If you think we can get the horse back in the barn, tell me how.
First, you tell me how in 1955 you would have answered the question "tell me how we can get to a notion of free love, hippies and druggies, and a me generation." You can't make these things happen, they happen because society is ready for them to happen, and because some generally unintended catalysts come along.
One thing I can say is that in the US in particular, but also elsewhee, we have gone through a cycle of demeaning the wisdom of age and the ages. We went through a period where a kid fresh out of college was deemed to have more wisdom than a person with thirty years experience. The dot-com boom was fueled largely by listening to people under 30 and ignoring those like Buffett who had been around the block once or twice. This has carried over to the "rejection of the dead white males" movement.
But I think this is also starting to reverse. I don't have time now to discuss that in more detail, but I see a cyclical movement back toward a balance between youth and age, and more respect for the folk and written wisdom of the past.
These cycles do happen. I don't see the horse as being nearly as far away from the barn as you do. Besides, the barn is, by the cyclical theory, the most stringent option for marriage, which would be arranged marriages, absolutely no divorce, etc. I'm not insisting that we go there, though in the Islamic cultures this conservatisism seems to be returning. All I want to do is move the horse back toward the paddock, which isn't that huge a leap. And I'm not looking to government to do it, but to the people at large, which is where all social movements should and usually do come from. |
