Interesting that you write this the same week the George Carlin documentary arrived. If you want to know what counterculture used to be, he even ranted against "Save the Planet" when that became too much of a mainstream, toothless movement for him. (As a side note, it's scary and sad how relevant even his 80s/90s material still is.)
re: the crisis of meaning, postmodern social conditions, disruption, social atomization, cultural evolution and regression (Ghost in the Machine)
note: after entering "stage 4.5", it is estimated that young people on average can transition out of postmodernism in 2-3 years, with focus and hard work, middle age people will take 5-10 years, etc.
Jordan Hall's thoughts on postmodern social conditions, and the disruption of legacy "sense making" systems (hierarchies of curated expertise) by network technologies. (also see N.S. Lyons on "Virtuals vs. Physicals")
(also see Ken Wilber's "Tier 2" formulation, popular with Boomer counterculture types and some new agers)
]
excerpt:
For stage 4, stage 5’s tolerance of contradiction is indistinguishable from stage 3’s; both appear simply irrational.6
Lacking a clear presentation of stage 5, and particularly a clear explanation of how it differs from stage 3, it is inaccessible from stage 4 directly. At best, one can only reach it from
[->] 4.5, the gap of nihilistic despair. [postmodern awareness]
[->] This generally provokes anxiety, rage, and depression, and is not a good place to get stuck.
Many of the people I care about most, and find most interesting, are STEM-educated refugees from ideological rationalism. They’ve mastered rationality, they’ve seen through it—and many now are stuck. Systems cannot provide them with meaning; but neither, it seems can anything else. Many fall into crippling nihilistic depression—a characteristic of stage 4.5. This is awful.
4.5 is necessary en route to stage 5, but maybe it doesn’t need to be so horrible. One needs to become disillusioned and disappointed with rationalism, and then angry at it, and perhaps temporarily reject rationality altogether (in theory at least). Moving beyond any of the developmental stages involves a profound sense of loss: of one’s previously comfortable mode of making meaning. One’s meaning-making mode is always experienced as “the self,” and the new mode seems frighteningly alien—even though it is more powerful once mastered. The 4-to–5 transition is particularly difficult, as it appears no new meaning is possible even in principle, which implies you are nothing, and have no value.
However, if you understand that meaning re-emerges at stage 5—or can accept this, based on plausible testimony—then you need not descend into despair. Unfortunately, little or no support is available for the 4.5 to 5 transition. Mostly you can only get to stage 5 through a rare combination of luck, intelligence, and endurance.
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order.
[->] Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form
— e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
... Societies that can elevate the bright over the dark side of each form and achieve a new combination become more powerful and capable of complex tasks than societies that do not. Societies that first succeed at making a new combination gain advantages over competitors and attain a paramount influence over the nature of international conflict and cooperation. If a major power finds itself stymied by the effort to achieve a new combination, it risks being superseded.
... A people’s adaptability to the rise of a new form appears to depend largely on the local nature of the tribal form. It may have profound effects on what happens as the later forms get added. For example, the tribal form has unfolded differently in China and in America. Whereas the former has long revolved around extended family ties, clans, and dynasties, the latter has relied on the nuclear family, heavy immigration, and a fabric of fraternal organizations that provide quasi-kinship ties (e.g., from the open Rotary Club to the closed Ku Klux Klan). These differences at the tribal level have given unique shapes to each nation’s institutional and market forms, to their ideas about progress, and, now, to their adaptability to the rise of networked NGOs.
note: Hanzi Freinacht is not a real person, "he" is two intermittently obnoxious european, white male post-Boomer philosopher-academics that collaborate on the "metamoderna" project.
Nora Bateson, who is the daughter of Gregory Bateson (one of Margaret Mead's husbands) is a known Boomer-left opponent of "stage theories", but her criticisms sometimes/mostly arise from the "pathologies" that stage theories predict are typical of the counterculture-left.
According to Ken Wilber, developmental psychologists (one of the major types of stage theory) were viciously driven out of most of academia starting in the 1960s as the postmodern cultural-left began to get entrenched.
Here is an example of how the pathologies of the cultural-left ("woke" cancel culture, etc.) showed up in vicious attacks on biological and social scientists by the 1970s.
Another case is E.O. Wilson, as mentioned in the above article.
Robert Kegan and the other major developmental psychologists whose work undermined the cultural-left's basic beliefs were reportedly severely marginalized in academia.
More recently Bret Weinstein in the Evergreen College fiasco.
The list of scientists and others that have been viciously attacked by the cultural-left is long.
While the book world is diversifying in the ethnicity of its authors, which is a good thing, the bios of publishing writers remain pretty much the same: graduates of elite colleges and MFA programs. It’s most startling to look at the bios of the people publishing in the small and micro presses and seeing a whole lot of writers with the same elite bios. When I started out, the small
and micro presses had plenty of blue collar writers.
