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Going Around and Coming Around They say that if you keep your old clothes long enough they will come back into style. There is truth to that. Look at all the young neo hippies out on the street. But there are always little differences. The fabrics change. The accessories are different. Tattoos, piercings and dreadlocks undreamed of by hippies of old abound. The times are not the same, but we stand at a moment now in American history when the old is becoming new again. It happens with some regularity that the great middle of American society swings back and forth between the right and the left. Coming out of the anything goes war years in the 1940s, the cultural assumption swung toward conservatism. This lasted into the mid to late ’60s or early ’70s, depending on where you lived, when liberality rose to ascendancy. That well documented shift of the dominant cultural assumption, which I was proud to be a part of, lasted into the ’80s when during the Reagan years, shift happened again. This came as a shock to many of us. It had seemed to us, in the ’70s especially, that liberality was just the way the world would be from then on. The cold water of that shift to the right took a large toll on many of us, and a resignation and even despair took hold as we looked on with horror as defeat after defeat at the hands of the conservative cultural warriors seemed to roll back most of the gains from our all too short run in the sun. All too many are still buying in to doom and gloom. But just as it seemed to us that liberality would rule forever, conservatives fell victim to the same folly. Many of them are still struggling to hold on to the belief that they’ll stay in power forever, even as the sea change builds up around them. One only has to look at the hubris of the neo/theo-con leaders as they have thought in recent years that they could implement any policy they wanted, liberal sensitivities and the rest of the world be damned, to see how convinced they have been of their permanence and invulnerability. But the pendulum does always swing, one way and then the other. This next year will bring seemingly unprecedented change. The middle swings back once more toward liberality and a rebalancing begins to take place. Some of this I say just from observation of the way things seem to go in the world. I’ve now lived through enough of these shifts to be convinced of their inevitability. I also have the advantage of seeing the astrological indications of the slower moving outer planets. It is right now about 1970 in the return of a major cycle. The corelations between the Viet Nam war and our debacle in Iraq are astounding. Of course, things are different and we should not expect exactly the same occurrences. We are not coming out of the ’50s. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then. But it is time to stop sitting on the sidelines carping and get on with the business of recreating society. What is important now is to make the most of the period we now enter. We need vision, discipline and hard work. The middle is fickle. We will hold it for only so long. Changes must be made as permanent as possible as the right will plot its next rise from the outset. So for veterans of the last wave, dust off your tie dye but don’t expect the younger generations to see things exactly the way you do or to respond in exactly the same way. Younger generations, try to take what value there is in the experience of the past, but pursue your vision for the future. Let us, each in our own way but above all together, add our light to the coming changes. But don’t ever forget that the seasons do change, we all breathe in and out, what rises falls, and let’s get it right this time. |
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