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Occupiers Have to Convince the Other 99 Percent
The occupation movement’s greatest challenge will be overcoming the deep distrust of white liberals by the poor and the working class, especially people of color. Marginalized people of color have been organizing, protesting and suffering for years with little help or even acknowledgment from the white liberal class. With some justification, those who live in these marginalized communities often view this movement as one dominated by white sons and daughters of the middle class who began to decry police abuse and the lack of economic opportunities only after they and their families were affected. This distrust is not the fault of the movement, which has instituted measures within its decision-making process to make sure marginalized voices are heard before white males. It is the fault of a bankrupt liberal class that for decades has abandoned the core issue of economic justice for the poor and the working class and busied itself with the vain and self-referential pursuits of multiculturalism and identity politics.
The only effective tool for change will come through movements such as those that stand in direct opposition to state power and seek through the sheer force of numbers and civil disobedience to discredit and weaken the corporate state. (photo: Dylan H.)
The civil rights movement, after all, achieved a legal victory, not an economic one. And for the bottom two-thirds of African-Americans, life is worse today than it was when Martin Luther King marched in Selma in 1965. King, like Malcolm X, understood that racial equality was impossible without economic justice. The steady impoverishment of those in these marginal communities, part of the Faustian deal worked out between the Democratic Party and its corporate sponsors, has been accompanied by draconian forms of police control, from stop-and-frisk to militarized police raids to the establishment of our vast complex of prison gulags. More African-American men, as Michelle Alexander has pointed out, are in prison or jail or on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began. The corporate state keeps some two-thirds of poor people of color in the United States trapped in internal colonies—either in the impoverished inner city or behind bars. And the abject failure on the part of the white liberal establishment to stand up for the rights of the poor, as well as its decision to throw its support behind Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who abet this institutionalized and economic racism, has left many in these marginal communities disdainful of protesters from the newly dispossessed white middle class.
“The black community and the community of color have been dealing with these issues for decades,” the Rev. Raymond Blanchette, an African-American preacher from Queens, said in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan one day last week as we closed our jackets against a chilly wind whipping down the canyons of the financial district. “Now the white community around the country is beginning to see it and experience it firsthand. It’s pretty shocking to them. The African-American community and other communities of color are saying, ‘Welcome to the world I live in.’ That’s why you don’t see that many of those [nonwhite] faces here. It’s like, OK, now you decided you are going to speak up because now you’re the one that’s affected by it. One of the reasons I’m here is because I see the viability of this movement. I want to bring those communities together.”
The power elite have desperately tried to tar the movement with a series of calumnies, branding protesters as hippies, anti-Semites, drug addicts, leftists, anarchists and communists. They have so far been unable to blunt the fundamental truth the movement imparts: We have undergone a corporate coup. It has to be reversed. But this truth has yet to resonate among those who for decades have been betrayed and ignored by white liberals.
The decision by protesters from Occupy Wall Street to join Cornel West in Harlem last Saturday to protest the New York City Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy was an important step in taking the message of the occupy movement to our impoverished internal colonies. West, who led the protest outside the 28th Precinct at West 123rd Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard and who was arrested along with about 30 others, was part of a crowd that chanted: “Stop-and-frisk don’t stop the crime. Stop-and-frisk is the crime.”
The power elite are frantically searching for the ideological weapon that will discredit the movement. But the clarity of the protests, the painful personal stories of dislocation that are the heart of its message, and, most important, the self-discipline, despite police provocation, which has kept these protests nonviolent have advanced the movement and discredited the forces of control. The power elite, held together by the glue of force and fraud, are seeking ways to communicate in the only language they know they can master—unrestrained force. And as we enter the second month of demonstrations, the power elite fear that the core message and the calls for resistance, which resonate with a majority of Americans, will lead to a direct confrontation with the corporate state. If the movement starts to pull hundreds of thousands of people together, if it leaps across class lines, as I saw during the peaceful revolutions in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, then the corporate state is probably finished. Our corporate overlords know this. And they are doing everything in their power to make sure this does not come to pass.
The divisions between the poor and the working class on the one hand and the white, liberal middle class on the other reach back to the Vietnam anti-war movement. The New Left in the 1960s was infused with the same deadly doses of hedonism that corrupted earlier 20th century counterculture movements such as the bohemians and the beats. The antagonism between the New Left during the Vietnam War and the working class and the poor, whose sons were shipped to Vietnam while the sons of the white middle class were usually handed college deferments, was never bridged. Working-class high schools, including many high schools with large numbers of African-Americans, sent 20 to 30 percent of their graduates to Vietnam every year while college graduates made up only 2 percent of all troops sent to Vietnam in 1965 and 1966. Anti-war activists were seen by those locked out of the white middle class as spoiled children of the rich who advocated free love, drug use, communism and social anarchy.