It doesn't matter much if the book world is "diversifying in the ethnicity of its authors", money talks. They are (mostly) all gonna become the same boring hacks that previous writers have been forced to become. Changing the "Colors" of the covers doesn't matter much if they are just following along.
On another note - I do believe other Countercultures will rise up & burst through all the dreck, as has happened many times in the past.
I definitely see your point. I think literary fiction has become a genre filled with lightly-flawed heroes. A lot of novels these days remind me of that old job interview answer: “I think my greatest weakness is that I care too much.”
Pia Maleny (Eric Weinstein's wife, Jewish but from India) said that corporations that offshore the jobs of citizens, or that just want to justify wage and employment benefit stagnation, will use "diversity" as a CHEAP ALTERNATIVE to actually sitting down with citizen-workers to bargain over labor conditions IN GOOD FAITH.
In other words, "diversity" has been weaponized by an unholy alliance of the cultural-left (PMC) and media-tech billionaires against the working classes.
Joel Kotkin wrote a book, based on his collection of voluminous economic and demographic data sets, about the coming Neo-feudal era of global neoliberalism, in which the working classes are reduced to a peasant class, again.
There are lots of arguments both for, and against, "diversity", and depending on context, they can be more "right" or "wrong", with both sometimes being true due to complexity.
The dominant argument FOR "diversity" is that it is (or claims to be) anti-oppression, pro-equality, or pro-"equity".
What used to be the dominant, Boomer argument, that there is a transcendent scheme of Joseph Campbell type Jungian archetypes that "includes" historically "oppressed" social groups, lurks in the background.
In response, the main argument against "diversity" (Identity Politics) is that it is a thin veneer over totalitarian neo-marxism and the incoherence/irrationality of postmodern relativism and anti-western self-loathing.
I think we said much of the same thing. Big time publishing is an elite corporate enterprise regardless of its publicly-stated populist beliefs and goals—with academia being a direct conduit into that corporate enterprise. And, now, it seems that that the corporate/academic relationship has made its way into the small/micro press world. In those small magazines in the 90s, I was being published alongside a lot of blue collar poets. There weren’t near as many MFAs in the bios back then. I was a poor non-MFA kid poet on the rise. But I think publishing has, by and large, stopped including economic class as part of its measure of diversity.
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”
― Joseph Campbell
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
If you want to be alive, why dont some of you go and read the amazing books of fiction and poetry, and see how much your missing. Im reading this thread and this writing is gnarled or vague or hyperbolic like most of the assumptive lists by Ted Goia. For one thing, there are more novels and books of poetry that are NOT the same, but tell many wonderful, terrifying stories with TOTALLY original and HIGHLY ARTISTIC techniques not seen too often before or at best, rarely.
Go out and get yourselves a copy of current Cave Canem Leader Tyehimba Jess' OLIO, a rollicking kaleidiscope meticulously researched of African American artists in the nineteenth century, the tribulations and triumphs that combine to form the finest 'long poem"in the lasts fifty years or more of American literature. Or read the scathing poetry/political to the heart and blood books by Mai Der Vang- Yellow Rain-exposing the biological warfare bombs used by the US on the Laotian peope during the Vietnam War, complete with maps and Pentagon reports and crafted into a book that sits like a grenade similar to some of Arab-American Phi Metres work that includes a very skillfull use of the "erasure" technique. And how about Honore Jeffers' The Age of Phillis?, a very fine writer's description of the battles of the great poet Phyllis Wheatley who made Thomas Jefferson show himself for the biggot that he was. Go find the poetry of South Korean wizard Kim Hyesoon and have, per Emily Dickenson, the top of your head come off at the unsurpassable surrealist imagery. Bring much duct tape. You will need at least one roll for each of her seven books, plus her friends Kim Yideum and Don Mee Choi (also her translator). Top it off with Douglas Kearney's poetry, if only for mindboggling typography.
As a fully committed member of whatever counterculture still exists (Burning Ambulance - fully independent since 2010!), all these tweets say to me is that, to quote Irving Berlin, "popular music is popular because a lot of people like it." And who cares? Personally, I have no trouble finding low-profile ("underground"/"counterculture") art, and never have. Sure, a record or a book or a movie with a million-dollar PR and advertising budget is gonna be easier to hear about than something shoved into the world with nothing but the love of its creator to propel it. But that's all the more reason why I choose to write about the latter. Want to support the counterculture? Instead of wasting your time bitching about pop fluff, which ultimately means nothing, spend your finite mortal lifespan alerting people to the good stuff that's everywhere...if you know where to find it. I don't even write negative reviews anymore. There's too much good music I could be writing about instead.
You hit a key element there: "if you know where to find it." If you know anything about Ted Gioia, he is constantly on the lookout for new music and fresh ideas. Part of the point he is making (I think) is that even a lot of independent art is tired because its underpinnings are more tied to a hustle-culture mindset than to actually asking something of the experiencer.
