Is it but the candleshine of generous (and hazy) remembrance that lends the glow to the "old" times (which might be five years ago or a hundred)? In Pacific Overtures Sondheim underlines this potential difference of perception when his character sings (of the memory of Perry and Harris landing at Shimodo) the line "I was younger then."

What is the fact about how we were 50 years ago in the USA? Hitler and Mussolini were rattling their swords. Unrest was everywhere, Spain, France, the USSR, China. We were not yet done with either the Dust Bowl and its effects or the Great Depression. But one could walk down any block in any American city without fear of being mugged. Men-type people, from kids to middle-agers, got up so that ladies could sit down. Cab drivers knew the cities like the backs of their hands. Salespeople not only knew the merchandise but waited on you.

Is this but a dimly held memory of mine? Was it really that way? Yes! It was! I'm here to bear testimony to it. Every corner grocery and drug store gave credit. We went to Work, to a Job where we intended to earn a day's pay. Is this some dream of mine? Of course not! It happened to me. Well -- was that good or bad? For the moment it's not important that it was either good or bad. Most specifically I'd like you to get Mad as Hell along with me when they tell you it was never that way, neither as grindingly poor nor as golden -- only memory makes it so. Not true! That's exactly the way it was.

It is at this point in the argument that many get lost. Wasn't that the era of Al Capone, Frankie Yale and Legs Diamond? Weren't there grifters and bad guys? Weren't there bloody strikes and Nazis meeting in Madison Square Garden (on Fiftieth Street)? Weren't we all, the whole world, headed toward war? Of course, of course. But kids went to High School, not Woodstock (the bad ones smoked Lucky Strikes in the bathroom, not joints in the hall); people who earned a living drove cars (if they could afford to); divorce was a rarity and families were composed of Mom and Dad and the kids, not two Moms, three Dads and a live-in girl-friend who likes leather. It's really true! That time did exist no matter what they tell you. But didn't we plant the seeds of this time in that time, a time quit different from this time? Our search should lead us toward an understanding of both the difference between then and now, good or bad, and the path that led us to this strikingly different place some fifty years later.

Of course for those $200,000-a-year Doctors who have forgotten their hypocritical oath and are obsessed with their tax shelters and the thrill of Power and Money this may well seem like the best of times. Their doctor fathers and grandfathers had no such lives. They took care of sick people (which was their job) and often got paid little or nothing. Doctors were respected people then (not for their money but for their learning). When we use the word "Doctor" today we can't help sneering. We know who they are (and before you clamor I know what I've said does not apply to all doctors).

And yes, for kids of seventeen who know the difference between a Thunderbird and an Audi far better than they know the difference between Virginia Woolf and Belva Plain, for those kids in their millions (in Moscow they are called "the Golden Youth," and they are conspicuous because of the paucity of their numbers; here they are everywhere) this might also seem like the best of times. Rupert Murdoch and other hell-bent-for-leather conglomerators and acquirers might consider this to be the best of times too. (To digress, who can remember when the New York Times did not have a single typo in the whole paper?) So yes, there are those lemmings who immerse themselves in a small space with a surround of ear-splitting noise, have salade niçoise and quiche thrust at them and call that elegant dining. They leave their Lucullan feast and rush to stand on a block-long line to gain entry to the latest "in" place were they can subject their ears to another pounding and shake and wiggle in "no-touch" dancing. What can these people, diners and dancers, have in common? Their youth. They have no apperceptive base (which, alas, takes time and application to build).

Things are not so hotsy-totsy for the little old lady who lives alone since her husband died, making do on a pension and social security. She lives almost furtively, beset by people who really think of her as the enemy. For the bellicose government we have elected she (having worked in the workforce or as a wife and mother all her life) is a villain, standing in the way of getting one more missile into place because she's draining off their money. Doctors and hospitals have a field day with her. Muggers rip her off. Youth (sometimes her own children) not only ignore her but zero her out so that she becomes a non-person, her memories and knowledge of no value, her input useless and unheard. Her landlord would like to evict her. Her kids are considering a nursing home but want custody of the estate first.

Nor are the kids themselves in as great shape as they think they are, with Madonna, John Belushi and David Bowie as their role models (along with Marie Osmond and Brooke Shields). They too are in a disaster mode and don't know it.

As for the rest of us, including those few of us whose minds remain un-blown, still able to think even a little (despite the din and the incessant lies) we have a tough time just holding our own, sifting through the wreckage, the memory that informs us that there is another way to be, has been, can be again!