The unions and the white working class remained virulently anti-communist. They spoke in the language of militarism and the Cold War and were unsympathetic to the anti-war movement as well as the civil rights movement. When student activists protested at the AFL-CIO’s 1965 convention, chanting “Get out of Vietnam!” the delegates taunted them by shouting “Get a haircut.” AFL-CIO leader George Meany ordered the security to “clear the Kookies out of the gallery.” United Automobile Workers President Walter Reuther, once the protesters were escorted out, announced that “protesters should be demonstrating against Hanoi and Peking … [who] are responsible for the war.” The convention passed a resolution that read: “The labor movement proclaim[s] to the world that the nation’s working men and women do support the Johnson administration in Vietnam.”
If the movement starts to pull hundreds of thousands of people together, if it leaps across class lines, as I saw during the peaceful revolutions in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, then the corporate state is probably finished. Our corporate overlords know this.
Those that constituted the hard-core New Left, groups like Students for a Democratic Society, found their inspiration in the liberation struggles in Vietnam and the Third World and figures such as Mao and Leon Trotsky rather than the labor movement, which they considered bought off by capitalism. They saw the working class as part of the problem. Many came to embrace the cult of violence. The Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam and the Weather Underground Organization became as poisoned by this lust for blood, quest for ideological purity, crippling paranoia and internal repression as the state system they defied.
The bulk of the white protesters in the 1960s found their ideological roots not in the moral imperatives of King or Malcolm X but the disengagement championed earlier by beats such by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs. It was a movement that, while it incorporated a healthy dose of disrespect for authority, focused on self-indulgent schemes for inner peace and fulfillment. The use of hallucinogenic drugs, advocated by Timothy Leary in books such as “The Politics of Ecstasy,” and the rise of occultism that popularized transcendental meditation, Theosophy, Hare Krishna, Zen and the I-Ching were trends that would have dismayed older radical movements such as the Wobblies and the Communist Party. The counterculture of the 1960s, like the commodity culture, lured adherents inward. It set up the self as the primary center of concern. It offered affirmative, therapeutic remedies to social problems and embraced vague, undefined and utopian campaigns to remake society. There was no real political vision. Hermann Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha” became emblematic of the moral hollowness of the New Left. These movements and the celebrities who led them, such as the Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, catered to the stage set for them by television cameras. Protests and court trials became street theater. Dissent became another media spectacle. Anti-war protesters in Berkeley switched from singing “Solidarity Forever” to “We All Live in a Yellow Submarine.”
The power of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it has not replicated the beliefs of the New Left. Rather, it is rooted in the moral imperatives of justice and self-sacrifice, what Dwight Macdonald called nonhistorical values, values closer to King than Abbie Hoffman. It seeks to rebuild the bridges to labor, the poor and the working class. The movement eschews the hedonism of the New Left; indeed it does not permit drugs or alcohol in Zuccotti Park. It denounces the consumer culture and every evening shares its food with the homeless, who also often sleep in the park. But, most important, it eschews, through a nonhierarchical system of self-governance, the deadly leadership cults that plagued and ultimately destroyed the movements of the 1960s. The political and moral void within the New Left meant that, like the counterculture of the beats or the bohemians, it was seamlessly integrated into the commercial culture. At its core the New Left shared the same hedonism, entrancement with mass entertainment, love of spectacle and preoccupation with the self. And the degeneration of the New Left is personified by politicians such as Clinton, who mouthed the usual platitudes about the poor and working men and women while he and both major political parties, awash in corporate dollars, betrayed and impoverished them.
Murray Bookchin wrote: “Radical politics in our time has come to mean the numbing quietude of the polling booth, the deadening platitudes of petition campaigns, carbumper sloganeering, the contradictory rhetoric of manipulative politicians, the spectator sports of public rallies and finally, the knee-bent, humble plea for small reforms—in short, the mere shadows of the direct action, embattled commitment, insurgent conflicts, and social idealism that marked every revolutionary project in history. … What is most terrifying about present-day ‘radicalism’ is that the piercing cry for ‘audacity’—‘L’audace! L’auduce! Encore l’auduce!’—that Danton voiced in 1793 on the high tide of the French revolution would simply be puzzling to the self-styled radicals who demurely carry attaché cases of memoranda and grant requests into their conference rooms … and bull horns to their rallies.”
Macdonald argued that those who wanted change had to base all actions on the nonhistorical and more esoteric values of truth, justice and love. They had to retain Danton’s call for audacity. Once any class bows to the practical dictates required by effective statecraft and legislation, as well as the call to protect the nation, it loses its moral authority and its voice. The naive belief in human progress through science, technology and mass production, which this movement understands is a lie, erodes these nonhistorical values by placing faith in state power and fantasy. The choice is between serving human beings or serving history, between thinking ethically or thinking strategically. Macdonald excoriated Marxists for the same reason he excoriated the liberal class: They subordinated ethics to another goal. They believed the ends justified the means. The liberal class, like the Marxists, by serving history and power capitulated to the state in the end. This capitulation by the liberal class, as Irving Howe noted, “bleached out all political tendencies.” Liberalism, he wrote, “becomes a loose shelter, a poncho rather than a program; to call oneself a liberal one doesn’t really have to believe in anything.”