Another key is knowing or at least having a sense that something is missing. I fervently believe a big issue is the subversion and subduction of arts education in K-12 for "computer literacy," which at this point comes naturally through modern living. Sure, if you dig deep enough, anything can seem derivative. But there's an element of fresh needing to also be at least slightly unpredictable if not a little uncomfortable at first. I'm not talking about shock value, which is banal and boring unless you've lived a Kimmy Schmidt life, but that brain tickle that happens with a moment of surprise that was generated by an effort of creative force. I am probably not making sense here, but hey... I tried. And thanks for efforts in promoting creative works. I could not find Burning Ambience when I searched for it. Print only? Cheers.
morally unregulated commercial culture, plus technological change and disruption, result in a loss of "authenticity" (lifeworld)
See Howard Rheingold's book/site on "Virtual Community" and "Disinformocracy".
meta-note: anti-establishment commentary, such as this substack are, ironically, recycling Rheingold and Habermas and many other earlier thinkers in their analysis of how commercialism recycles/destroys authentic culture.
Your post has me pondering what feels like an oxymoron: Is there such a thing as a powerful counterculture? And if there is such a thing then is there any powerful counterculture today? Though I’m not even sure how to define power. A few thoughts come to mind. There was a time when a major film studio would produce a movie like Taxi Driver. Remember when Snoop Dogg was dangerous? He’s now a spokesperson for multiple mainstream products. I think the mainstream distributors of art were once far more willing to take chances on the weird—the countercultural. But we live in a world where CODA is deemed to be the Best Picture.
If counter culture is dead then why did Substack succeed the way it has. Substack gave all of those cancelled by the MSM a place to be heard. Substack counter culture until very recently.
Already been there: tantric Buddhism, rainbow bridge.
"To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe — to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it — is a wonder beyond words."
Yeah, I agree with what you’re saying here. And I also wonder if, in a capitalistic country, we are forced to measure the power of a counterculture by its capitalist success? Or at least the size of the audience? If a counterculture happens alone in a forest, does it make a sound when it falls?
Any decent counter-culture doesn’t give a damn about capitalism, almost by definition… at least in the US. Also, in my limited experience with the C-C, people are mainly doing things for themselves or to impress a small group of peers without much regard to what the larger world thinks.
Another thing… the corporate monoculture creates its own version of a counter-culture to sell to people and many people can’t tell the difference.
All good points. I’m thinking of a counterculture that speaks to more than a small audience of like-minded folks. A counterculture that challenges and changes the dominant cultural. But that kind of counterculture does have a short shelf life, doesn’t it?
Countercultures do seem to burn out pretty quickly. Punk was, what ‘77 to ‘79? The movements get commodified and the frontier of dissent moves someplace else.
At one point I saw I was using words like "fantastic" way too much in my reviews and wondered if I was reviewing records or just praising them. But after a few minutes, I came to the same conclusion you have; there's just a LOT of (objectively) good music out there.
I stopped writing book reviews over twenty years ago. And I’ve only provided about five book “blurbs” to be used to promote other people’s books. Why? I just got tired of seeing the word "essential” applied to everything out there.
Is anyone else familiar with the Little Village Foundation in the Bay Area? Run by a musician/producer, they produce CDs and concerts for musicians whose music is not in genres supported by the dominant paradigm. My roots guitarist friend Mary Flower literally received a surprise phone call from them a couple of years ago offering to produce a recording for her -- a great experience.
It strikes me that having a counter-culture requires having a culture — that is, having a commonly accepted set of standards and ideals and cultural norms in general. "When everybody's somebody, then nobody's anybody." If anything goes, then there is no grain to go against — it's just a cultural hodge-podge.
the culture *was* modern-rationalism and systematics (managerial capitalism for instance) plus, the moral infrastructure of mythic religion.
counter-culture was a reaction to the "crisis of meaning" that resulted from postmodern social conditions (suburban consumerism, rapid technological disruption of legacy "sense making", hierarchies of curated expertise) and the failure of rational systems.
You've stated well and succinctly the reason that "counter-culture" no longer has any real meaning: there is no specific culture to which a counter-movement is possible. What we have now is a collection of cultures, many of which are counter to others. Some stick with some set of old traditions, others embrace some new combination of mores, beliefs, and values.
yes, and one of the weird things about it is that the counterculture was a reflection of postmodern social conditions, which only arise in suburban consumer culture as the "information" economy has displaced much of the legacy farming-manufacturing economy.
the incoherence of suburban consumerism being the cause of counterculture led to most of the disasters that are being discussed as related to the "crisis of meaning".
