"Anti-Nationalist Civics"....What?

[Eric the Green]

(07-10-2022, 04:09 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(07-10-2022, 03:41 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Gun violence and massacres is another pandemic, making everywhere in our country unsafe and all the people afraid. Guns are more and more allowed to be carried everywhere, so intimidation and threat has replaced the love-in friendliness and open trust gained from the 2T. Republicans block all action on this issue, so it just gets worse. The alienation and lonely atomization among youth today, another product of neoliberalism, seems to drive some of them to violence.

We're unlikely to see eye to eye all that much on the ideological stuff, but...what "open trust gained from the 2T?". That was precisely the time America started becoming less trusting and crime and political assassinations increased. It's only in the last few years that crime has gone up a bit because of the craziness, but the murder rate started going up rapidly in the mid 60s, fluctuated in the 80s and didn't start going back down until the 90s. In other words, the 2T and early 3T were the worst of it. Not an environment fostering "openness and trust". Just look at Gen X (or for that matter, any other Nomad generation). Cynicism and mistrust are what they're known for, precisely because a spirit of trust was exactly what their childhoods would not afford them. Trust tends to be reestablished mid-4th turning by the Nomad and Civic generations, not during the 2T. 

I don't want to say the previous 2T didn't have some tremendous benefits, but increasing public trust and togetherness was...not something it deserves credit for. Quite the opposite in fact.

I experienced it; you did not. So quoting some stats does not erase the real friendliness and open trust that was created in all the love-ins and get togethers in the psychedelic sixties. The clicks and ranks of our 50s youth disappeared, and we were all one. The love shared among us could not be greater. Commentators described the Bay Area as an intimate community. I could stick out my thumb and go anywhere. The luminous feelings of the time lived on, as many testified. Inhibitions disappeared and people everywhere became much more authentic and open. Tolerance and respect for differences increased, and this continued to grow. The year 1966 was the great psychedelic awakening year; psychedelic art of many kinds and an amazing explosion of music and garage bands proliferated. Yes, it deserves great credit. Knocking this era impoverishes us greatly. It was a new native and contemporary culture that I treasure, and it should be treasured. It was vast and infinitely rich and manifold.

But, Generation X was cynical. They blamed their cynicism on neglect in childhood, and they complained on this forum about it a lot (the original version). So of course we know all about that. There was neglect. And in some ways trust declined. This does not cancel what was created-- and is now lost. Trust in government and institutions did decline in the 2T, as is typical of 2Ts. But 2Ts also typically have romantic and bohemian movements; previous 2Ts were similar. It's a combination of cultural awakening, social movements, romantic feeling, breaking down social barriers, and questioning of authority. It is natural for a nomad generation to follow up after prophets with some practical abilities to make ideals work better and to restore awareness of efficient attention to basic needs and self-reliance that tend to be neglected by idealists. But their resentment against Boomers destroyed some of the potential to apply, make workable and develop what their older siblings started.

The Consciousness Revolution was quite typical, and more intense in the consciousness-awakening field than ever before; but also too disorganized, and the culture created in circa 1966 was not further developed very well, since it seems to have receded; but it did re-appear in the circa 1989-1993 era in what was called the rave or cyber-punk era, a fine Generation X echo of the psychedelic culture that had been created in the sixties by the Silents and the early-mid Boomers, and the multi-media art and techno-ambient music created then was as fine as the poster and pastel psychedelic art and music of the 1966-1970 era. And in the visionary art, new age and human potential movements that began in the sixties and became popularized in the years ever since, the new culture also had some fine results in helping people discover themselves and their potential to overcome repressive programming and improve relationships, compassion and trust, and discover what lies beyond materialism. Most young people today probably have no inkling that these cultural gems ever even existed.

But no doubt, questioning authority and drug use had some bad echoes in poor communities, where drugs became a basis for crime and gangs; thus the rising crime rate. And the experimentation in relationships in the sixties and the liberation movements also had an impact on family breakdowns. But no doubt also, the questioning of authority over the great mistake in Vietnam, a magnificent movement for peace that became the first ever peoples' movement to stop a war, left its mark in rising mistrust of institutions. Watergate didn't help either in 1973, nor did revelations of CIA misconduct in 1975. Breakdown in respect for authority and the ghetto riots in the cities set the stage for the rising crime rate, which at the time I saw as an extension of the riots, and it peaked in about 1990. 1966 was the year of the first of the modern mass shootings too. The assassinations in 1968 ignited the gun control movement, and also immediately the reaction against it. And 1966 was also the year that our conspiracy theory culture was born in the questions about the JFK assassination and the Warren Commission, and this was magnified by other theories such as chemtrails in the late 1990s and the 9-11 "inside job" theory in 2001. This too is all based on distrust in authority.

Our society has been increasingly polarized since the mid-sixties between those dedicated to the ideals of awareness, liberation, social and economic equity and ecology/consumer rights that blossomed in the sixties, and those dedicated to the reaction by authoritarian religion and the business-culture against these movements. In many ways this "psychedelic" liberation unleashed idealism and creativity and mutual friendliness, and also unleashed the dark sides and repressed and tormented impulses that had been locked inside us too.

So it is best to see the 2T as a mixed bag. You sure do seem to elicit some long essays from me, Mr. Black   I don't know if they make any impression on you though.