Notes on Social Declension
Nelson, Jeffrey M.
LTERNA TI The Counterculture's Periphery Notes on Social Declension J e f f r e y M. Nelson D ECLENSION IS NOT a recent phenomenon. In almost every society the soothsayers and the...
...For we - - the people on the periphery of the counterculture, the self-proclaimed critics and dispassionate observers, the detached analysts - - will be dragged down by our own vanity, noting with pleasure as we go, the sights of our name in print, our voices on the radio, and our visages on the television, as some insipid commentator asks us for one last insightful observation...
...But unlike the drug addict who yearns in his agony to be saved or to die quickly, those here on the periphery of the counterculture do not seek an exit...
...Contemporary writings no longer seek causes for a universal problem...
...Younger businessmen soon begin to believe their own sales-pitch - - a simple matter of resolving cognitive dissonance...
...They continue to burn the candle at both ends, tasting of the fruits of a tree the seed of which they condemn...
...Fortunately there is nothing here over which to get excited...
...having invented adolescence and thus prolonging childhood...
...Therefore, peace, the slogan of the Nixon visit, cannot emerge as the result of talks with Peiping...
...One of the commonplaces of current cant--cant of the self-proclaimed, urbane, intellectual variety--is that the nuclear family and its concomitant morality is dissolving, and despite the efforts of many senior psychologists to defend its utility (and its validity...
...but does it have the necessary (and non-coercive) means of enforcing those values...
...final product yielded is none other than that which we are now hearing described as the counterculture...
...It has given up no allies this way...
...The opinions expressed reveal the depth of concern which may be heard not only in Taiwan but also in South Korea, Thatland, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan and throughout Asia...
...What is ~ml~rtant here is not whether it is true, but rather that such occurrences are common enough to warrant belief...
...In any type of subculture - - class, community, occupation, etc...
...They cannot understand why President Nixon embarked upon his trip to Communist China without first consulting them, as partners in an alliance are allegedly supposed to do...
...in which the counterculture becomes dominant and traditional values cease to be operative, there exists no viable means of reversing the flow of change...
...their questioning was rejected without answers...
...Another Chinese with strong feelings is Nancy Yu-Huang, the American educated publisher of the English language newspaper, the China Post...
...Nixon's visit to Peking cannot repair the weakpoints in his Asian policy...
...All that is left to do, we are told, is reflect: leave posterity a record of the phenomenon, that the world may someday understand the process of declension...
...Even if I were not Chinese, watching President Nixon's plans for his trip to Peking, I would say it was like watching a child playing with fire...
...The fact that the United States has a long standing treaty commitment to protect the island seems less and less important a part of the political equation as the American government appears to be embracing a policy of withdrawal from the world...
...Of course not, but it is the beginning of a partial explanation...
...It could also be avoided by buying a house outside the city, as have so many who sincerely preach to us of their good faith and strong moral convictions...
...Mter all, you really cannot tell if it is good or bad unless you taste it and we all do have appetites...
...Perhaps the family as our fathers and mothers knew it is not an eternal verity enjoined by natural law...
...Our modern doomsday critics have exaggerated beyond reasonable lengths...
...Even those gloomy Englishmen of right and left, Bolingbroke and Burgh, held out hopes for a better day and never accepted Albion's plight as one of inevitable disintegration...
...There are others, of course, so affected, not the least of which are the normally conservative university officials and professors who find an alien life-style surrounding them, a life-style which cannot be avoided...
...No place was this concern more evident than in Taiwan...
...Buried beneath the usual allusion to Aries ~ L'enlant et la vie lamgiale sous t'ancien regime, is the assumption that the concepts of familial life which we accept as transhistorical, transcultural principles, are relatively recent innovations, and as such, are quite as capable of being outmoded by recent social developments as they were created by former social exigencies...
...Now, our failure to heed such a warning may be due to nothing more than an intrinsic flaw in our nature, for, ironically enough, it often appears that the only universal trait of human nature is the tendency to absolutize...
...In fact, we have liked to contrast our own willingness to stand by our stated word with our adversaries' unwillingness...
...This means that discussion with one Communist country in order to promote peace might be looked upon as dangerous by another Communist regime...
...Certainly we have been guilty of what Hume and so many others have warned us against: elevating our particular experiences to the level of absolutes...
...No, these were serious attempts, in the best style of contemporary political science, to answer a universal dilemma: why is it that nations fall from greatness...
...Red Chinese aid to Laos, North Vietnam and Cambodia is large...
...What began as a doubt regarding minor historical aspects of familial morality ends in a rebellion against and total denial of traditional socio-sexual mores...
...Consider these facts: Over the past two and one half years soine SO0,000 United States troops have been brought home from Asia...