If there is no counter culture then why has Substack been so successful? It was Substack that gave those cancelled on the msm a place to speak to those looking for alternatives. Unfortunately Substack is no longer that place. The sheep are now gaslighting us on Substack.
Howard Rheingold's comments on "Disinformocracy" is a good summary, it includes an explanation of Habermas' idea that "systems colonize lifeworld" (H. has uses specialized definitions for each word, but basically says that morally unregulated commerce, plus technology, causes disruption and the destruction of the cultural processes that generate authentic meaning).
Ever occur to you that if you’re not aware of the counter-culture, then you’re not part of it? That, perhaps, you’re the culture they’re currently counter to? It’s not for you, that’s why you can’t see it or recognize it. Why would you expect it to take the same forms it did from 1950 to 2000, or whatever span of time you want to refer to? The world has changed. Alt-weeklies? Seriously? Weekly publications, much less monthly ones, are irrelevant before they hit the press.
You keep on blaming the ‘culture,’ and young people for the corporate consolidation of various creative industries that was largely perpetrated by people in your generation. I went to APW in Portland in 2019 and I was amazed by all the indie publishing that’s happening. Yeah, cinema isn’t what it was, but again, capitalism. At some point they decided that every movie should make a billion dollars and be bland enough to past muster in totalitarian regimes.
And sure, comics are finding it harder to make jokes that punch down at people who have been marginalized or even victimized. You have a problem with that? Personally I don’t. Generally a lot of people are sick of a culture that finds humor in making fun of queer kids, etc. you might even say that they’re “counter” that culture. Oh my, are they part of a counter culture?
Do you think your grandparents’ generation understood or approved of your youth culture?
You like to deflect and marinate in denial and infantilism.
Your original comment WAS vapid drivel, as are most of your comments, they are just memetic replication of idiotic, standard, reactionary leftist blather about 1/2 a step away from idiotic Soros troll scripts.
I don't know what your cultural preferences are, but I agree with you.
I am part of a sub-sub-culture.
Very little on the streaming channels or in the movies is part of that.
I watch my alma mater channel which has clean funny innovative programming.
(BYUTV)
Their comedy show Studio C is skit driven like SNL, but I can watch it with my young grandchildren ages 10 & 12. It's their favorite show. Lots of insider cultural references, too. They re-did the Joan of Arc story as a docudrama, they have a western series, an outer space series, a knight in shining armor series, and a kids solving mystery series, but all driven with values that are counter-culture, and spiritually oriented.
I think the Christian culture in general is now counter-culture, and that mainstream media conglomerates have no use for it.
Regnery is the publishing house that has all the conservative books on it.
The [Francis] Schaeffer family created the American Religious Right. Without the Schaeffers, more famous campaigners like Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, and Anita Bryant would never have reached mainstream political audiences.
The Schaeffers were hippies. Too late, they realized they had created a monster. I found their story extraordinarily compelling: a tragedy in the mode of Ancient Greek drama.
There are two parts to this. The first is the remarkable tale of their lives and works.
The second concerns Francis Schaeffer’s analysis of the history of meaningness ...
This page explains what made the “hippie” counterculture monist, first; and then what made the “Moral Majority” counterculture dualist. We’ll see also that the monist counterculture had some dualist elements; and that the dualist counterculture tacitly accepted some “hippie” monist boundary-blurrings.
Much of this material is controversial. Reading it, you may have strong emotional reactions, categorizing particular countercultural moves as good or bad. I would suggest trying to suspend such judgements. Each had, I think, both good and bad effects.
I hope you will recognize that I do not support either counterculture against the other. I find some aspects of each attractive, and some repellent. Overall, it is most important to understand why both were wrong, and both failed. But it is also valuable to understand what was right in each, and what might be worth saving from their wreckage.
On this page, I go into the history of the dualist counterculture in somewhat more detail, because it’s probably less well-known to most readers, and because I’ve written about the monist-countercultural religious left extensively elsewhere. If I seem critical of the 1980s Religious Right here, I assure you that I was just as hostile to the monist left there.
The countercultural mode of the 1960s-80s marked the final attempts to rescue the glory of systems from the maw of nihilistic collapse. It failed, and we live in its wreckage.
It would be polite to say “enduring influence” but I’d rather call it “wreckage.” As civilization burned, we built two vast, fantastical, ornate galleons as escape ships. But they were not the slightest bit sea-worthy; and they collided and broke up in the harbor. The crash left a floating mass of broken spars and tangled lines, choking access to the exit.
Millions of people are still trying to live on that flotsam ...
Although both countercultures developed impressively thick and wide approaches to problems of meaning, both failed, for the same reason. Systematicity can never succeed on its own terms; it cannot be absolute. Reality is nebulous, and systems cannot fully grasp its variability. The universalism of the countercultures was their undoing. They could not accommodate the growing demand for cultural, social, and psychological diversity. Subcultures could, and did.
