Diagnosing the West's Generation 50's

In contrast to the screaming harpy in my previous post, here is a woman who defies Eve Ensler's silly progressive typecasting by proving capable of having an intellectual conversation.

Her musings were prompted by an American high school student asking what the American 50's must have been like for women. What follows is a powerful insight into the growing malaise that brought about the radicalism of the decade that followed. Her conclusion was particularly haunting:

The fifties housewife was doomed, as was the “dad who knows best.” The housewife’s life wasn’t really about linoleum floors, casseroles or new toasters and refrigerators. People like to say it was but it wasn’t. Her world was held together by non-materialistic values and once those were thoroughly assaulted, she could not defend it. She could no more explain what she did or why she deferred to men in many areas of life than a prayer or a poem could say, “This is what I am.” When people accused her of materialism or vacuity, of weakness, she did not know what to say to counter the complete falsity of this charge. The sacred was no longer defensible. For that reason – not because of economic and technological change  - the things she valued most were about to disappear.

What brought about the beginnings of the radicalized 60's were not extraneous circumstances, but a metaphysical black hole that could not be fulfilled because they had done away with metaphysical things. This sort of thinking is dangerous to the materialistic historian who grounds the very fiber of history on physical circumstance. I personally find this sort of thinking a refreshing breeze.

The way she describes the collapse of the American family reminds me of Tolkien's dying Minas Tirith, where there were more tombs than grand houses, and the children are scarce. I fear that we in this country are at that same stage of history as the US in the 50's. After all, we just elected to the presidency with an astounding mandate a man-child who cannot articulate anything about our common values beyond vague platitudes. This, after all, is a man-child who thinks our families are disposable where economically inconvenient.

With this trajectory in mind, I shudder at our prospects for the next decade.