>>> seamus2001 at home.com 08/09/01 01:37PM >>>
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> CB: Shouldn't we boomers have a high standard of self-criticism ?
Sure there are a small minority of us who have remained loyal to the
progressive cause. But I for one am extremely dissatisfied with the
overall location of our polity and economy and culture compared to
where one might expect us to be in the war on poverty, against racism,
against U.S. militarism and imperialism etc when one considers where
the young people's average attitudes and activities were in the 60's
and 70's. It would seem that the Clintonians, the Bushites, the Bill
Gateses, the stock marketeers , the silicon valleyers, are more
representative of the mode for us now. For example, legal services for
the indigent have been decimated compared to where they were in the
early 70's and where they should be given the trend at that time.
Affirmative action has been pretty much crushed compared to the early
70's. There was very little opposition to the wars on Panama,
Yugoslavia and Iraq compared to the anti-war struggles against the
Viet Nam and Central American wars.
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Hey, let's not fall on the sword of our ambitions and hope here.
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CB: So, you read my comment as suicidal despair ? I meant self-criticism so that we can do better, not give up.
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A lot the wonderful agit dynamics of the sixties that diffused/dissipated can be explained by good people falling in love with other good people and having families and kids.
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CB: So how do we prevent that from having that effect on the movement ?
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> Then as you point out below, look at our children. So many are
business majors, dot.com CEO's and execs, money-firsters,
"capitulators to the money-culture", gangster rap enthusiasts,
material girls and boys. Aren't we boomers responsible for them some ?
We have raised a new generation that is to the right of our position
in our youth.
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Well the fall of the Berlin Wall really generated a huge shift of
imaginary possibilities and attitudes. Hence youth fascination with
sci-fi/technological possibilities rather than different ways of
social relating; now we gotta show how inconsistent those possibilties
are with the organization of capitalism.
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CB: Yes, it is difficult to promote socialism when socialism is falling down, though Reaganism got going before that.
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> Of course, this is not a 100% thing in either the boomers or the
X'ers, but I am only giving an honest impression of the general trend,
and it is not entirely based on the monopoly media picture, but from
alternative media and direct contacts. I am not happy to conclude
this ,as I must include myself in the failure. But we can only start
to turn it around by facing how dismal things are.
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"Imagination is more important than knowledge." [Einstein]
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CB: Yes, I am reading a bio of Einstein now, and he was a militant pacifist in Germany during WWI, very brave and principled. And he is just a likeable humanist, real smart, a socialist. But I still am not sure how relativity helps the world, given that most physics gets controlled by the capitalists toward their own ends. Philosophers and physicists have imagined the world in a number of ways, but the thing is to change it into communism from capitalism.
I know this is a very strict standard, but why not the best ethical foundations for the left ?