I think you're giving way too much credit to "counter culture" as a "frontier or artistic production that's building new and exciting ways of understanding the world." Counter-culture is dope, sloppy dress, 'free love', and lack of visible means of support, all whilst demanding the mainstream majority give them respect for freeloading and breaking stuff that is vital to a healthy ongoing culture.
Wow, you must really hate Jesus, it’s hard to think of a more countercultural figure than him. My goodness, what are you even doing here? No counter-culture, no jazz, no Ted Gioia, no newsletter on which to make strange comments.
The cultural-left seems to always project its own spiritual pathologies and obsession with "power" onto people that it categorizes as "oppressors", via conformism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism and psychological violence (bullying).
The more radical-extremist the cultural-left becomes, the more it aligns with mental illness:
Your endlessly repetitive, and mud-slinging rants are quite one-sided. Of course far-left radical extremists are all that you say, but so are the far-right, radical extremists! I was part of that "counter-culture" of the late '60s/early '70s, and I learned long ago, that those who are on either extreme resemble each other far more than the group they claim to align with.
While at UCLA, in the midst of demonstrations protesting the Vietnam War, and Kent State shooting of unarmed students, I met a fiery leftist, who had just transferred from Yale or some other Ivy League school. At some point, he shared that at his previous school, he had been a big supporter of the war, and quite the conservative. It became quite clear that jumping from the extreme right to extreme left was as easy as changing his shorts!
That you reveal your disgust with extreme leftists, while giving a pass to extreme right-wingers, even defending extreme evangelicals (who only in a Bizarro World, could possibly see in Trump, some kind of Christ-like being)... Yet you flail away on the biases others may display, as if you're Mr. Objective. Quit pretending, you are highly biased, and you also resemble many of the things you are calling others. But then we know that is was that master propagandist, Goebbels, who advised their extremists to, "Accuse your opponent of that which you are guilty of."
Something which extremists, whether of the left, or the right, appear to be following quite zealously these days...
I think the counter-culture of today is Analog, and therefore very difficult to perceive from a "remote" location.
Counterculture has always been hyperlocal and invisible until it percolates up into NYC or LA and thence into mainstream exposure via the media apparatus in those cities.
A fascinating take on a deep-seated problem. This monoclonal culture seems to be everywhere and nowhere; and I think it's "nowhere" only because too few actually discuss it openly. Aren't universities supposed to be where young minds discover new things and are challenged? We all know that's not the case as speakers who are "controversial" are run off campus amid riots, in some cases. And words themselves are deemed unspeakable, without any consideration that a word is a snapshot of an idea, so by extension when you "cancel" words you are canceling ideas. At some point, you start running out of ideas! (That you can talk about.) Very interesting post.
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
I followed the Scorsese thread from Discussing Film to IndieWire. I enjoyed that very much. One's age is definitely a factor in whether or not you view these times as lacking a counter culture. I was in college when one of my best friends was being shot up in Vietnam. I was fortunate to draw a high number in the first draft lottery. My formative years were filled with high profile assassinations. There were people in the streets and an accompanying soundtrack. What I was not aware of at the time was that we were "driving into the future while looking in the rearview mirror." The music that I listen to now, other than straight ahead jazz, blues & funk, is not in English. Around 1990 I discovered a whole new universe of music that I loved. It came from Guadeloupe, Martinique, T&T and Haiti. I then ventured into Africa and found some of the best music that I had ever heard. Some of it was retro like classic pre-Castro Cuban big band. As I age I think my appreciation for various art forms craves authenticity in whatever medium. These are my personal feelings. YMMV. I am sure that counter culture exists and will inform the future in uplifting transcendent ways. At least I hope that this is the case because the soul of the world needs it badly.
Disruption of the legacy sense-making system (modern-rationalism, managerial capitalism), resulted in the reaction of counterculture.
But as disruption expanded and mutated, it caused the failure of counterculture, and then its absorption into commercialism and loss of authenticity.
In other words, counterculture became the failed post-legacy system because it was not anymore anti-fragile to disruption that the legacy system.
The desperate search for meaning that resulted lead to fragmentation and social atomization.
The alt-countercultures that had emerged before WW2, such as Sri Aurobindo and Jean Gebser's were extremely demanding in their call for deeper transformation, and thus they were not compatible with the easier forms of counterculture that were compatible with the formation of a "controlled opposition" on the cultural-left from the 1960s on, so such alt-countercultures remained obscure until the 1990s and early 2000s when they became useful to some of those opposed to cultural-leftism ("PC") and neomarxism.
Yes, before the Spanish Civil War (1930s) he was in the culture ministry of the Republican govt. (at that time, the Spanish Republic govt. was reformist, liberal-left-progressive, and had nothing to do with the USA Republican party.)
