Last night on NBC the movie Woodstock appeared. I only watched a few minutes of it, having seen it many times before, but it made a succinct impression on my mind, given the situation I find myself in here at Exeter, and throughout my work with adolescents.
In that movie the kids, vapid-headed and seemingly out of touch, nevertheless had a dirty innocence to them, as if all their ignorance, all the believed clichés and efforts, mock or not, made toward the Age of Aquarius, had a redeeming quality about it. That redeeming quality was some sort of quest for authenticity, some visceral response to phoniness, that flung them outward, like a nova, in search of some ground of knowledge that they not only could call their own but could really rely on to be essentially and infinitely portable, some food that would nourish them no matter what the famine.
Of course there were those who abused the situation, who never had a thought larger than the next drug dose or party, people who, in any historical situation, would have been the ones who tore the buildings down and delighted in the rolling of heads. But that is true of any era (check out the 20s) and is no demerit against the 60s.
What those kids at Woodstock had was a sense, a perception, if only glimpsed, that something had to be different, that what was could not be all. To them, what had been handed down was not sufficient; they had a cavernous doubt that fueled a needed resuscitation of the American dream. This impulse was made flesh in a number of ways: politically, musically, chemically, morally, even militarily. Each of these paths had its brambles and cliffs, yet that impulse to doubt and question, to needle and pierce, was valid and necessary. That it now has such aspersions cast on its head should not delete its importance.*
What about kids today? What have they inherited? They have lost the quest for some truth and have as a legacy instead a smoothly grinding music industry that sells any tripe and calls it a movement. They have an ad industry dedicated to fleecing their pockets, please to have such a large and captive audience. They have inherited a party attitude and a lax attitude toward drugs, taking the hedonism and rejecting any of the intellect that went with it. They have inherited a society concerned primarily with narrow self-interest and Ronald Reagan. Above all, they have no idealism, no sense that being human automatically puts one in the position of having to care. All in all we have ended up with a generation of children who are basically useless, with no common sense, with no impulse that could be called transcendental or political or humanitarian.
This is ruination because, even at Exeter, people are groomed for responsibility by pampering them so much that their brains can not be sharpened in a real sense, in that College of Hard Knocks parents used to promote as the best college of all. Kids have had taken away from them a tangible, risk-taking world and have instead had it replaced with a nebulous pattern composed primarily of their inchoate feelings and strivings, so much so that they can think of nothing that does not satisfy themselves or a small circle of friends. It is as if they had been handed a mirror and told that what they see is the only thing the world is about. No wonder they are so defenseless and guilt-ridden. They got the down-side of the 60s and the adults have done nothing to change that except make it harder for kids to be real and functioning people.
* Why is such doubt only recognized as valuable in a religious context? The weekly poster at the Unitarian church has something to that effect, that an ounce of doubt is worth a pound of faith. Is it because we know that religion ultimately doesn't matter and that any urge toward religious doubt is only the refinement of an empty hole, useful to no one, and therefore no real threat? When doubt becomes politicized, and if it can steer clear of nihilism, then it has potent power because it claims nothing and checks everything. And when something has potent power that does not come from in-house, then the impulse is to destroy, as we do today, badmouthing the 60s to cover our embarrassment at having been caught in a moment of insight questioning and going outside channels. We wish to demote our freedom to security.)