In line with the occupy movement, we must not extol the power of the state as an agent of change or define progress by increased comfort, wealth, imperial expansion or consumption. The trust in the beneficence of the state—which led most liberal reformers to back the wars in Vietnam and Iraq at their inceptions, as well as place faith in electoral politics long after electoral politics had been hijacked by corporate power—ceded uncontested power to the corporate state. Liberals and liberal groups, such as MoveOn, which urge us to appeal to formal structures of power that no longer concern themselves with the needs or rights of citizens have become forces of disempowerment.
The only effective tool for change will come through movements such as those that stand in direct opposition to state power and seek through the sheer force of numbers and civil disobedience to discredit and weaken the corporate state. The corporate state cannot be the repository of our hopes and dreams. And the liberal establishment has, by making concession after concession, merged itself into the corporate apparatus and has nothing left to say to us. It is part of the elaborate and hollow political theater that has replaced genuine political participation. The dismantling of our radical social and political movements in the early and even middle part of the 20th century in the name of anti-communism left the liberal class, as well as the wider society, without a repository of new ideas. The utopian fantasies of globalism and naive acceptance that the dictates of the marketplace should be permitted to determine human behavior became not just the creed of the corporatists but finally the creed of liberal apologists such as Thomas Friedman and most professors in university economic departments. And the strength of the new movements is that they have exposed this lie.
What we are witnessing in parks and squares across the United States is not simply widespread revulsion over the greed and cruelty of corporate capitalism, but the articulation of a new and potent radicalism. This radicalism challenges the right of corporations to poison our ecosystem and turn greed and self-promotion into the highest good at the expense of human life. If this movement can cross class lines, if it can articulate its vision to those in marginalized communities, especially poor people of color, it can tap into a force and power that was never part of the New Left. It can make possible the shaking of the foundations and, let us hope, the toppling of the corporate state.
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134 Comments so far
Show AllThoughtful maturity is highly unlikely as long as those propping up the status quo can continue to bleed us dry for another temporary patch to kick the can down the road--to the point where it is going to fall anyway.
The status quo is like a log jam or the finger in the dyke allowing those who profit from present circumstances to get theirs and get out before the bottom drops out.
After us, the deluge.
Intriguingly stated, heyletsevolve. Have I been missing them, or do you just post here far too infrequently?
You may find hope here like I did:
http://ni4d.us/
One day at a time, we do the best we can ...
Robert, I totally agree that the the entire system has to collapse before the brainwashed will be forced to let go of their belief that the system can be "fixed". It will take the shock of collapse to wake these folks up from their false beliefs and the dream world they have always lived in. The youthful generation that started and sustains this movement have never supported this system because they never got attached to it in a fundamental way. Hopefully they can keep it alive and growing until the "awakening" of the remaining masses. This movement is just being born. It has a long way to go to full maturity. I have great hope and faith that this global movement will in fact change the world that we perceive today and will be fundamentally changed for the better. But of course, major upheavals can go in unpredictable directions. We can only hope and stand up for the truth, justice, and love that this movement promises.
Don't start looking for the limits this early in a transition. You'll sell it short ...
>>The counterculture of the 1960s, like the commodity culture, lured adherents inward. It set up the self as the primary center of concern.
This quite a poignant point. I recall reading a book on Shamanism and a rather notable Shaman in Mexico from the 50's and 60's. A team of researchers had went down there in the 1950's and been introduced to the use of Magic Mushrooms by a Shaman there. They reported on their all but Mystical experiences and this become one of the first reports on the same in Western Science.
In any case the counterculture of the 60's read about this and flooded down to that same Shaman imploring her to allow them to experience this transformation. The Shaman was leaned on by the Mexican government to help them as this was bringing tourist dollars into the region.
In any case the Shaman was interviewed many years later and stated that she wish she would never had done as she did. She referred to the visions from the Mushrooms as voices for "Little people" who would divulge to the Shaman information that would help them treat diseases or plant the right crops or use Nature in the most rewarding manner. This was not for the benefit of the Shaman but for the tribe and all its people and the local environment. A symbiosis if you would.
She suggested that after that flood of people from the Counterculture flooded that region in order to "Look inwards" for reasons selfish reasons the little people no longer would speak to the Shamans through the mushrooms.
They still got you high but that was never why the Shamans ingested them.
The issue was that the kids from the US who travelled to Mexico to ingest mushrooms were doing it "recreationally," for an inner thrill, a tourist me-ride..., and the other issue was that the shaman put profits before her relationship with the plants.
