What to do with the restlessness of youth has been a problem throughout
history. During the past couple of generations, that problem has escalated
enormously, especially in economically advanced countries, because of
universal education. The kids have been taught to read and think, and that
has proven dangerous and destabilizing.
A very long time ago when the earth was still flat, young men, appropriately
indoctrinated, could be sent off to take part in crusades or pogroms.
During late medieval times, they could have a great time by hiring
themselves out as mercenaries, and young women could go along for the ride
as "camp followers". During the early part of the 20th Century, they could
still be induced to feel a sense of pride and honor by fighting for king and
country, and during the Second World War they could feel good about saving
the world from tyranny. Then something happened: Enormous numbers of them
went to university, previously a place where only their elite leaders were
allowed entry. Educated, they began to ask questions, and did not fight as
ardently in Korea and especially Vietnam.
In the post-modern world, all ideologies and "isms" are suspect. Wars are
no longer about saving the world from something, they are now ugly and
meaningless, confined to dirty little places full of ethnic or religious
intolerances. Who defines and manipulates the world and to what ends is no
longer obvious, but that some are gaining enormously while most are losing
is all too obvious. If you really don't know who to strike out at, strike
wherever you can. Strike where those who appear to be rich, powerful and in
control meet. Strike at Seattle, Prague and Quebec City!
How did things ever get so far off the rails?
Ed Weick
Visit my rebuilt website at:
http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/
> Yes they are similar. Eerily so. In fact they seem to be a parody, like
so
> much of our post modern culture these days. In a posting to Ed W. the
other
> day I said this somewhat stronger,
>
> "A lot of what is going on in every day events really turns out to be
> parody. Some protest is authentic and deserves to be heard. This is not
> authentic and we should tune them out."
>
> I am not unhappy with the demos, but I do get the feeling that they are
> checking the old newsreels to "get it right"
>
> arthur cordell
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ed Goertzen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: March 29, 2001 11:00 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Fwd'd We Are Everywhere Project
>
>
> Hi All:
> Does anyone besides myself see the current demonstrations as similar to
the
> ones that introduced the 60's?
>
> Note the following except from Bork's book.
>
> THE BIRTH OF THE SIXTIES
>
> "The Sixties were born at a particular me and place: June, 1962, the
> AFL-CIO camp at Port Huron, Michigan. (There were preliminary stirrings in
> parts of the civil rights movement and in the Free Speech movement at
> Berkeley. Though most Americans have never heard of the proceedings at
Port
> Huron, they were crucial, for the authentic spirit of Sixties radicalism
> issued there. That spirit spread and evolved afterwards, but its later
> malignant stages, including its violence, were implicit in its birth.
>
> Port Huron was an early convention of SDS, then a small group of
alienated,
> left-wing college students. There were fiftynine delegates from eleven
> campus chapters. One of them described their mood. "four-square against
> anti-communism, eight-square against American culture, twelve-square
> against sellout unions, one-hundred-twenty square against an
interpretation
> of the Cold War that saw it as a Soviet plot and identified American
policy
> fondly." In short, they rejected America. Worse, as their statement of
> principles made clear, they were also foursquare against the nature of
> human beings and features of the world that are unchangeable. That is the
> utopian impulse. It has produced disasters in the past, just as it was to
> do with the Sixties generation.
>
> Starting from a draft by Tom Hayden (heavily influenced by the writing of
> the radical sociologist C. Wright Mills), the convention wrangled out the
> Port Huron Statement," a lengthy, stupefyingly dull manifesto, setting
> forth the SDS agenda for changing human beings, the nation, and the world.
> Like the wider student radicalism that ensued, the document displayed the
> ignorance and arrogance proper to adolescents, These youths were in a
state
> of euphoria about their own wisdom, moral purity, and power to change
> everything. They were short on specifics about how they would reform the
> world, what the end product would look like, and what was to be done if
the
> world proved intractable.
>
> SDS and the Port Huyon Statement did not create the temper of the Sixties
> out of nothing. They coalesced the restless discontents of their
> generation. While most student rebels did not belong to SDS, the Port
> Huron Statement repays attention: it was the most widely circulated
> document of the Left in that decade, brought SDS to national prominence,
> and its notions became the common currency of the New Left. The New Left
is
> important because it is still with us in the guise of modern liberalism.
> What was composed atb Port Huron, therefore, is a guide to today's
cultural
> and political debates."
>
> Reprinted in James Miller's "Democracy Is In The Streets - From Port Huron
> to the Siege of Chicago." Miller's subtitle rather neatly sums up the
> progression inherent in the manifesto.
>
> PP 26-27 "Slouching Towards Gomorrah" by R.H. Bork
>
> Regards
> Ed G
>
>
>
