While we hash out below who's responsible for Bratz at the Beach, James Poulos floats an intriguing theory:
But although some of the split between conservative political victory and cultural failure can be attributed to some particular generation gaps in voting preferences, much more interesting is the underlying phenomenon by which 'the generation gap' became informally institutionalized as a cultural norm in which parents and children were by definition alienated from one another, and often openly hostile.How did this happen? Simple: kids of the '60s grew up into adults of the '80s, adults whose inability to maintain coherent lives within authoritative moral institutions was unprecedented. It wasn't so much that people suddenly had 'loose morals'; critics on the left are right to emphasize this. But in doing so they often downplay the more important point -- that loose morality in the '80s somehow managed to overthrow the cultural institutions and social conventions that protected and reproduced moral authority. Indeed, this change had little to do with cultural agitation on the political left, and much more to do with the organic character of the generation that got married in the '70s and divorced in the '80s. The permanent generation gap only makes sense in the context of the unprecedented failure of people coming of age in the '70s to maintain the authority of the family in the '80s.
Well, that and Kajagoogoo. Confound you, Limahl!
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AnotherBeliever, I'd say you "rebel against rebellion" by embracing the timeless wisdom and meaningful traditions that "the system" rejected back when it threw out the baby with the bath water not so very long ago, in terms of history's grand scope. In other words, you recover the baby. (And no, that's not a pro-life reference!) Easier said than done, I know, but lots of folks here seem to be trying, which encourages me daily.
"How but in custom and in ceremony/Are innocence and beauty born?/Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,/ And custom for the spreading laurel tree." - W.B. Yeats
There's no need to rebel against an authority you support. If one is a liberal college student and is attending college at a campus in which the professors are liberals, then there's no need to rebel. You can get what you want and still be friends with your professors, who, after all, are in a position to write letters of recommendation for you. The same can be said about conservative students, by the way, who decide it's a better use of time to work on the college conservative paper and line up conservative internships and seminars (Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, etc.) than to pitch up a big fuss on campus. We've set up some nice, culturally-fulfilling career tracks for our more ideologically motivated college students in recent decades, and the smart ones know how to play it, rational self-interest and all.
Also, as an aside per the Iraq War and protest, the reason for the lack of mass protests by college students against the War can be summed up in two words: no draft. I'm not suggesting that non-protesting anti-Iraq War students are selfish. Quite the contrary, actually. I'm just suggesting that there isn't a lot of incentive to take the time and effort to protest (and maybe get a taste of tear gas or a police truncheon) if the War isn't likely to affect you personally in the most important way. As I saw someone state on another blog, the Marines are at war, America is at the shopping mall.
I think immigrant families demonstrate the basis for the generation gap. People whose formative experiences were radically different - herding goats in The Old Country vs. playing Little League baseball in America - will naturally have different perspectives on life. Bearing that in mind, have you heard the saying 'the past is another country'?
My mother, a left-hander, tells me stories about being forced to write with her right hand in school because writing left-handed with a fountain pen smears the ink into illegibility. Myself, I remember being taught to write in cursive script in 2nd grade, but I've lost the skill since then, never having had occasion to practice it. I can sign my name cursively, but for anything else I print, badly. In 3rd grade they taught us to type, and by the time I was handing in essays there was a requirement that they be typed. Now I'm a graduate student, and most of my professors don't even want paper copies, preferring to recieve our essays as text files; I noticed yesterday, when I went to use my printer, that the full ink tank had entirely dried up from going disused for over a year. When Grandma's letters arrive in her beautiful flowing handwriting, I need the help of someone older than myself to deciper the words; they might as well be written in Gothic blackletter. My mother's world, my grandmother's even more so, is a foreign country to me. That's the generation gap.
Return to tradition? I want to see the Latin Mass someday; I'm marrying a man who, like me, doesn't believe in divorce except in truly extreme circumstances; I've bought a fountain pen and practiced writing my name with it. But in this I am like a third-generation Irish American dusting off Grandma's soda bread recipe; I can adopt the trappings of The Old Country, but it is beyond my power to replicate the reality they grew from. My generation may discard some of the 20th century's social innovations - I think we will - but we will not become my mother's generation by doing so; the Culture Wars have been going on longer than most of us have been alive, and they are all we know.
"kids of the '60s grew up into adults of the '80s, adults whose inability to maintain coherent lives within authoritative moral institutions was unprecedented."
That might just be because we examined those institutions critically and found that they weren't so "moral" after all. The military? The Church?
I also (naturally) disagree with the notion that we are unable "to maintain coherent lives" within (OR outside of) "authoritative institutions".
"It wasn't so much that people suddenly had 'loose morals'; critics on the left are right to emphasize this. But in doing so they often downplay the more important point -- that loose morality in the '80s"
Wait a minute!!! That sentence began with the statement that "It wasn't so much that people suddenly had 'loose morals'" and then all of a sudden reverts to that loose morality in the '80s". WHICH IS IT?
But I am glad to see that "critics on the left are [ahem] right to emphasize this" [that "It wasn't so much that people suddenly had 'loose morals'."]
"somehow managed to overthrow the cultural institutions and social conventions that protected and reproduced moral authority."
Again, I disagree that said institutions and social conventions were necessarily "moral". But has The Church (TM) actually BEEN overthrown? (And, for that mater, has The Church (TM) actually "protected and reproduced moral authority" at all??? So many assumptions on the part of the writer.
"Indeed, this change had little to do with cultural agitation on the political left"
Wow, that's refreshing to read.
"The permanent generation gap only makes sense in the context of the unprecedented failure of people coming of age in the '70s to maintain the authority of the family in the '80s."
Yet another assumption. What "authority" does/did "The Family" (TM) HAVE anyway? How is it/should it be "maintained"? Same questions for The Church and The Military.
"Can you rebel against rebellion?" is a really good question.
I think the answer is yes, at least culturally, and as an example from the l970's offer a crucial marker, the movie "Animal House." In this story, we saw essentially a 60's style liberation of Kerouacian bohemians rise up against an authoritarian mindset in an era before the 60's happened. This setting was a stroke of genius, in many respects, and in an incredibly ironic twist, helped revive in this country the whole Greek system against which "Animal House" was rebelling.
So from this example I think the answer is yes, but the result leads to a kind of ironic cultural chaos far better suited to Hollywood liberalism (think Seinfeld, Maher) than Reaganesque clarity (think Delay, Bush).
The 70's revolt against liberalism, in other words, is inherently reactionary. That is its strength, and that is its weakness -- it is against something, not for something, which probably in part explains why modern-day Republicans in Congress and in the White House have utterly failed to capitalize on their time in power.
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