Sam Smith – This photo of your editor at college in the 1950s pretty well sums up where I and some of my friends were politically and psychologically at the time. We put style ahead of substance and attitude ahead of action and believed that music and hip literature were the major tools of changing society. We were part of the Beat Generation.
To be sure, a year after my graduation in 1959 the beats actually formed a political party and held a national political convention, One of the candidates was a black guy named Big Brown. His pitch to the convention: reading some of his poems.
Although the civil right movement had started, otherwise the activist story associated with the 1960s had yet to begin.
Does this mean the beat generation years were just a waste of time? I think not. Even though the Woodstock music festival, for example, wouldn’t occur for another decade, the sounds and thoughts of beat America were a preface to change. As Alan Ginsburg put it, “Nobody knows whether we were catalysts or invented something, or just the froth riding on a wave of its own. We were all three, I suppose.”
In 1982 Ginsberg offered this summary of “the essential effects” of the beat generation:
· Spiritual liberation, sexual "revolution" or "liberation," i.e., gay liberation, somewhat catalyzing women's liberation, black liberation, Gray Panther activism.
· Liberation of the world from censorship.
· Demystification and/or decriminalization of cannabis and other drugs.
· The evolution of rhythm and blues into rock and roll as a high art form, as evidenced by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and other popular musicians influenced in the later fifties and sixties by Beat generation poets' and writers' works.
· The spread of ecological consciousness, emphasized early by Gary Snyder and Michael McClure, the notion of a "Fresh Planet."
· Opposition to the military-industrial machine civilization, as emphasized in writings of Burroughs, Huncke, Ginsberg, and Kerouac.
· Attention to what Kerouac called (after Spengler) a "second religiousness" developing within an advanced civilization.
· Return to an appreciation of idiosyncrasy vs. state regimentation.
· Respect for land and indigenous peoples and creatures, as proclaimed by Kerouac in his slogan from On the Road: "The Earth is an Indian thing."
Whether you agree with all of Ginsberg’s claims they offer a sense of how change can get a start in a less than clear fashion. And we live in a time when the need for change greatly outruns its effective application. For example, this poll of the young in ten countries was reported by Mother Jones
Nearly six in 10 young people, aged 16 to 25, were very or extremely worried about climate change, according to the biggest scientific study yet on climate anxiety and young people, published on Tuesday. A similar number said governments were not protecting them, the planet, or future generations, and felt betrayed by the older generation and governments. Three-quarters agreed with the statement “the future is frightening”, and more than half felt they would have fewer opportunities than their parents. Nearly half reported feeling distressed or anxious about the climate in a way that was affecting their daily lives and functioning.
The article reminded me of the 1950s when some of the young felt betrayed or unprotected without a solution and so some turned to music and words for what is now known as a counterculture.
I cite this not as an older American attempting to define such a new counterculture, but to note that in the past the young have sometimes initially dealt with what we consider massive political, environmental and social problems in a cultural fashion that clearly differentiated themselves from those screwing up our society. In other words, starting a new generation of belief and style that ultimately helped form the base of substantial real change.