His most well known book in new age/consciousness-studies circles is Ursprung und Gegenwart ("The Ever Present Origin"), which was a reframing of earlier sociologists' work, such as Karl Jaspers, Max Weber, Nietzsche, etc. and an attempt to synthesize western rationalism and eastern mysticism and mysticism to explain what would now be thought of as cultural evolution. Gebser actually semi-rejected the use of cultural evolution because he was critiquing the rational-scientific paradigm as being to "linear" in its framing of time-space.
Gebser preferred the "circular" model of the kosmos in pre-modern, eastern cultures, so he called cultural development "unfolding" (ever-present).
In my opinion, the "unfolding" of the awareness of the kosmos in waves can be seen as "nesting" within "linear", evolutionary process, which is known through physical evidence (fossils, etc.).
The insights that developed in the 1970s/80s from sociobiology were not available to Gebser from the 1930s-60s, but toward the end of his life, his thinking was probably shifting in ways that would have been compatible with sociobiology (dual-inheritance theory: gene-culture co-evolution.)
This is great, though it doesn't entirely fit with my experience as a consumer of culture. In the last year I've read a few excellent self-published novels, gone to a few indie rock shows that are decidedly not mainstream, and enjoyed a wide variety of online writing.
I wonder then if there *is* a counterculture but that it is thinly spread across dozens of different niches and genres. Countercultural art is out there, but it can't coalesce. This is no better when it comes to pushing back on mainstream culture, and monoculture amounts to a landgrab against a weak and divided enemy.
Substack is actually then a great example of this. Lots of great nonmainstream writing happens on Substack, but the individual support for writers doesn't easily translate into the Substack Monthly periodical or anything like that.
counter culture exists in reaction to the collapse of the legacy cultural system, it is not a cultural system itself.
the collapse of the legacy culture becomes the collapse of the counter culture, which then results in a reaction, as you say, that is more fragmented and atomized, and a "crisis of meaning" (John Vervaeke).
Here is one way of seeing all that from a meta-perspective (systems theory, evolutionary psychology):
No one can afford to be countercultural - everything but the air (stay tuned) has been monetized, so it costs too much just to survive. We're all wage slaves now.
The culture around squatting has certainly diminished in the UK since the 1980's. Economic & Policy changes affecting housing, welfare rights and living wage opportunities have sadly eroded the chances of many young original minds & creative thinkers/musicians/writers/performers/artists/artisans etcetera who can think for themselves, ......
- (without being 'taught' how to regurgitate recycled countercultural theories & academic jargon through university systems)...
......of actually having the time and space to be creative unless, perhaps, they are living in a tent city & possibly being creative with a bottle of methadone.
Actually the counterculture itself has been commercialized, heavily.
But commercialization inevitably leads to a loss of authenticity.
-----
the collapse of the legacy culture becomes the collapse of the counter culture, which then results in a further reaction that is more fragmented and atomized, leading to a "crisis of meaning" (John Vervaeke).
Here is one way of seeing all that from a meta-perspective (systems theory, evolutionary psychology):
Sounds like the same thing as the "spiritual" new age Boomer stuff: it gets reduced to a business template for how to make money on "life coaching" and similar commercializations of the rejection of an earlier form of commercialization (LOHAS - lifestyles of health and sustainability).
These 14 tweets are all about media of one kind or other. Of course, over the past seventy years we have become a media-obsessed society. One could argue that our concept of a counterculture stems from the time of the Beats, a media-oriented bunch, although there are deeper arguments of a much longer oppositional stance to the straight world, which I think is the essence of a counterculture. See Ken Goffman’s “ Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House” among others. (Goffman is better known as R.U. Sirius, a media counterculturalist of some note.) However, one might also argue that culture is a different thing from media, that culture is a matter of the way one actually lives, not just how one presents to the world.
It is quite possible that the last place to find a meaningful counterculture is in media, particularly social media. Perhaps it’s hiding in all the outlying agricultural areas of new, young farmers trying to grow food in more sustainable ways. Of course, they communicate with various publications and are social, but they’re the ones with an oppositional stance to the way things are done and an eye to the future. And, yes, they have their own music! I’m pretty sure that sniffing around large corporate media operations will only show you the corpse of last year’s sensation, not the living, breathing mess that future life will be. Nothing wrong with being a little covert these days.
Yes, this was my thought throughout the article and subsequent discussion.
Dominant culture is "content"-driven, networked, and digital.
Therefore, the counter-culture must by its nature be local, analog, and driven not by the production of media content, but objects. Because it is analog, it's difficult to perceive unless personally and physically observed.
It is craft-making.
I also skew agricultural in this regard. Those who plant orchards and make cider, or the Catholic Pastoralism movement, those who forage for wild plants and make distilled spirits from them...these are the counterculture. It all requires the production of interesting objects, not of interesting media content.