...Nor has the inquiry ended...
...nay, it will soon take the lead with advertising...
...But then I can only ask, why do they continue to frequent such movies if they know they are going to walk out...
...This country does have something in the way of a consensus of values...
...But in all these eighteenth century instances the object of inquiry was not merely to locate the source of another nation's internal collapse...
...correspondent Dan Rather, whether the United States The Alternative May 1972' 7...
...This innovation is within the family and is not the family itself...
...Business must meet demands to maintain increased Profit...
...Par excmple: the counterculture has thriving enclaves within our borders, and, in' keeping with' (nil" tradition as a voluntaristic society, we have accepted the precepts of laissez-faire...
...Today, there are many reasons for the people and the government of the Republic of China on Taiwan to be concerned about American policy...
...Professor Chen Tzu-sheih stated that "Nixon is a pragmatist...
...and both of these must operate at all levels and in all segments of society...
...If the demand in the marketplace is for the perverse, capitalism follows...
...This, however, is only the beginning...
...From now on, as a consequence, American influence in Northeast Asia, Central-South Asia and South Asia will be greatly diminished...
...This, we have argued, made America different...
...The fruits of their rebellion are amalgamated, as both liberal sympathy and peer approbation act as contingencies of reinforcement, and the...
...By this I mean that there are certain blocks and countries advocating a certain type of Communism...
...Jeffrey M. Nelson is a graduate student at Harvard...
...And with that brief statement we enter the company of our pessimistic contemporaries But tl~is sl~ould not be taken to imply that pessimism necessitates engaging in the masochistic pleasure which pervades contemporary social criticism...
...The beast with red cheeks, Aristotle called man, for the species feels shame;, red reflects pride and passion as well, and today it is those attributes which combine to drag him down once more...
...However, is this impetus enough to account for what appears to he a wholesale denial of the validity of familial morality...
...But which ones...
...For it is to the weakest of man's points of vulnerability that the counterculture directs the enticement which brings under its spell.many of our best friends...
...But I suspect the denizens of the eastern metropolis are equally aware...
...More than 30,000 Americans in other Far East nations will also pull back...
...What concerns our Asian allies is not only the fact that America's word no longer seems dependable but also the fact that America says one thing and seems to do another...
...The businessmen of the community are similarly affected...
...Asians cannot view the President's initiative to Peking as anything but a sign of weakness since it comes at the very moment of American withdrawal as well as at the time when Soviet strategic weapons seem to be moving ahead of those of the United States, a fact of which they are very much aware...
...The rebellion is infectious...
...younger members of the intelligentsia continue to subject our conventional value structure to their rhetoric of obsolescence...
...Montesquieu gave his thoughts to Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des romains et de leur decadence...
...For one thing, there is, as in most claims, an ounce of truth among the falsehoods...
...No President would recognize Red China and de-recognize Taiwan in one stroke...
...The prospect became clear that the essence of Vietnamization was an American acceptance of considerable Asian instability and uncertainty...
...An example of such official reaction came in a conversation with H.E...
...In saying this we risk the temporal damnation of many conservatives and, if they are correct, eternal damnation as well...
...But they do not constitute the whole...
...It carefully constructed a system of alliances, in Europe and in Asia, based upon a mutual interest in stopping the forces of aggression...
...While the Nixon Doctrine is l~ss than they would want, it nevertheless appears reasonable in principle...
...She noted that "America has been the best frieud of China traditionally...
...But this is not an overly simple task in and of itself, for it takes some thought to consider critically what it is that ails us...
...South Vietnam is hardly the only country witnessing a massive withdrawal of American forces...
...It is very possible that in objection to this assertion of total vulnerability it may be stated that all ye of good faith and strong moral conviction will not abandon principle in the face of temptation...
...the disease had not yet struck home...
...He stated, "The United States is a country honoring treaty commitments...
...In pursuit of this end, we sponsored the Marshall .Plan for the economic recovery of Europe after World V/ar IL we risked the Berlin Airlift, we lauded Marines in Lebanon and fought long and costly wars in Korea and in Vietnam...
...Although reflection, as we noted in -the beginning, should not consider remedies of any kind, it is most difficult to preside over one's own sentencing without having a pang of regret...
...But today the image is shattered...
...Perhaps those who have fled to middle-America know some~ing of which we are here concerned...
...The earlier writers looked out upon an object of their interest...
...If this life-style were merely political or a political variant of sorts, we would be in less danger of infection here on the periphery...
...Pessimism, far from being the sole property of forebears or of that human doomsday machine, Henry Adams, is still with us...
