{In which Pascal the existential Russian blue cat reminds us what a long, strange trip it’s been.}
“Johnny’s in the basement / Mixing up the medicine / I’m on the pavement / Thinking about the government.” (Dylan, “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” 1965)
All the new thinking is about the government. In this, it resembles all the old thinking, only worse, because now it requires thinking about Elon Musk.
Perhaps because I am old—I literally wear my trousers rolled—the current chaos being generated by our MAGA overlords has me diving deeper than usual into my bottomless well of nostalgia. As a certified Boomer, I grew up with chaos, the difference being that the chaos in the Sixties was in the streets whereas today’s chaos is mainly in the White House and in government offices and agencies.
On the one hand, chaos is chaos; but not all chaos is created equal, and not all chaos serves the same purpose(s). Sometimes, when all that is solid melts into air, and when all fixed, fast-frozen relations are swept away, we have to pick our chaos (like picking our poison); that is, we have to decide which chaotic side we’re on.
For example, here is Jacques Ellul’s analysis (from his 1973 book Hope in Time of Abandonment) of the Sixties’ chaotic counterculture, which attracted a large portion of the postwar generation:
The young are in revolt against organized and ordered society itself, against the proliferation of things and of well-being, of skills and machines. They rebel in glorification of flower power, of the hypnotic dream and the musical trance. Absent is any program or project; in fact, that absence is the essence of the revolt. One lives for today. One seizes the present moment and tries to make it as beautiful, as seductive, as charming as possible. The ‘consequences’ are rejected. New modes of expression and new kinds of life experiences are tried out; security and provision for the future are renounced. Action toward a fixed goal is scorned.
Rage against the machine! In Ellul’s estimate, Sixties’ rebels were not trying to do anything so pedestrian as reforming society. Rather, they were bent on immanentizing the eschaton:
The young are trying to get at the root of evil. 1 Convinced that all will be recaptured in the end, they promote only the Nothing; that, at least, or so they think, can never be captured by our cumulative and englobing type of society. Protests against war, against racism, and against repression are mere pretexts and secondary rallying points. The essence of the movement is nothing. It aspires not to see beyond the present moment. It recommends the Great Rejection of everything, which must be reduced to nothing because whatever exists is alienation and repression.
What Ellul called the Sixties’ “Great Rejection” bore more than a passing resemblance to Herbert Marcuse’s proposed “Great Refusal”:
In this movement, there is no more value. There are no longer any criteria for action. There is no intelligent deliberation. There are flowers and love, hunger one minute and surfeit the next. There is desire finally set free, an ownership of the world which exudes from every pore, a calm exaltation, musical ecstasy, a resurgence of Orphism, a stripping bare of the self. This growth of the irrational is the true protest against the technological society. These desperate attempts, these behaviors which seem to us so strange and outlandish, these rings and beads, these Hindu symbols and long hair, these refusals and insults, these hatreds and hallucinations, this loveless free love and this confusion of crowds with communion, all this novelty which the young are throwing in our faces, is nothing but the reflection of the situation which is marked by the absence of a future. 2 Of course, there will be a tomorrow. But there is no future, no building, no job, no logic, no ultimate unfolding of life, no harmony either present or to be sought after. There is no possible continuity, no steadfastness or loyalty, no lesson to be drawn for tomorrow’s conduct, tomorrow’s tactics, or tomorrow’s living, because tomorrow is nothing. 3
Of course, one could (and many did) characterize the absence of ambition as a refusal to grow up, thereby dismissing the whole counterculture movement as a reprise of the Lost Boys’ anthem: “I won’t grow up / I don’t want to go to school / just to learn to be a puppet / and recite a silly rule.” Still, for someone my age, it’s hard to accept that our generation’s Children’s Crusade was simply the growing pains of an affluent, coddled generation. Maybe Neil Sedaka should have changed his tune to "Growing Up Is Hard to Do"? 4
As a constructive alternative to the foolishness of the Sixties, consider the following much more adult guidance from Linda McMahon, recently installed as Secretary of the Department of Education. Ms. McMahon—tasked with shuttering the DOE so that American children can be protected from exposure to DEI, SEL, and other harmful acronyms—has exhorted her employees and colleagues to join her “in this historic final mission on behalf of all students.” Ignoring the ominous implications of “final mission,” she explained the raison d’etre of America's education system: “Postsecondary education should be a path to a well-paying career aligned with workforce needs.”
As inspiring as that sounds, another way of stating Secretary McMahon’s point might be this: “Twenty years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift.” Why bother filling kids’ heads with “useless, pointless knowledge,” even a little of which is known to be a dangerous thing? The formula for getting ahead is simple: “Get dressed, get blessed, try to be a success.” Who needs a Department of Education for that? "Teacher, leave them kids alone!"
The question is, which kind of chaos do you prefer? The childish antics of a g-g-generation of spoiled brats, or a mature approach to Making America Great Again by throwing government agencies into a bureaucratic woodchipper, bringing chainsaws to HR meetings, and training students to align themselves with workforce needs? Do you want to grow up or don’t you?
God, I miss the Sixties. I was so much older then, but I’m younger than that now.
------------------------------------------------------------
1 “And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” (Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock,” 1969)
2 “There’s no future, no future, no future for you.” (The Sex Pistols, “God Save the Queen,” 1977)
3 “There’s nothing at the end of the rainbow / There’s nothing to grow up for anymore.” (Richard Thompson, “End of the Rainbow,” 1974)
4 My first ever reference, and likely my last, to Neil Sedaka ("Breaking Up Is Hard to Do," 1959).
Recent Comments