Clive Hamilton is always good for a chuckle when he puts on his pious moral badge and lashes out at anyone or anything in the vicinity.
From free love to narcissism is classic Clive, if you don't mind an ad hoc mix of bile, indignation, outrage, and blind prejudice.
First up, he buys without question that Woodstock was the original celebration of peace and harmony and tolerance and love. And marvels at how the organizers threw open the gates when too many people turned up, as if they had much of a choice when the UAW/MF (Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers) anarchists cut the fences, and people took the opportunity. After all, nobody argued with "free" then, just as nobody much minds a little piracy these days.
That said, the organizers still managed to sell 186,000 tickets, before their failure to plan for the size of the crowd made selling tickets a hopeless task. Just in case you think there wasn't any intention to make a buck, as if the event had nothing to do with the marketplace, and as if mobs of musicians were eager to fly in and work for free singing to a mob who'd paid nothing.
Somehow Clive does:
WTF? What is this fiendish market? It sounds like the Adolf Hitler of our times. Or perhaps a vast, gigantic leech. I guess the only way back is barter. Using wheat or chaff bags for clothing (seeing as how Mao suits aren't around any more). Or give everything away for free. Out of love. Like the way Abbie Hoffman wrote steal this book, and then whacked a sticker price on it, and if you actually stole the book, you could get done over for shop lifting?
But of course the wonderful original Woodstock - try sneaking into a screening of the movie way back then, and see how much the free market applied - is celebrated by Clive mainly so he can cudgel Woodstock 99, which was "unapologetically a corporate venture".
Memo to Clive, so was the first one, but when they fucked up the planning, they had the grace to go with the flow.
But when you're telling this tale, it's best to accentuate the positive, so never mind the first festival's use of drugs (including one death through heroin use), and recount in gory details the failures of '99, including having an impregnable perimeter fence!! Like, you know, your local stadium and picture theatre has impregnable security these days, when they should be doing the gig for free, out of love, and a hatred of that fiendish giant squid of a marketplace.
Oh and did we mention the second Woodstock's loathsome the gouging and the security guards (so much better to have an unsupervised riot without guards) and the fact that none of the original bands showed up for the second gig. Well it would have been tricky for Jimi Hendrix.
Oh it makes a wonderful narrative, to contrast the joy of the first with the "palpable mood of anger" at the second, and then ask a profound question:
So what happened? How did the baby boomers whose rebellion shook the foundations of conservatism in the sixties and seventies end up supervising the most materialistic, egocentric and decadent societies the world has ever seen?
Err, just one question Clive?
Err, just one question Clive?
Yes, you with the stupid smirk and your hand up at the back of the class!
How does the Altamont Free Concert fit into this narrative?
You know, the one where 300,000 attended, thinking they'd be heading to a Woodstock West in December 1969, and the Maysles' brothers made a film about it called Gimme Shelter, and the Rolling Stones hired the Hells Angels as security (though boy did they later run away from that story), and anyhoo, the Angels were paid with $500 in beer, and fueled by LSD and speed, the crowd turned ugly and numerous fights erupted between the Angels and the crowd and a pregnant woman got hit with an empty beer bottle and suffered a fractured skull, and the Angels armed themselves with pool cues and motorcycle chains, and one circus performer hallucinating from acid got knocked unconscious, and then the Angels got even more aggressive, and then as Mick Jagger pleaded for everyone to cool down, 18 year old Meredith Hunter pulled out a gun, and Angle Alan Passaro stabbed him five times, killing him, while other Angels made it a stomp fest.
There's more, plenty more, but let's just say that four months after Woodstock, Altamont was hailed as the death of the Woodstock nation. And it was free, no fence, and it was ugly.
How does that concert fit in your narrative Clive?
Details, details. A bit like brooding on the Manson murders and Sharon Tate lost in the mists of time, when you can spout cliches like a gargoyle on a cathedral. Especially when you're determined to chart a societal shift on the basis of a couple of rock festivals handily dressed up to suit your thesis.
While we're at it, how about a bit of condescension in relation to the sixties and the seventies? Sure thing:
It wasn’t all bad, of course. The victories of the social movements of the sixties and seventies were necessary and inevitable. The sexual revolution blew away strictures that caused so much misery — the shame of pre-marital s-x, imprisonment in unhappy marriages and the neuroses that stood in the way of s-xual pleasure.
The demand was to replace a society of oppressive rules and conventions with a society of autonomous individuals committed to the welfare of all and discriminating against none. For the first time we would be free to control our own destinies. (don't blame me or Clive for the s-x spelling, blame Crikey).
Oh in whatever hippie dreams you have Clive. You know you could always shift to Nimbin.
But I guess you have to paint a rosy picture so you can salivate about the decline and fall of the west, which has happened right now, if not yesterday at 4 pm:
We wanted to be free, but ended up making a gilded cage in which to live. The door is open, but we are too afraid to exit. For decades psychologists have collected data on a personality trait called the “locus of control”, a measure of the extent to which we believe we control our own lives rather than being subject to outside forces.
The research shows that since the 1960s young people in the West have become more inclined to believe external forces control their lives.
No never. Surely not. Gilded cages? With open doors we're afraid to exit. To where?
How did we ever get the notion of such cages? Locked into school from age 5 to 17, with maybe some pre school and institutional child care before that, and maybe a turn at college or university for another three or four years while some git lectures you about the decline of the west over and over again, and if not off to work for the man in some factory, or do an apprenticeship for bugger all wages, or head off into retail and serve people all day, or perhaps join the armed services and see the wars of the world.
