we're-still-paying-for-them things about the '60s. Both facts are true. Some lives were enhanced by the '60s, some lives were wrecked by them. It's all true. Why try to sum it up in a tidier package than that? Patrick Allitt argues that the '60s were one of the frenzied Great Awakenings that America is (for better and worse) prone to going through every 40 or 50 years. Sounds plausible to me.>

Michael writes: "I mean, there were some cool and fun things about the '60s, and some awful, over-the-top, we're-still-paying-for-them things about the '60s. Both facts are true."

Dead on.

Rod writes: "As far as I'm concerned, "the Sixties" runs from the day the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed, ending the crime of legal segregation, until Reagan was elected in 1980."

Yes, that period of liberal tyranny, the Nixon administration. Why do conservatives get such jollies out of piling hate on these people who made a bunch of noise 40 years ago and could never win an election for dog catcher?

I'll admit the possibility that Abbie Hoffman is boring to me for the same reason that Jerry Falwell and James Dobson are boring to Jonah Goldberg-- that he reflects an aspect of my movement/party that I'd prefer to ignore. I submit that the people Jonah ignores have much, much more influence among party insiders, and a much wider following, than Hoffman ever did.

Also, you should check out http://itunes.stanford.edu/

There is a terrific lecture there by Prof. Gay, I think, on the unusual unanimity of party affiliation among blacks. When blacks live in areas that provide effective social services, that unanimity begins to break down. Interesting empirics that seem to be relevant to the caricature of multiculturalism that inflames you so.

Liberals don't forget that the 1950s was a great time for letters-- liberals are always reading Ginsburg, Kerouac, et al. Conservatives prefer to indulge the powerful, and spend their time spewing spite at the politically powerless pro-free-love bloc.

David White: You are right. Substitute "came to fruition and acceptance" for "took root.">

Keep fighting that good fight? What a calling! I can t tell what is more significant -- bashing the ell out of the sixties and liberals, allocating credit for the civil rights movements, or the war on non-procreative sex!>

Just be thankful that birth control was available back then. Just think if all that sex going on was strictly for Procreation and that generation was allowed to breed. You might still have to bitch about the "Sixties" generation today, in 2006.>