University of Virginia Library

Populace Awaits New Generation As 'Saviors'

By David Miller

The Beatles

Shaggy, matted hair, callous eyes surrounded by
granny glasses and adolescent pimples, dirty bare
feet, and clenched right hands - here we are, the
new, now generation! We are the pampered star of
psychiatrists, sociologists, pollsters, women's magazines,
and the American Civil Liberties Union. Like
all stars, we seem to have been "cut off" from the
rest of humanity. The scissors of news-seeking copy
editors have cut the invisible umbilical cords that
have always joined the generations and declared the
"generation gap." We have become personified our
name is Youth.

Everyone is interested in what we say and do.
There is a hush of expectation among the populace.
Many seem to await us as "saviours" and nothing we
can say or do can convince them that we are not.
Perhaps the state of moral bankruptcy in this nation
is so great that we can't help being "saviours." But
behind all the words and actions lurks the
unthinkable, unmentionable question what if we
are not the "saviours?" The Russians once believed
in "saviours" too.

Masters Of Criticism

Such masters of criticism we are. We have the
knack of putting our fingers squarely on all those
things we find disagreeable in the world. Our caustic
eye misses not one item for complaint. It's really a
wonder we never turn it on ourselves.

We have carefully examined the Establishment
and found it wanting. We have examined our parents
and found them wanting, and religion, laws, art, and
life, itself - they were all found wanting. But how
about us? Could it be that we are wanting, too?

Of course, we sometimes recognize that there is a
"minority" of our age group who are not such fine
fellows. But on the whole, we are very much
self-satisfied. Our own orgy of self-congratulation is
almost matched by the plaudits of our parents. Like
an endless record, the drone goes on, "our children
are the best fed, best educated . . ." And those "bad
seeds" - well, there are always a few. (What we fail
to see is that those "few" are more and more
becoming our "leaders" and deservedly or not, our
spokesmen. Like a dumb herd, the rest of us play
right into their hands while disclaiming them at the
same time.)

Popular Views

The popular view of ourselves as intelligent,
"idealistic," and "socially aware" is heady stuff. A
few lines of this melody and awkward, immature
youths become Don Quixote in full armor,
searching frantically for windmills. Our knowledge,
our humanitarianism, our righteousness, give us
license to do with the world whatever needs to be
done.

Like a giant sponge, we cling together. Our
generation is a unit. If a student is reproached by
anyone, anywhere, we, as college students are
expected to join our voices in a unison of
indignation. Our school newspapers keep track of
every college student who is "unfairly" treated. This
class identification leads us to protect villains and
saints alike, indiscriminately.

But how about us, you and me who are we,
and what kind of a world are we really building?

We are the most affluent, best educated
(book-wise) group of young people in history . . .
and possibly the most spoiled, intolerant, selfish,
rootless and unhappy. Perhaps I shouldn't mention
it, but we are also "kids." We know our books, but
we haven't lived and experienced adult life enough
to have the kind of judgement to temper our
boundless arrogance.

Being "Right"

For one thing, we don't have the insight to
understand that being "right" isn't all that counts.
Because we believe it is, and because we believe that
we have a monopoly on truth, we are impatient with
those we see as wrong. We curse them for their
stupidity, we push them, we revile them in truth,
we attack their own human self-respect. If we make
everyone fearful and unhappy, that is the price of
making things "right." We have failed to learn that
being human is often more important than being
right.

Thus, if we disgust and frighten others, we must
have no regrets, but only hate their intolerant
ignorance. Only by seeing ourselves in this way can
we understand how a radical leader can talk so
blithely about the "brutalization of the morally
innocent." We have more than any group in history
have made innocence a crime. We must know all,
experience all, whether disgusting or sublime.

Our ingenuousness is further heightened by our
tacit belief that we have escaped the chains of
history, that we can chart a new course so easily
where others have failed. We see our ideas, our
programs, as born full-grown from Zeus' forehead.
The lessons of the past have no meaning to us. We
are "creators." If the SDS and Nazi Youth seem
remarkable similar, we know this is only superficial
appearance. If all our freedom, our "kicks," seem to
leave us hollow-eyed and empty in the end, this too
is illusion.