There are positive ways to cultivate an authentic relationship with plants, nature, and the spirits. And the information and insight you gain this way can be used to help social change movements, provided you keep your relationship clean and true.
"They still got you high but that was never why the Shamans ingested them."
That's an interesting point about all psychedelics, even pot. The "high" is incidental to a broader experience, if the user is open to it. If the high is all that's sought, then the experience can be stunted, and a bit of a waste. That's why these drugs were often linked to religious ceremonies, to open the mind ...
GW: You probably know that throughout the ages, the Initiate had to prove his or her innate integrity before certain mystical experiences would be revealed to them. Spiritual power, if misused, incurs major karma.
The analogy you provided regarding the mushrooms and the visions they allotted, reminds me of the way The Secret got promoted. There ARE metaphysical ways to expedite the manifestation of one's premier hopes and wishes; but the greater question is: have these elements been earned? Plus in the case of The Oprah Show, is it wise to encourage more getting (materialistic) in a phase that's already led the natural world to convulsions of ecological overkill?
No practice of Power should be extended unless the sacredness of its underpinnings are appreciated by the student, or would-be recipient. When the sacred element is present, it diffuses the ego's wish to own, hold, or gain.
Indeed and I know you likely aware of all this and what follows is general commentary.
The steps to Shamanism involve inducing a trance state wherein the Shaman is given guidance from the Spirit world. Information is then transferred from that Spirit World which then guides the Shaman onto a next larger step.
They did not just walk around sticking plants into their mouths to see what would happen as most would end up dead. The Spirits they speak of would detail which plants safe and how to prepare them and then the Shaman would move from the lessor drugs to ones of greater potency that allowed them to peer even deeper into that world.
Another chapter in that book related how a person lived with a tribe in the Jungles of South America and was trained in the art. One potent Drug is made of a rather common vine but one could not just eat this vine and have a vision.
The vine was merely one ingredient in a concoction that took weeks to make and included poisons that would kill a man outright even in the smallest dose. The properties of the poison to kill were mitigated by other plants that were used in preparing the final potion. He described literally weeks of work and dozens of plants to make a few drops of a drug that barely covered the bottom of a bowl and then a preparation of the body in order to ingest it.
The point I am making is the Shaman did not arrive at this via trial and error. They claim they were guided by spirits from the weaker to the greater in order to obtain this knowledge and the spirits would not just give this information to anyone.
Now I would note a few things from the realm of science. One is the current theory that in the past mans brain had a greater amount of something called magnetite which was gradually lost as man "evolved". This gave man the ability to sense direction in much the same way animals do , that is by being able to sense the magnetic field. This SCIENCE clearly shows that a Chemical can increase ones "awareness" of things one could otherwise not perceive. It is not just random visions.
Another scientist has studied bees and has claimed that the Bee has the ability to "see "and perceive things in 6 dimensions. That is they have a sensory apparatus that allows them to see what man can only speculate on in theory. He came to this conclusion after watching bees dance wherein they transmitted information to other bees as to the location of sources of pollen. In charting the dance in the 4 dimensions we can see he noted that the dance was identical to the theoretical model Scientists use when trying to describe 6 dimensions into the 4 we are aware of.
Just imagine a two dimensional being trying to describe 3 dimensions to other 2 dimensional beings.
Now Imagine a Shaman describing this other world to the initiate or the non believer.
It might sound like mystical gobbledy gook to the person who has closed their mind.
GW NORTH: I am aware of the things mentioned in your post. If you've never read Jane Robert's, "The Seth Material," or "Seth Speaks," you might wish to. These topics are covered at a level seldom otherwise found; and I pass on this awareness by making references to this type of phenomena (and perceptions that relate it) in my new book... hot off the press, "Dolphinity."
Hedges offered some valuable insights, but he may have tried to explain too much. There are so many moving parts to such disparate and broad social movements that occur over decades, and so many perspectives on those movements, that it is difficult to accurately or satisfactorily describe them in a few paragraphs.
I did enjoy one of his basic points concerning a troubling development in the New Left in the '60s, in that far too many involved in it became obsessed over time with narrow, personal goals rather than with the original broad social goals. I suspect that the corpo-plutocrats provided powerful resistance to the social goals and, as force follows the path of least resistance, the individuals naturally found the pursuit of narrow personal goals easier and less frustrating and so tended to choose that path.
Ever since the '60s the corpo-plutocrats have provided resistance to movements to achieve economic equality or fairness as that threatens their interests, while they have offered little resistance or even encouraged movements in other directions, movements that could occupy the minds of young people and allow them to satisfy their rebellious urges and need to engage in idealistic pursuits in ways that do not threaten the corpo-plutocracy.
"a troubling development in the New Left in the '60s, in that far too many involved in it became obsessed over time with narrow, personal goals rather than with the original broad social goals. I suspect that the corpo-plutocrats provided powerful resistance to the social goals and, as force follows the path of least resistance, the individuals naturally found the pursuit of narrow personal goals easier and less frustrating and so tended to choose that path."
