[lit-ideas] Re: Commencement
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 14:39:20 -0400
> [Original Message]
> From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 5/17/2006 1:05:30 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Commencement
>
> Robert quotes:
>
> "We really thought we were going to build a world of peace
> and love and justice and harmony . . . and our days were
> filled with meaning," he said.
>
> That period, Ansary said, seemed to have the potential to
> define not only his life but also the direction of modern
> society.
>
> "But the years passed and the juggernaut of industrial
> modernity hurtled on," he said, and it was the
> counterculture that crumbled and "we who scattered to the
> many winds, to become sales executives and lawyers and math
> professors and carpenters' wives."
>
> _____________
>
> This sentiment is quote common, I think, and mirrors my own
> experience. I wonder how many people on the List have
> noticed and felt the same thing?
>
> However, instead of feeling undermined by "the juggernaut of
> industrial modernity," I would finger increasing isolated
> self-concern, the lack of civic responsibility, the sense of
> isolation, the corporate propaganda of the Reagan years and
> beyond as crucial sources of the change.
>
> Hence my rant about "needs and wants" and the "inner child."
> The turn inward, if anything, hastened the dissolution of
> the counterculture into the Yuppie status quo. Selfish
> hippies getting stoned and listening to Jerry Garcia aren't
> going to change the world--they just get smug and buy stuff
> they don't need.
>
People who are not centered on self are very self-centered. When one is
not in touch with the self and cannot meet one's own needs, or at least
know what they are, one turns to everything external (food, sex,
possessions, McMansions, whatever) for relief. When one is centered, one
doesn't need Yuppie status quo. Getting stoned is escaping from psychic
angst, quite probably the result of not being centered, and listening to
Jerry Garcia might be a way of bonding to a larger group, not being
isolated in the dog house as it were. The inner child isn't about
possession and status. It's about inner peace. I know, you don't believe
it, and that's fine.
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