A Counter-Cultural Movement?

I find it interesting that there’s no defined counter-cultural movement at the moment, especially amidst such great change. I’ve been waiting and wondering. Is one going to arise?

I’m really knew to all things technological. I’ve thought of doing this kind of thing (it’s still weird to me to even use the word “blog”) before but I’d get on a page talking about my RSS feed and go to the help desk to find out what that was, and it wouldn’t be there – as if everyone ought to already know. That’ll give you an idea of my ignorance. I’d also looked at a bunch of sights and couldn’t really find a place where I thought I’d fit, and it took me a while to see how that’s an old way of looking at it, but I’m just saying….

I bring it up because what finally got me to set up my blog was having done a search on “counter-cultural” movements. The only thing I found besides the 1960’s just about was an academic article on dentistry (sorry I didn’t read it to figure out how counter-cultural that could be) and one on the internet.

I guess if this is the new counter-cultural movement I want to be part of it. I haven’t been a good fit in the “spiritual” culture, and that’s where I’ve been for a number of years. It’s kind of like hating the specialization. That’s what drives me nuts when I attempt internet searches. It could be that I don’t know where to look, or the right words or something, but there seems to be these divisions all over the place. You’ve got spirituality over here, and religion over there, and self-realization in another place, and social justice in another, and cultural stuff that’s all about celebs, and on and on.

One of my own most beloved writers is Abraham Heschel, and while I was doing my research and seeking under the category of “interfaith” I found, via a link to the magazine Cross Currents, one that exalted him. It spoke not only of his teaching, writing and mysticism but of his activism. During Heschel’s participation in the 1963 National Conference of Religion and Race in Chicago (a herald to the later march on Washington), he said, “Equality is a good thing … what is lacking is a sense of the monstrosity of inequality.”

What is lacking is a sense of the monstrosity of inequality.

That’s the value in being “counter” to the culture. Being counter has gone out of favor with those who want to bring change in new (mainly liberal) ways – the idea now being to be “for” change in positive ways rather than “counter to.” The implication is that opposition is a negative action. But when you don’t have opposition you don’t see the monstrosity. You don’t get your heart broken.

The 1960’s were about young people manifesting a lifestyle that opposed the prevailing culture. That’s how the hippies got named a “counter culture.” Nope – don’t want my parent’s lifestyle, or values or war. Thanks but no thanks. The movement had teeth and it didn’t stay confined to hair and music and drugs. It jumped lines and entered politics and started all the seeking with the Eastern religions, and well…all kinds of stuff…I’m no scholar or historian, I’m just musing.

But I like this writer and religious person Walter Bruggemann who calls for a prophetic ministry that is about being contrary to the dominant culture. I went to hear a monk speak once, drawn by the title of his talk: Solitude as Counter-cultural. Parker Palmer, writer, Quaker, and educational reformist speaks of resistance as a starting point.

The thing is, the dominant view, simply by virtue of being dominant, exerts an influence, often a controlling influence, and it is this influence that being counter to the dominant view addresses. Without a recognition of this influence, there is no counter weight that keeps it in check. It runs amuck. You spend half your life (or all of it) trying to fit in.

Thomas Merton said it was part of his solitude to see what the “man of the moment” couldn’t see. Without a “counter” movement, the men and women of the moment aren’t aware of the influence – of the pressures being exerted – pressures to be and to live a certain way. Freedom and choice appear to be present, but the freedom to choose has been narrowed substantially. The new arises, becomes a trend, and then conforming to the new trend is seen as having a choice.

There’s a great line in the movie, “The Big Chill,” where the former activists, sitting around the dinner table, are asked by one of their own, “Was it only fashion?” Fashion may be a choice, but it isn’t a substantial or significant choice.

To simply be “against” the dominant view seems a little silly. A question that could be asked is What’s the alternative? What better idea do you have? What’s better than getting what you want (spiritual abundance/consumer culture)? Where are there any greater freedoms than in this country? (So don’t knock it.) Where is there any better health care? (If you think you have an answer, keep it to yourself.) This is the influence of the dominant…the power of it. If you don’t have a policy for it you’re just dreaming. Makes you wonder how Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech would be received now. It wasn’t exactly “reality” then. It only pointed in the direction of a new reality that could be.

A politics and spirituality of being “for” a new way without a corresponding counter-cultural movement, seems to me like what is happening, and I feel it is a movement with no teeth, a movement that can’t quite get it’s legs underneath itself. The value of a counter-cultural movement is in its ability to draw attention to the influence of the dominant. I think it’s kind of cool that blogs are leveling the playing field, making it easier for more voices to be heard, and that it’s a place where it is not unseemly to be against the mistaken attitudes of one’s own time, like greed, or deception, or war.
Artists are almost always counter-cultural simply by nature of expressing a singular vision.

I like the idea of solitude as counter-cultural. It says that even though solitude is not valued by the culture – the busy and productive life being seen as the life of value – it has value. It’s not a choice made of anger or negativity but is one of orientation. It is a protest through non participation and, even if it isn’t chosen for that reason, it does oppose the values of the busy life and the influences that you can’t see while you’re under them.

Another gem of Bruggemann’s is a call to criticize and energize. You can’t only criticize; you can’t only energize. There is a need for both.