From reading Hedges quite a lot lately, I realize one of his main bugbears is self involvement at the cost of the ethical imperative to devote oneself to broad social goals. This is his central indictment of what he calls "the liberal class." He offers all kinds of examples of how this self involvement of liberals has been used by the corporate power to distract them from really giving their all to progressive ideals and goals. One example in this article is how protesters at Berkeley went from singing "Solidarity Forever" to singing "Yellow Submarine." This probably disgusts him. He has written elsewhere that liberals of the liberal class need input from radicals. Hedges believes that this sort of liberalism has always needed the radical left - socialism, communism - to keep it honest and vital. "Liberalism, cut off from the radical roots of creative and bold thought, merged completely with the corporate power elite."
Several commenters here have railed at Hedges for demeaning the consciousness raising that was the goal of Leary and proponents of eastern mysticism, and he does seem to give it short shrift. But it's hard to argue with the idea that the fight against the deeply entrenched corporate power, the corporate state, is a desperate one that can't be fought by monks focused on the search for self enlightenment. Such monks can provide guidance. But the present preoccupation of vast swathes of the liberal class on their careers and their cultural pursuits doesn't seem likely to be the product of eastern principles such as that "the outstanding characteristic of the human situation [is] suffering or frustration. This frustration comes from our difficulty in facing the basic fact of life, that everything around us is impermanent and transitory." In other words, we confuse the map - our concepts about the apparently fixed forms of nature - for the territory: the ultimate reality. For Buddhism the ultimate aim is "the awakening", when we "pass beyond the world of intellectual distinctions and opposites" to experience reality as undivided and undifferentiated "suchness".
from the article:
~ They have so far been unable to blunt the fundamental truth the movement imparts: We have undergone a corporate coup. It has to be reversed. ~
this statement is incorrect, as the 'truth' identified is not truth...
we have not suffered a corporate coup, we suffer landlessness...
we have no claim to land, nor resources, that we do not purchase from our violent oppressors, which leaves us but beggars...
we are victims...victims of the violent murder and land theft that took place on this continent before we were born, and victims of the mechanisms those murderous thieves put in place to maintain their advantage...
reversal is the right course, but a reversal of land allocation...a negation of the right to own property, and a dismantling of industrial infrastructure...
people are animals, and animals require viable land, and resources, not money...
we must fight to take the land back from those holding, and protect it from further damage...
a tweeted revolution is rather oxymoronic, at this stage of the game...
the cell phone is the bane of the living world...
which do you prefer?
Things are not as clearly divided as Chris Hedges paints in his vision about the “99%”.
To begin with, in 1966 I took 400mcg of Sandoz LSD and this was my awakening and it was by no means a picnic or an exercise in hedonism.
Another point Chris Hedges fails to deal with is the influence of the African American Baptist Christian movement which opposes abortion and homosexuality.
There are many ways to reach consensus, but one is not to point a finger at psychedelics, Zen, the I-Ching, Allen Ginsberg, or Jack Kerouac.
I have agreed with much of what Chris Hedges has written in the past, but I think in this case he may be ‘throwing away the baby with the bath water’.
You can't demonstrate much of anything to the other 99% if you don't have a strategy for making a real difference. The idea that you can offer justice to the disenfranchised without getting involved in the nitty-gritty business of authoring and executing policies that make a difference is a bit naive. To do that you need to know what you stand for and how to act in ways that are consistent with what you stand for. And in earlier posts I pointed this out very carefully in my second letter to protestors. http://www.gpln.com/secondlettertoprotestors.htm
Thanks for this -- knowledge of our history seems thin on the ground these days in many parts. What would be nice is if this nascent revolution actually addresses how the democratic process was overtaken by corporations and organizes to change it permanently. Very straightforward democratic reforms -- enormous in their scope and effect -- are now possible. I don't know what needs to happen for the Occupy movement to decide this matters and formalize their demands.
Agreed that the 60's had its share of self-absorption, racism and drug overuse. Also agree that you are bound to get sewage when you mix liberal / self centered pursuits with spirituality and/or social change.
Disagree with Hedge's complaint that spirituality and joy somehow wreck social change movements. Sacrifice and action mixed with joy can be a magnetic combination, resulting in feeling more alive and aware -- both of the inequality, suffering and challenges, as well as the miracle of life on mother earth and the sense that we are all connected.
I've also noted that most of my coolest, most practical ideas have come during silent reflection time (prayer / meditation), either alone or in groups. IMHO, including joy and surrender along the active road to a more just world would yield a better, longer lasting result.
"The trust in the beneficence of the state—which led most liberal reformers to back the wars in Vietnam and Iraq at their inceptions, as well as place faith in electoral politics long after electoral politics had been hijacked by corporate power—ceded uncontested power to the corporate state."