...While official circles refrain from any real Criticism of American policy, it is not difficult, when speaking to influential citizens outside of the government, to guage their real feelings...
...Viscount Molesworth surveyed the unfortunate plight of the Danes in his Account ol Denmark...
...Thus, on tt~e boraer of the counterculture grows a most unique subculture, inhabited by those who are in some sense dependent - - socially, economically, intellectually - - upon the institutions at the center...
...America has, for many years, prided itself upon being a reliable ally...
...The general has become the particular, and it is too late to make inquiries into causes...
...By aligning the nouveau, the rebellious, and the intellectually fashionable, with the promiscuous, the liberated, and the implicitly and explicitly sexual, the counterculture can attract any one of us...
...these parents must begin to accept a changed moral standard...
...Their doubts led to questioning...
...To paraphrase what surely must be Leo Strauss' most eloquent eipgram: we must regain our Neronian consciousness, that we may at least know that Rome is burning, and perhaps we shall even perceive that we are fiddling...
...But, if you will excuse the punning reference, the germ is spread in the most contagious of ways: social disease...
...We are more philosophical...
...When President Nixon was asked January 2, by C.B.S...
...rather, the discussion inevitably begins with a consideration of the history of the family within the context of broad social change...
...Professor Lucian W. Pye of the Center for International Studies at M.I.T...
...As an example of this phenomenon, the incredible amount of attention given to the rumor concerning the cause of Daniel Ellsberg's political conversion is wortl~y of attention...
...In all of these cases, the United States has shown itself to be a trustworthy ~iend...
...Professor Lin Chih-lieh, for example, said that "the Nixon visit to Peking clearly manifests the fact that the policy of containment in Asia has been completely destroyed...
...Communism today has changed fTom the Communism of the past...
...No, here on the periphery our fate is not so simple, and if we have the depth left to perceive it, our fall will have an element of tragedy h~ it...
...In a recent article Professor Donald Zoll noted that it takes a peculiar type of intellectual conservative to thrive in New York City while most others are forced to emigrate to the heartland...
...Twenty-two foreign affairs experts discussed me recent changes in American Chinese policy at the Institute of International Relations in Musa, a suburb of Taipei...
...increased sales, increased volume...
...Johnson would have noted, they all go to Hell...
...Just as Thomas Szasz and Erving Goffman have remarked on the tendency to be driven insane from confinement in a mental institution, or to become criminally oriented after time in a penal institution, so too there is a strong tendency to go to the Devil while living in Hell...
...This line of reasoning should not be dismissed as a perverse notion of Women's Liberation or as the fantasies of social revolutionaries...
...No, beneath the facade of pleasures which we presently enjoy is the outline of significant social change--decay might be a better word--and it cannot he ignored...
...Working people find their children are acquiring the habits and characteristics of university students who surround them, and, in an effort to reach middle ground with their children...
...Boston has never been so bad...
...Tsai Wei-Ping, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs...
...Requiescat in pace, Cotton Mather...
...Inside the enclave, a university town for example, are thousands of people who are among but not part of the counterculture...
...They also find it difficult to explain why the American President appears to have gone to Peking out of weakness, rather than out of strength...
...He is also a tricky, power hungry politician...
...Yes, reflections, not inquiries...
...For rebellion, as Camus noted, is deeply rooted in our own nature...
...where it appears to be self-sufficient, this world apart is left alone to flourish...
...Who needs children, marriage, or monogamous love...
...We have given those who have doubted, our rebellious young citizens, young and old alike, a sense of rejection, unwarranted to your mind perhaps, but sufficient in theirs to create just cause for suspicion if not rebellion...
...We learned our lesson about Communism the hard way...
...They are living off the flames as Rome burns, and as the city burns they fiddle quite knowingly: And they are taking the calculated risk that they will not die in the flames or burn for their own sins...
...The litterateurs reflect upon sinking ships, and a political scientist ponders The End ol the American Era But in one sense the style of the inquiry has been modified...
...Travels With Richard Taiwan: America's Moral Dilemma Allan C. Brownfeld T HE SINGLE IMPRESSION which" this writer could not escape during a recent tour of the Far East is that our Asian allies are nervous...
...Here every road is paved with good intentions, and, as...
...If you think that you can reform the Communists you are bound to fail...
...One would think that only the lowest of the low are corrupted by temptation illuminated in neon and on the screen...
...In almost every society the soothsayers and the Cassandras have foretold the doom to come if no "renewal of morals, no regeneration, occurs...
...But the matter does not end there, much as we would like it to...
...Now, whether right or wrong, our mores would survive and in the end triumph if they had the force of social sanction behind them...
...Our early history, that of New England a t least, is but one long Jeremiah attempting to forestall what Perry Miller described as "the declension of a Bible Commonwealth...