I wonder if the sameness of media and entertainment is a consequence of shareholder primacy (SP) business culture. Under SP culture the objective of business is shareholder value; financial metrics are prioritized above all else.
Fifty years ago, business culture was stakeholder capitalism. This link shows a brief description of who economic policy before 1980 selected *against* shareholder primacy.
In the 1980's policy changed to create an environment that selected from SP culture. The culture was maximally SC in the 1960's and 1970's, and maximally SP in the 1910's & 1920's and 2010's and 2020's see figure.
As far as media and culture industries are concerned today, under SP culture, predictable profitability is paramount since these two things are most rewarded by the stock market. Under SC culture the emphasis is on beating the competition as measured by a variety of metrics, not just share prices.
Interesting that you write this the same week the George Carlin documentary arrived. If you want to know what counterculture used to be, he even ranted against "Save the Planet" when that became too much of a mainstream, toothless movement for him. (As a side note, it's scary and sad how relevant even his 80s/90s material still is.)
I’ll check that doc out. Didn’t know about it. 🙏
Please, please, please give us a long-winded, in-depth analysis!
re: the crisis of meaning, postmodern social conditions, disruption, social atomization, cultural evolution and regression (Ghost in the Machine)
note: after entering "stage 4.5", it is estimated that young people on average can transition out of postmodernism in 2-3 years, with focus and hard work, middle age people will take 5-10 years, etc.
Jordan Hall's thoughts on postmodern social conditions, and the disruption of legacy "sense making" systems (hierarchies of curated expertise) by network technologies. (also see N.S. Lyons on "Virtuals vs. Physicals")
https://medium.com/deep-code/situational-assessment-2018-the-calm-before-the-storm-5a0bd014ec84
and
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/202005/the-hammer-the-dance-and-the-red-religion
-----
John Vervaeke's "Crisis of Meaning" Youtube video series is pretty good, as are his written materials.
Related to Vervaeke, "Stage theory" (evolutionary psychology, cultural evolution, systems theory) is one deep dive that some people find useful:
https://meaningness.com/images/metarationality/developmental%20landscape_999x383.png
the above graphic is linked from:
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
[note: developmental stages explained in depth*, this is the oversimplified version:
stage 3. premodern social forms: mythic (good vs evil), agrarian economy
stage 4. modern social forms: rational-systematic, industrial economy
stage 4.5 postmodern social forms: relativist, rejection of the "absolutes" of mythic and scientific cultures, "information economy"
stage 5.
post-postmodern / meta-modern: holistic, "fluid", patterned nebulosity, epistemic indeterminacy , post-capitalist network economy?
(also see Ken Wilber's "Tier 2" formulation, popular with Boomer counterculture types and some new agers)
]
excerpt:
For stage 4, stage 5’s tolerance of contradiction is indistinguishable from stage 3’s; both appear simply irrational.6
Lacking a clear presentation of stage 5, and particularly a clear explanation of how it differs from stage 3, it is inaccessible from stage 4 directly. At best, one can only reach it from
[->] 4.5, the gap of nihilistic despair. [postmodern awareness]
[->] This generally provokes anxiety, rage, and depression, and is not a good place to get stuck.
Many of the people I care about most, and find most interesting, are STEM-educated refugees from ideological rationalism. They’ve mastered rationality, they’ve seen through it—and many now are stuck. Systems cannot provide them with meaning; but neither, it seems can anything else. Many fall into crippling nihilistic depression—a characteristic of stage 4.5. This is awful.
4.5 is necessary en route to stage 5, but maybe it doesn’t need to be so horrible. One needs to become disillusioned and disappointed with rationalism, and then angry at it, and perhaps temporarily reject rationality altogether (in theory at least). Moving beyond any of the developmental stages involves a profound sense of loss: of one’s previously comfortable mode of making meaning. One’s meaning-making mode is always experienced as “the self,” and the new mode seems frighteningly alien—even though it is more powerful once mastered. The 4-to–5 transition is particularly difficult, as it appears no new meaning is possible even in principle, which implies you are nothing, and have no value.
However, if you understand that meaning re-emerges at stage 5—or can accept this, based on plausible testimony—then you need not descend into despair. Unfortunately, little or no support is available for the 4.5 to 5 transition. Mostly you can only get to stage 5 through a rare combination of luck, intelligence, and endurance.
...
---end excerpt---
* https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence
a classic abstraction of cultural evolution and regression:
re: David Ronfeldt's TIMN model of social change
disruption -> disintegration -> regression to ideological tribalism -> reintegration at higher level / social form
https://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/02/overview-of-social-evolution-past.html
---excerpts---
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order.
[->] Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form
— e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
... Societies that can elevate the bright over the dark side of each form and achieve a new combination become more powerful and capable of complex tasks than societies that do not. Societies that first succeed at making a new combination gain advantages over competitors and attain a paramount influence over the nature of international conflict and cooperation. If a major power finds itself stymied by the effort to achieve a new combination, it risks being superseded.