You use the "most" word far too loose Chris. No, true Liberals did not do this, many have been fighting for a long time. Now all of the sudden, we've been included in what the villiage and media Liberals did.
The use of the terms 99% vs the 1% are misleading as Buck points out.
The middle class has about as much in common with the homeless or those families that scrape by on a non living wage, as they have with the 1%. Despite the disparity of income between the middle class and the 1%, they both suffer from a grand myopia and each group is addicted to commodity fetishism, and the destruction of the planet. (Ever notice how Obama travels either locally or internationally?) There is a lot more going on with Occupy Movement than the middle class cares to admit or acknowledge. So it hardly surprises me when someone like Buck gets taken to task: the mirror he is holding up provides an apt reflection for his critics.
I'm somewhat more optimistic about how much of the "middle class" (what remains of that rapidly shrinking group) starting to "get it" than you might be. I think the recent collapse of the economic system has taught many formerly "comfortable"-feeling members of the middle class that they, or at least their children, are quite vulnerable to being betrayed by the system and cast out of comfortable middle-class existence in a very short time due to a job loss or a health crisis that, along with the student debt being run up even by kids of the middle class, means that most folks of the remaining middle class are beginning to realize that the door is closing fast on them and their children ever being able to live in comfort for the rest or even most of their lives.
Except for those lucky remaining members of the middle class who are almost at retirement age and have plenty of money set aside and free from the stock market that they can draw on for medical costs if they live a long time in retirement.
He left out Alan Watts and Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse actually has a lot to say about the current situation. Hedges has a lot to say, but this column seemed a mismash.
Does Hedges want to further the northeastern Protestant "stop-enjoying-life-and-work-till-you-drop-ethic"? It is very difficult to balance all the variables.
Anyone who is poor and homeless is marginalized, and marginalized badly. That includes a lot of white males Chris.
Usually I find Chris Hedges' essays worth reading and full of insights, but this one made me angy and I had to stop reading about 3/4 of the way through.
For me, he has COMPLETELY missed the mark on what dynamics were operating in the New Left in the 60's and how what-went-before is influencing the current movements like OWS & others.
Primarily, Hedges fails to give ANY credence or credit here to feminism & the constant struggles of women in the 1960's (and today) to be heard, to be respected, to be allowed to decide our most personal life goals- including higher education, careers and whether to have children- or not. And in the course of making our own urgent demands on a daily basis, the men in & near our lives had their conciences raised. The existence of feminist-& anti-bias- understanding men in the world is a stong factor in how effective these new styles of decision-making are.
That is not to say our work is done, far from it!!
But, those of us who were there "back in the day" remember very well that the New Left leaders- all men - didn't "get" what oppression looked like, because they were so busy out-intellectualizing each other and treating the women in the committees (esp SDS) like all we were good for was a nice f**k.
In my view, OWS and similar movements grow directly from the strengths of women, queers and people of color who joined together over the last FOUR decades to form inspiring & creative dynamic movements. We pushed our way past the blindness of the 1960's white male privilege to create new ways of working and we founded respectful collectives & effective strategies. We've learned from global movements, too- like courageous Liberian women & Chiapas, to name just a couple.
It would be nice if Hedges had a better understanding of the real history.
Abbie Hoffman? Tom Hayden? Totally irrelevant to our struggles.
Buffoons and overwrought men like that always will be.
"Primarily, Hedges fails to give ANY credence or credit here to feminism & the constant struggles of women in the 1960's (and today) to be heard, to be respected, to be allowed to decide our most personal life goals- including higher education, careers and whether to have children- or not. And in the course of making our own urgent demands on a daily basis, the men in & near our lives had their conciences raised."
How does this square with:
"But, those of us who were there "back in the day" remember very well that the New Left leaders- all men - didn't "get" what oppression looked like, because they were so busy out-intellectualizing each other and treating the women in the committees (esp SDS) like all we were good for was a nice f**k."
If this is true, why would Hedges include feminism in the acheivements of the New Left? What you describe in the 2nd paragraph seems in accord with other criticisms he has for the New Left. White males out-intellectualizing each other and ignoring their women colleagues (except for the function you elude to) comes out of the self-involvement at the cost of broader social inclusiveness Hedges is criticizing. He seems to be hoping OWS will avoid this.
"Buffoons and overwrought men like that always will be."
Love it!
(Merry laughter)
Maybe because the New Left was made up of people, and women are people?
Leaving bunches of people out of the discussion just because they weren't men leaves a Hella hole in your history.
Hardly Buffoons. Hayden and Hoffman were and are men of good will. They are brothers seeking and acting as best they could for a clean environment and a just society.