Why on earth would people come to think external forces control their lives? As opposed to medieval folk who thought kings, nobles, the church and god controlled theirs?
Well I'm still not satisfied. It wouldn't be a full on rant if you didn't chime in with a Miranda the Devine bit about how young women are now acting badly, where you also note your personal preference is for emasculating men.
Remarkably, declining scores on locus of control tests are greater among young women, despite the opportunities for women delivered by feminism. Perhaps we should expect no more of an era in which for many the desirable life is the one lived out of control — binge drinking, indiscriminate s-x, and capitulation to every desire.
Equality came to mean freeing girls to behave as badly as boys and created a new gender — “girls with balls” as one writer put it — where once we imagined perhaps something closer to boys with ovaries.
Oh you did, you did do a Devine. Oh thanks ever so much, she'll be awfully pleased.
Next you'll be telling us how your favorite television program is From Ladette to Lady.
But you know, selfish, self centered narcissist that I am, I still want more. Hit me with your best shot Clive, nail me to the wall.
You know, in the old days I thought I was just a useless piece of scum, a waste of oxygen and food, a hopeless derelict failure, a complete waste of time and space for myself and society at large. Then as people tried to bolster my self-esteem, my ego began to grow rampant as I wrote opinion pieces and raged at the world. I began to think I was an important person. What happened?
The objectives were noble, but the demand for individual rights in the sixties and seventies released a self-centredness that has grown into full-blown narcissism. In the fifties only 12 per cent of US teenagers agreed with the statement “I am an important person”; by the late 1980s, 80 per cent described themselves this way.
In our pursuit of tolerant pluralism we created a society of radical individualism, a phenomenon dubbed “boomeritis” by author Ken Wilber. Appeals to the principles of equality and freedom often allowed egocentric demands to flourish. Slogans such as “Let it all hang out” and “Do your own thing” were soon interpreted as “No one can tell me what to do”.
Self-worth became self-worship.
In our pursuit of tolerant pluralism we created a society of radical individualism, a phenomenon dubbed “boomeritis” by author Ken Wilber. Appeals to the principles of equality and freedom often allowed egocentric demands to flourish. Slogans such as “Let it all hang out” and “Do your own thing” were soon interpreted as “No one can tell me what to do”.
Self-worth became self-worship.
Self-worship, self centredness, full blown narcissism? What, you mean like Mickey Rooney in the late nineteen thirties?
Whatever.
The marketing language used today mirrors this development precisely. Narcissistic interpretations of liberation are the bread and butter of modern advertising. Consider these tag lines from magazine ads:
“Just do it.” “Go on, you deserve it." “Just for you.” “If it makes you happy, it’s a bargain.”“I don’t care what it is, I want it.”
Which proves a couple of things. You haven't been watching Mad Men, and you clearly have not the foggiest clue about the history of advertising, and its diversity and scope in the twentieth century.
I cannot begin to count the many period ads which involve some kind of narcissist appeal to the consumer. You should get out more and take a look at some of them.
It is now apparent that the radical demands of the liberation movements dovetailed perfectly with the logic of hyper-consumerism. The self-creating individual was ideally suited to the needs of the market, and it is now apparent that the social conservatism of the fifties that was the source of so much oppression also held the market in check.
WTF? Have you any idea of the nineteen fifties in America? When consumerism was rampant and conservatives loved to shop? Understandable really if you'd just come through a war thinking you were likely to die, but instead could now indulge yourself by ordering up some boomer babies and then stocking the house with goodies for you and your spawn. As the good times rolled and the factories shifted over to peace time production, and drool, the four band eight transistor radio rolled out to make the early sixties a time of plenty and joy.
Social conservatism of the fifties held the market in check? By what delusional measure can you make such a preposterous statement?
But you know egocentric narcissist that I am, I'm still not satisfied. I still want more. I'm in the market, and the appetite is huge. I demand that you make some more Clive-isms for me.
It’s little wonder that Gen Xers and Gen Ys take a jaundiced view of Woodstock nostalgia. Sure they have been the beneficiaries of the social movements of the Woodstock era, but they know that the balding boomers, after taking time out for a bit of wistfulness, will soon get back to fucking up the world.
Um Clive I see that you're 56, and don't have any hair, which might be a stylistic flourish or a sharing in Larry David's anxiety about belonging to the bald club.
But it means that at least you're old enough to know about the benefits of taking a Bex and having a cup of tea and a good lie down. It gives you "better relief", admittedly along with kidney failure, but what the heck.
Your alternative, which is to pour out your wistful soul, spill your guts on the page, is a wonderful piece of therapy, but the incoherent rage that you offer muddies up any insights or clarity gen x'ers and y'ers need, as the take over running the show, which hopefully will include locking up ranting, raging, retiring boomers in nursing homes so they can expire without further fucking up the world.
Which they currently do by publishing rants which only work as a kind of raging against the dying of the light. Have you thought of poetry as an alternative? Try this, thanks to Dylan Thomas, a raging drunk who nonetheless offers support for your kind of therapy:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And remember. The disappointed idealist, the person who finds frustration and imperfection in the way the world fails to conform to their template, and their values, is the biggest danger to human kind.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And remember. The disappointed idealist, the person who finds frustration and imperfection in the way the world fails to conform to their template, and their values, is the biggest danger to human kind.
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