When we are cursing others, being obscene, using
violence, we excuse ourselves because our hearts our
in the right place, our goals are "right." We don't see
that habits are as important as goals. When and if the
goals are achieved, the habits will still be there - the
insults, the obscenity, the quick recourse to violence.

Like children, we believe good intentions are
enough. If our actions destroy or hurt others, we do
not hold ourselves responsible. We don't have the
courage to take responsibility for consequence we
did not intend. We even expect others to look at our
unbelievable, often unconscionable actions and
excuse us because our intentions were good.
Remarkably, they have often done so.

Aware of What?

In the end we may wake people up, make them
"aware." Aware of what? Of the arbitrary nature of
our whole social structure. We cannot bear to face a
truth that wise men have perhaps known all along
We take this frightening truth and like children hold
it up so that all may see. But we can't live with it
as shown by our frantic amusements, our drugs, and
our destructiveness. That truth is that it is all
arbitrary. Everything that man believes and has built
is arbitrary. There is no way to prove otherwise. We
will never be able to prove something is "good" or
"right." We have to live with this premise.

But accepting this viewpoint does not make
meaningless or absurd. Whether things are arbitrary
isn't important if we would learn that, we could
quit criticizing thing we don't like for its
arbitrariness. What matters is whether things have
value to us as human beings. If they do, they should
be kept or instituted. If they do not, they should be
changed. Even the value we place on things,
however, is arbitrary it is choice by predilection.
This is why democracy is so important to us. It
allows these personal values and predilections to be
counted and weighed. We must not let our new
"bully boys" take this away.

The saddest note on us is that we who to be
such messiahs are little more than the sad
byproducts of a sad age. We are our parents'
products, not their antitheses. The youths they spent
in want and frustration are being repaid to us as the
lesson of "kicks" and . They are then
youth again through us, spoiling us with indulgence,
corrupting us with the emptiness of
meaningless drugs, alcohol, boredom, and
anxiety.

Our childhood is pro by our parents
through our early twenties Momma and Daddy
take care of us with They protect
us from tea and
responsibility. When we when adult
behavior respected, we are not ready. Not used to
facing a world that is not all we want it to be, we
react. We and trike at all that us.
If there are laws we do not like, we disobey them.
there are people we do not like, we insult them.

Mommy and Daddy

As for mommy and daddy, we still love them (or
something) enough not to take our frustrations out
on them. So we take them out on the university, our
"mother " It becomes the symbol of all we
find wrong in society. If laws kept us from
destroying society, at least administrators
will allow us to wreck the university. The
university is the "playpen" of a generation suffering
from "infantile dementia."

The remarkable abdication of adults from their
responsibility to help guide the young has left us to
become victims of our own adolescence. Our actions
speak a subconscious desire for discipline and
guidance. But adults, missing the lesson of the ages,
believe the only way to please us is to stoke the fuel
of the flames that consume us.

We do abhor the older generation's queer
behavior, of course. hey drink..they cheat their
wives, they are hypocritical, conformist. We are
different. We take drugs, practice , refuse
values, and dress alike (but like freaks instead of
).

Saviors Joke

The joke seems to be on us. We, the "saviours"
are just a further degradation of a perverted social
ethic based on egotism and materialism. That's what
it's mostly about, getting those "kicks" and having
the world made just for ourselves.

Of course, we think we "care." We use all the
"right" words like justice, tolerance, freedom. But
we tend to care philosophically, not emotionally. We
abstract ideas war. Negroes, honesty, love. We care
about racial equality as an abstraction, but how
about Harry Jones, the very real black man next
door, do we care about him? We advocate love, but
do we practice it? We must care about people, not
ideas. We've got to feel it in our guts.

Tolerance is not enough as an attitude toward
others. It is too objective, too neutral. We must learn
to "care" about others. That probably leads away
from an ethic of each person doing "his own thing."

The truth is that our generation is building a
world where only the callous can survive. It will be a
world based on "right," not love. It will be a world
based on individual separatism, not human community.
It will be a world of excess, not happiness. You
don't believe it? Look at us. We are the generation
that has forgotten how to laugh. Perhaps we do need
a "revolution." But we don't need this one.