...states clearly that during the past year "Asian economic progress was offset by political anxieties over the emerging realities of the Nixon doctrine...
...And, following the Renaissance model, so often identified with Machiavelli's Discoursi, the writers of the period sought the means by which corruption might be forestalled and virtue retained...
...Perhaps, but at the risk of further damnation (if that is possible), I doubt it...
...Mrs...
...What the new policies may produce is not a "generation of peace," but a generation of instability which can lead only to testing and probing by those Communist countries which maintain their aggressive policies...
...Outside of the government, however, more concern and some bitterness is felt...
...Then of course there was the longtime obsession with that sickest of Europe's sickmen, Poland, which is discussed by almost our entire generation of founding fathers--and mothers (see Mercy Otis Warren's History ol the...Revolution, II, 182ff...
...But by closing our minds, by burying our heads in the sand when our absolutes have been questioned, look what a situation has been created...
...These include 9,000 from Thailand, 6,000 from the Philippines, 5,060 from Okinawa, 12,000 from Japan, and smaller reductions in Taiwan...
...Speaking as if to convince himself of the truth of his words, the minister stated that "Taiwan is important to the defense of many countries in the Pacific area...
...If we lack that perception, we shall fall in any case, and, as befits a wasteland, our fall will lack resonance and probably will not even be accompanied by a whisper...
...In a word, we have spoiled our chiMren...
...Now, is that a frightening piece of knowledge or merely what you had suspected all along...
...Up to the present it has been the custom to note only that segment of this population which backlashes from within and swings to the right...
...Since a sizable number of United States forces on Taiwan are there in support of the Vietnam effort, it is considered reasonable to assume that numbers will taper off as the war continues to wind down...
...But let us attempt to transcend our limitations and approach this with an open mind...
...In South Korea, 20,000 American troops suddenly have orders to return home by midyear...
...Mechanisms of enforcement can only give sanction to traditional values where such values remain operative...
...Nixon's entourage might not he a proper match for them...
...While the President argues that our commitment to our allies in Asia is firm, American troops are rapidly leaving Asia...
...In November, 1969 the Seventh Fleet terminated its two-destroyer patrol off the coast of China and in July 1971 the United States stated that it would not transfer nuclear weapons now on Okinawa to Taiwan and also ended air reconnaissance missions over the mainland leaving from Taiwan...
...the rejection was received as an invitation to intellectual and social rebellion...
...And what is the result...
...Americans are young and vibrant, but have less experience and patience than those in Asia...
...Surely, to the individual, the admonition based on moral strictures is .appropriate, but only the rare soul will be able to surmount the pressure of countercultural environment...
...But natural law and the church notwithstanding, history does seem to question certain facets of the modern nuclear family...
...We might just grow tired of it all and ignore it, as did some Romans and those latter-day epicureans who walk out of Swedish movies...
...The ship which is sinking (or sunk) is our own, and we are the rats...
...And those of us there on the periphery slowly take on the attributes of that which we have so long denounced, as we give in to man's strongest emotions, his basest passions...
...Social sanction requires two resources: a basic consensus of values and a means of enforcing all secondary values derivative of the consensus...
...All of which brings us to the point of the present exercise, that is, a few reflections of our own...
...Videlicet: our verities are questioned: The Alternative May 1972 5 the family, marriage, monogamy...
...Nixon's announcement of his intention to visit the Chinese Communists has prompted the Soviets to enter Asia...
...This is all the more difficult with' the interweaving of good and bad, such that one can not easily have one without the other...
...YuHuang stated that "the Communists are very shrewd," diplomatically implying that Mr...
...What we hav.e here is not a critique of the moral and ethical basis of traditional monogamous familial culture...
...If we avoid it at all, it will be because ubiquity and saturation can-lead to boredom...
...The eighteenth century was a period in which the perspective broadened, and decline became the object of historical and comparative analysis...
...Yet, many argue, the actual military policies being pursued make it impossible to implement...
...If anything, we are guilty of...
...Watching you in international affairs we feel is like watching a child, full of energy, but too emotional...
...Adequate proof of this assertion is offered by the existence of Soviet made weaponry and supplies in the war raging in the Iudochina peninsula...
...it spreads throughout the community...
...Whatever one may think of Kate Millett or Norman Mailer, from their polarized angles of vision they have focused on a fundamental aspect of what confronts us...
...Where the counterculture threatens to extend beyond its borders, as in the case of drugs, society intervenes...
...Those who are aware know the risks they take, the edge of Hell upon which 6 The Alternative May 1972 they are situated...
Vol. 5 • May 1972 • No. 8
