3 posts tagged “culture”
This is a half-baked thought-train which has been rolling today while I try to get my dayjob done. I'm not bothering to add images or cite any claims, but rather just getting it "on paper" before I forget.
In 1966, the Western world was beginning to turn intself inside-out. Electric guitars were emitting fuzz, men were wearing long hair, women were wearing pants (and getting jobs!), and the youth were realizing that their elders had made a near-lethal mistake in underestimating the power of this new generation. The countercultural scene exploded and splintered into a thousand fragments, united only in wanting -change- (and perhaps in hating the Governor, Ronald Reagan). Motorcycle gangs roved the highways, Victorian mansions turned into enormous labyrinths of lifestyles experiments, and farms were bought by back-to-the-land hippies trying their hand at vermicomposting, dope-growing, and basketry. LSD was still legal, and readily available. It seemed like there was a chance of bringing about a new world. The only problem, and perhaps the main reason for the downfall of this cultural revolution was a lack of unity in vision.
Jump forward 20 years to 1986, when Reagan was still hated, but this time as president. Nearly all traces of the hippie culture have been sanitized, save for the masses following the Grateful Dead, and as laughingstock media caricatures. Punk and New Wave had since risen from the ashes, ushering in a new type of rebellion. As the corporatization of the nation continued, the "diy" ethic spread throughout music and publishing. Kids lived in squats, and still did a ton of drugs, although newer and more dangerous varieties (some of which were indirectly supplied by the government) were replacing the psychedelics and the mind-expanding approaches of the hippies.
A resurgance in conservative Christianity gripped the nation, and the failure of the flower children to build heaven on earth was harped upon in a cautionary tale against any type of liberal idealism. It is perhaps a pale echo, but the cycle indeed bears fundamental similarities to the culture of the 60s. Its execution was very different, but the desire for deep change was the same. A disgust with the failed vision of suburban utopia, a disdain for the corporatization of every element of life, and a contempt for needless authority and moral policing left a new legacy of protest music.
Has the cycle provided another wave? Perhaps in the midst of experience, it is difficult to see. It seems, however, that these movements were anomolies, or perhaps the punk revolution was merely an aftershock of the 60s shakeup, which has now completely diminished. While MTV might still claim that there are punk acts, followers of the music are hard-pressed to agree. DIY applies to websites more than to zines, and if new rebellions are being plotted, they are kept ominously secret. Everybody seems distracted by their various techniques of self-medication, althoug this time around the electronic media are seeming more seductive than the chemical. Disgust with the mess humans have created has not gone away, but the common reaction seems to be cynical acceptance (or more chillingly, even embracing it through ironic re-appropriation of iconography). Branding has become folk-art as people register vanity domains, create personal logos, and market themselves to improve page-rank as a tangible (and lucrative) form of prestige. As the overall body of music continues to grow, tight-knit musical scenes are diminishing into obscurity. Nearly anyone with a hundred bucks to spare is able to carry around the equivelant of thousands of pounds of record albums with them-- far too much to be intimately familiar with for the typical brain. The top 40, commercial, and even "alternative" radio are dying breeds as people move into their own customized cocoons of taylored media experience. There is no palpable sense of a generation coming together to bring about its new vision, unless that vision involves easy-to-implement dhtml APIs or one-click shopping from cellphones.
Two minor movements warrant mention, however. As punk breathed its death sighs, some of its refugees still wanted to rage, and what is best known as "grunge" emerged. This was a much larger, subtler, and important movement than is commonly considered; the eventual commercial success of the music is what history paid attention to, and all that people outside of the scene were aware of. That being said, the cultural and political contributions of grunge are trivial when compared to the 60s or arguably even the punk and new wave booms.
Along a similar timeframe, another subculture was burgeoning. The technologically skilled yet underground "cyberculture" of the 90s did an amazing job of moving itself into a position of tremendous leverage. Electronic music mushroomed out of nowhere to reach near total saturation among a whole generation. In Black Rock City, an entire town complete with electric grid and sanitation was built from scratch-- each and every year. You could sit next to any 20-something on the bus in Seattle or San Francisco and odds were that they knew what apache was, and could probably compile it. These kids took their enormous paychecks and flew around the world to parties, bought houses in nice neighborhoods, and generally had the ability to do whatever they imagined. Perhaps they got greedy and did not prepare for the dotcom crash, perhaps they were distracted by the very technology they helped create, but for whatever reason, techno-utopia has not been brought into existance, and the whole rave scene seems now like little more than a multi-year MDMA hangover. This, compared to grunge, seemed to be a true cultural golden child, albeit a stillborn one.
Chipped fragments of all of these movements still exist. If one looks hard enough, there are some hippies left in the hills and cities. Some punks are still doing shows. The grunge record producers still run the same labels, and the neo-futurists are still putting out desire-inducing magazines about expensive toys.
It is possible, if not probable, that I am merely too old to be involved in whatever might be brewing. It might be that while it is occurring, it is too subtle to witness. Regardless, there is a very sad lack of optimism, of idealism, and of potential for change in the air these days. It seems to have been replaced with an outlook of obvious doom, hopelessness, cynicism, and apathy. The common approach seems to be to find solace where possible, largely through fictional television (or the even more insidious "reality" tv), the internet, drugs and drinking, and above all, consumerism -- the endless pursuit for a magic bullet. While it is possible to find growing evidence of downshifters, functional dropouts, or practitioners of voluntary simplicity having an effect on culture, there does not seem to be much going on which is really threatening to throw a wrench in the works as in the past.
Have we missed the boat? Has it been proven too many times that the juggernaut cannot be stopped? Is the overmind telling us to give up? Is this the calm before the eschatological storm? Is it just me?
All you need to know about what to eat and what not to eat and how to make it. Its the Joy of Cooking for the new millenium, as well as the old. By returning to common sense and whole ingredients, we can forget the nightmare of industrialized ersatz food and inhumane animal production as rapidly as possible. By taking a look backwards at what has sustained humans for many thousands of years, we can possibly discover where we went wrong in the past hundred. Includes an awesome treatment of lacto-fermentation (think kimchee, sourdough, and natural pickles).
An example of thinly-veiled nonfiction worked into a novel, Ishamel is the story of a man who gives a gorilla a chance to teach him how to save the world. Its not as corny as it sounds; in fact I think it should be required reading for nearly everyone. Quinn has painstakingly researched the issues he addresses and offers some decent suggestions on how we can possibly proceed as a species. Some of the ramifactions will make people uncomfortable, but given that is the true state of affairs, there isn't a much better way to open the dialog than through an easy-to-digest book like this. Its a great introduction to radical civilization critique for those who feel all is well and that our culture is just going to keep "progressing" in the direction in which we have for the past few thousand years.
This review is really just a test of vox, but thanks for reading.
