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Does anybody mark this day anymore? Over this decade since the demolition of the Soviet Union, it seems we've been trying to breathe more easily. Some would say we're trying to forget. We'd had it so thoroughly worn into our skulls that any day - this one, for example - could be the last day for all of us. If you are younger, you may not understand the stories you hear from parents who learned to play "duck and cover" just before they learned about the madness that had gripped the world. You may not have a way to grasp the fear so many of us felt; and because we were so young and had been raised into trusting the world, we didn't have a way to bring that fear out of ourselves and look at it reasonably. This was the thing our parents couldn't explain away, except to say that it seemed necessary - to end a horrible war. As we got older and thought about it, we came to know Absurdity. We came to sense that a culture which had carried this invention into the world could not easily command our attention or respect. So, many of us tossed it out. The pillars of faith in the Nation, the Church, Human Destiny had been resting on nothing very solid. What happened in Vietnam just confirmed what we already felt. We were here on a whim; we could vanish in a flash. We knew it in our bones. The absolute standards that must have seemed so solid to our parents and grandparents seemed less certain than breath to us. Maybe in the economy of the fifties we were spoiled and pampered children; that is one facet of the spiritual puzzle we had to solve. So we screwed up. Many of us could not keep thinking and acting as if everything were OK. The foundations of the old familiar world had shifted. (If we couldn't speak it consciously, no matter; we knew it in our bones.) In the presence of the Absurdity, nothing mattered, nothing held us up. This is not good preparation for child-rearing. If any of this "boomer" generation can today authentically assert belief in God or respect for the Church or the Nation or Humanity, then you should know that we've had to work for it, because whatever had been given so casually to every human generation up until then was taken back on August 6, 1945. All bets were off. Aw, gee, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to do that to you. This entry came out of nowhere. I sat down intending to say something about the merits of hot turkey and cold spaghetti. When I read back over this thing, I wince. I've got huge unsupported generalizations, suspicious pop-cult theory, generational whining, and some very shifty pronouns. But I'll let it stand as a monument to my attempt to think about some big things on short notice. Now, bring on the weekend (which turns out to be the last school-free weekend of the summer, alas). |
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R. D. Laing |