Many things to think about in this piece and many misrepresentations covered by others above. Mostly as do many of Hedges pieces (he can't help it he went to seminary school) it veers into puritanism. Though racism and a back door to slavery support the current prison system so does the never ending puritan ethic in America the desire for punishment over rehabilitation, for rigid moral codes over pleasure. And Mr Hedges leaves out, as he always does, women and where they may take this movement when it may the the first that they fully participate in forming. Again I'll blame the Christian schooling for Mr Hedges male focus.
There were many excesses in the 60's and much of what Hedges says about the new movement is admirable but the pursuit of pleasure amidst a puritanical culture is not such a bad thing. The corporations perverted that natural desire and found myriad ways to commodify it. But we don't need more preachers telling us to stay away from pleasure in the name of higher ethics. We need to understand how the deep puritan strain in our religions has worked hand in hand with a garrison state. We need to seek a community that can enjoy and celebrate its connections to nature and each other and even the occasional seeking of higher consciousness through mid expanding substances. That has been part of many an indigenous culture and may be so offensive to the religious mind because it is a, unmediated by any preacher, way to connect to a deeper understanding. Even though he is not a fundamentalist Mr Hedges is still too much the preacher and women especially do not need this.
Your first sentence is non-sense. Your characterization by inference of Harvard Divinity School as a purveyor of "puritanism" only reflects your gross ignorance of the program. If anything, Harvard Divinity is a harbinger of progressive Christian values which places into question the foundations of what has been taught about Jesus of Nazareth. And that includes (but is not limited to) the notion of a resurrection. Hardly a puritan stance! Moreover, the Divinity Program has been at the forefront of inclusive theological claims including Process theology, feminist, Mujerista perspectives, Liberation theology, and numerous others originating from marginal social locations. Something you might take into account given the scope of your Dem apologetic within the DNC.
Artemix & Penelope: I'm glad that other women get it about Hedges' complete blindspot to the impact of (and necessity for) true gender parity and equality in all venues of life. Like so many intellectual men, Hedges takes it as a given that women and men both enjoy the same freedoms; that to speak for one (as person) is to speak for all. It ain't necessarily so... There is a grotesque lack of empathy seen and felt on this site for this issue in particular. Some glibly dismiss it as mere "identity politics." This omission shows a lack of genuine understanding on the part of those ever ready to disregard the matter, entirely. I am glad that others notice this about Hedges. (I posted a similar observation on the first page, not having yet come to your comments on what currently is page 2 of this thread.)
Excellent comment
artemix,
"Though racism and a back door to slavery support the current prison system so does the never ending puritan ethic in America the desire for punishment over rehabilitation, for rigid moral codes over pleasure."
hello - the negative impacts of the drug war are felt disproportionately on the backs of the poor who don't have legal representation - a marxist concerned about the welfare of the people would immidieatly recsend the classist, racist drug laws.
your comment resonated w/ me as well, thank you. especially for the quote above. certainly alcohol and coffee/tea has always been a beverage of the people and has been infused into their activism. why the disdain over psychedelics ? but not prozac, and the proscribed myriad mood stabilizers that many of the 99% percent are addicted to ??
(certainly more americans take prozac and drink alcohol than eat tabs of lsd)
why the discrimination (one would expect from the moral right) against people making their own choices based on their own needs ?
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need (or needs)" - marx.
...peace...
Well said, artemix!
Understand the spirit of the piece. Not so much it's one dimensional perspective.
Can't embrace all by rejecting all.
"It can often seem that Hedges suffers from a protracted case of anhedonia..." -- Ephraim (10:57am)
___________________
I agree with you and Geneva, along with other commenters who retain a more benevolent of Sixties counterculture and politics.
Hedges himself seems genuinely ascetic as a matter of temperament, so it's no surprise that he views the Sixties sociopolitical counterculture as hopelessly blighted by sensuality, which he reduces to the pejorative term "hedonism".
FWIW, the overall tone of his harsh and frankly caricatured condemnation of the divisive "fatal flaws" within the Sixties counterculture proved unexpectedly familiar to me. I know someone who takes a VERY similar, though less strident, dim view of this period.
As it happens, this person is a member of a monastic religious community. There's no doubt that his distaste is a function of his personality and temperament, just as my embrace of the Sixties counterculture (however tame and diffident in practice) is a function of mine. I believe it's the same with Hedges.
Of course there was an abundance of mindless self-indulgence, heedless, self-centered pleasure-seeking, and a proliferation of shallow, self-destructive and short-circuiting lifestyles, political philosophies, and methods in the years between the Eisenhower and Reagan administrations.
It's silly and futile to overly romanticize or sanitize the "Age of Aquarius" as utopian, or seek to conceal and overlook its blemishes in a purple haze of senile nostalgia.
But Hedges is far too ready to decry the Sixties' long-overdue and welcome liberation from the shackles of puritanical repression and its celebration of the human capacity for uninhibited (or at least less-inhibited) pleasure and joy.