So yes, there was another way of life, quite different from this one, and that life ended quite finally at the termination of World War II.

What can we say of its demise? Who killed Cock Robin? There are nominees by the dozen. It was Guernica, Coventry, Dresden, Rotterdam. It was GM plants and Ford plants in Germany, working full tilt producing vehicles for Hitler throughout the war, untouched by any Allied bombing raid. It was the baby boom, the suburbs, the quest for La Dolce Vita. It was the dropping of the Bomb on Hiroshima. It was the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the incursion into Cambodia. It was Watergate, the corruption of Power and Power that corrupts. It was young people with long hair dealing dope. It was the Rosenbergs and the right-wing conspiracy to destroy the left-wing. It was the assassinations, JFK, his brother, Martin Luther King. It was Danny the Red and Jerry Rubin (now a millionaire "networker"). When we've said all that we find we've said nothing, but simply described Life and the Life Process in the post-War years. What we've enumerated are events, happenings, as meaningful as one Jackson Pollack squiggle taken all by itself. They did not kill Cock Robin. We can eliminate them as prime or sole suspects.

It seems to me that More is the guilty party. Do you remember the movie, More? If it's pleasurable to lie on the beach and surf in the sun and get high and make love, then why not more? As the ad goes on MTV, "too much is never enough." If it is an acceptable goal to want something, then the sequel has to be to "want it all" as the idiot tube bleats about products from beer suds to shampoo suds, from carpets to life insurance. If 20,000 missiles (any one of which can destroy a major city) makes you feel secure, then why not 100,000 missiles? If making a profit of 10% after taxes is excellent in your industry for any company then what's wrong with 15% in your Company. Vince Lombardi voiced it most accurately when he said "Winning isn't the greatest thing -- it's the only thing."

Because there's enough culpability to go around in the tragedy of the transformation of our- world let's not neglect to point to more bodies, the sheer population beginning to jam this world. It might be tough for Moses to try to feed a few thousand souls in the desert, and to solve the logistical and human problems involved. How can we solve the problem of feeding a million souls in the Kalahari in a time of drought? More bodies makes it more difficult.

There seem to be more access to "information" today. There are no more brains than there used to be, people aren't smarter than they were. But there does see to be more access. The unfortunate truth here is that the news today (worldwide) is slanted so that the citizenry of whatever country can be manipulated. Thus Reagan is not outraged because his own government plotted to interfere with another country (Libya and Quadaffi) but because someone spilled the beans and a newspaper printed it (how dare they). Thus, although there seems to be more access, the obverse is true and although there seems to be more information, there is really no information that has not gone through their screen (whoever and wherever they are). But, because there are more machines, more newsprint, more air time, there is the impact in particular of the sensational and the sense we all carry around with us of "information overload."

While we are speaking of more missiles and more bodies and more "information" (which winds up being a kind of "white noise" background with no more -- or less -- weight than Heavy Metal for example), let's speak of more affluence (in this country at least, the country we live in, the ambience we feel each day). One might save one's life long, to go around the Golden Horn and see that exotic coast and those fantastic countries. How meaningful that trip would be. How rewarding. Now memorable because worked for, planned for, looked forward to, savored in advance. What can one say of a semi-yearly dash to Barbados or Club Med, a quick weekend in the Greek Islands, a fast visit to Ibiza en route to Cannes? More, here, would seem to yield less (not unusual for more). Perhaps easy does not do it. Perhaps hard does it. Perhaps less does it.

Do I seem to have a bias here? You bet I do. It makes me Mad as Hell when they try to tell me it has always been "the best of times ... and the worst of times" "Was it really so great during the Black Plague?" Hogwash. For all the complexity of the way it was fifty years ago it was better! Just fifty years ago! We hastened toward More and More was our downfall. No wonder so many opted out, joined communes, abjured the More, the Golden Calf that was being erected. Remember as the noise crashes in, and the skate-boarding zombies with their Walkmen race through the grid-locked streets, as the auto manufacturers deliver more than a vehicle -- (they deliver excitement, performance, speed, more ) remember as our Government seeks more control of our lives, that the pendulum does swing. Oh yes, it does swing. I stay Mad as Hell so that I'll catch it at the very beginning of its swing back. We will remember and inform the next fifty years.

-- Jeremiah

 

This essay first appeared in the newsletter Jeremiah: I'm Mad as Hell (Volume 1, Number 2, February 1986).

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