To him, the perilous and indeed occasionally dubious or bankrupt legacy of "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" is entirely decadent, pernicious, and corrupting. He flings away the baby with the patchouli-scented bubble-bathwater.
And as importantly, Hedges either intentionally or unconsciously fails to give credit to the counterculture's success in loosening, if not entirely breaking, traditional authoritarian, hierarchical, and paternalistic cultural biases that fostered authoritarian and elitist control, repression, and exploitation of vulnerable classes and minorities.
I share Hedges' skepticism or disdain for certain toxic aspects of identity politics and multiculturalism, and argue that these movements carried malignant seeds of authoritarianism and paradox that made them victims of their success.
But even as a fellow skeptic, I find him much too one-sided here in failing or refusing to acknowledge the benevolent progress and fruits of feminism and tolerance that germinated and flourished in the Sixties climate.
In doing so, he prefers to connect only the dots that led to the worst excesses, failures, and pitfalls of that era. He conspicuously avoids, or is simply insensible to, the tolerance, wisdom, joy, beauty, and especially the anti-institutional spirituality that flourished among the weeds upon which he remains focused.
Which is as it may be, but this time around Hedges is telling us more about himself than about history or social criticism.
If I've learned anything from this article, it's to not invite Hedges to any new productions of "Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical"-- or slip and mutter "Party Hearty!" in his presence, lest he drive me forth with a scourge like Christ purging the moneylenders from the Temple.
It's my impression that Hedges pursued religious study in his youth, to find truth.
When he found some he wasn't looking for; he changed, grew and moved on.
"" ... sex, drugs, and rock and roll" is entirely decadent, pernicious, and corrupting."
Well, aren't they? Two outta' three at least, come on.
Are you down on him because he won't hit the bong, bone your girlfriend, and doesn't like your records? Try and stay focused.
No, because there is the rigidity of the ideologue demanding political correctness.
What to know what annoyed me? There is something just so WASPISH about it all.
Couldn't have said it better myself, Vern.
Wow, you really harshed my buzz here, man!
Bummer.
And as long as we're reducing things to the simplest possible level, I might as well admit that I just don't aspire to your sphincter-creaking level of focus.
"harshed my buzz"
phraseology for the ages. you win the Bon Mot of the Week Award
If you're not making a nice living off your writing, you should be.
Good post, mr. Obedient Servant.
Check out the video of Chris in NYC OWC
He is aligned with their effort
The book "Our Bodies, Ourselves" is a direct product of the sixties. It has just been reissued in a revised and expanded edition. Surely, Hedges would have to recognize the enormous good that this book has done worldwide (I don't even know the number of languages it has been translated into and the number of women's collectives and similar works it has inspired).
Is there a version for men? You know, about men's bodies and men's health.
Sure. All of Western Medicine, including research (even research on rats was generally male rats).
I think you will find that most men are not too knowledgeable about their own sexuality and sexual health
sure they can "see" it , unlike women, but seeing doesn't mean understanding
Well then those men can start their own collective and write the boy's version. Poor Morticia always feeling like she must take care of teh men's feelings first and foremost.
"With some justification, those who live in these marginalized communities often view this movement as one dominated by white sons and daughters of the middle class who began to decry police abuse and the lack of economic opportunities only after they and their families were affected."
Ok, so you are white, middle class, you don't think too much about racial issues, but you view this OWS movement as something that needs your help. You honestly want to help bridge the gap between all groups on the left. Yet you find you have an agenda, ambitions, that divert your attention and energy from building that bridge. So what do you do?
First, realize that our agenda and ambitions are influenced by the environment we grow up in. But to realize that, you have to WANT to realize that. You have to have an agenda/ambition to realize that. So really, the first step is to cultivate an interest in psychology, human nature. I found personally that I can cultivate an interest in just about anything. You can discover that for yourself too. We're a lot more alike than some agendas allow.
Ok, so you can cultivate an interest in learning about human nature. Now you can discover that our agendas/ambitions are influenced by our early environments. So build an environment that nurtures ambition for universal enlightenment/solidarity/equity/justice in today's children. Along the way, you can cultivate that also in the adults, including yourself.
So now you can help build that bridge. Yes you have ambitions still to achieve other things, express your creativity in arts, etc, but you are able now to juggle that with your civic duties, such as helping to build that bridge of solidarity. You understand now that it's crucial. You understand now that liberalism somehow neglects the bridge of solidarity, failing to recognize the fundamental clash of liberty and ethics. You know that ethics come first, and you can't wait for liberalism to admit failure and reform itself. You have to break from liberalism, help starve the predators, and achieve solidarity with the biosphere.
Unity of the masses isn't the goal; social, economic and political change to a system that is more human is the goal.
Such a goal is attainable without unity, in fact , it's most likely that change will come when a new petit bourgeoise class will be pissed off enough to do something ( think french revolution ) , in the meantime, unity is the best chance the masses have .