... A people’s adaptability to the rise of a new form appears to depend largely on the local nature of the tribal form. It may have profound effects on what happens as the later forms get added. For example, the tribal form has unfolded differently in China and in America. Whereas the former has long revolved around extended family ties, clans, and dynasties, the latter has relied on the nuclear family, heavy immigration, and a fabric of fraternal organizations that provide quasi-kinship ties (e.g., from the open Rotary Club to the closed Ku Klux Klan). These differences at the tribal level have given unique shapes to each nation’s institutional and market forms, to their ideas about progress, and, now, to their adaptability to the rise of networked NGOs.
...
---end excerpts---
a post-Boomer, post-faddishly fadish version of the above that drips with irony, post-truths and post-relativism (!!!)
https://metamoderna.org/metamodernism/
note: Hanzi Freinacht is not a real person, "he" is two intermittently obnoxious european, white male post-Boomer philosopher-academics that collaborate on the "metamoderna" project.
Noice noice
Nora Bateson, who is the daughter of Gregory Bateson (one of Margaret Mead's husbands) is a known Boomer-left opponent of "stage theories", but her criticisms sometimes/mostly arise from the "pathologies" that stage theories predict are typical of the counterculture-left.
According to Ken Wilber, developmental psychologists (one of the major types of stage theory) were viciously driven out of most of academia starting in the 1960s as the postmodern cultural-left began to get entrenched.
Here is an example of how the pathologies of the cultural-left ("woke" cancel culture, etc.) showed up in vicious attacks on biological and social scientists by the 1970s.
https://quillette.com/2019/10/05/the-dangerous-life-of-an-anthropologist/
The moment I saw that, I knew it was going to be about Chagnon.
Another case is E.O. Wilson, as mentioned in the above article.
Robert Kegan and the other major developmental psychologists whose work undermined the cultural-left's basic beliefs were reportedly severely marginalized in academia.
More recently Bret Weinstein in the Evergreen College fiasco.
The list of scientists and others that have been viciously attacked by the cultural-left is long.
How meaning fell apart:
https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
While the book world is diversifying in the ethnicity of its authors, which is a good thing, the bios of publishing writers remain pretty much the same: graduates of elite colleges and MFA programs. It’s most startling to look at the bios of the people publishing in the small and micro presses and seeing a whole lot of writers with the same elite bios. When I started out, the small
and micro presses had plenty of blue collar writers.
It doesn't matter much if the book world is "diversifying in the ethnicity of its authors", money talks. They are (mostly) all gonna become the same boring hacks that previous writers have been forced to become. Changing the "Colors" of the covers doesn't matter much if they are just following along.
On another note - I do believe other Countercultures will rise up & burst through all the dreck, as has happened many times in the past.
I definitely see your point. I think literary fiction has become a genre filled with lightly-flawed heroes. A lot of novels these days remind me of that old job interview answer: “I think my greatest weakness is that I care too much.”
Very good !
Why is that a good thing? Are the books better?
Another answer:
How is "diversity" useful to corporations?
Pia Maleny (Eric Weinstein's wife, Jewish but from India) said that corporations that offshore the jobs of citizens, or that just want to justify wage and employment benefit stagnation, will use "diversity" as a CHEAP ALTERNATIVE to actually sitting down with citizen-workers to bargain over labor conditions IN GOOD FAITH.
In other words, "diversity" has been weaponized by an unholy alliance of the cultural-left (PMC) and media-tech billionaires against the working classes.
Joel Kotkin wrote a book, based on his collection of voluminous economic and demographic data sets, about the coming Neo-feudal era of global neoliberalism, in which the working classes are reduced to a peasant class, again.
There are lots of arguments both for, and against, "diversity", and depending on context, they can be more "right" or "wrong", with both sometimes being true due to complexity.
The dominant argument FOR "diversity" is that it is (or claims to be) anti-oppression, pro-equality, or pro-"equity".
What used to be the dominant, Boomer argument, that there is a transcendent scheme of Joseph Campbell type Jungian archetypes that "includes" historically "oppressed" social groups, lurks in the background.
In response, the main argument against "diversity" (Identity Politics) is that it is a thin veneer over totalitarian neo-marxism and the incoherence/irrationality of postmodern relativism and anti-western self-loathing.
I think we said much of the same thing. Big time publishing is an elite corporate enterprise regardless of its publicly-stated populist beliefs and goals—with academia being a direct conduit into that corporate enterprise. And, now, it seems that that the corporate/academic relationship has made its way into the small/micro press world. In those small magazines in the 90s, I was being published alongside a lot of blue collar poets. There weren’t near as many MFAs in the bios back then. I was a poor non-MFA kid poet on the rise. But I think publishing has, by and large, stopped including economic class as part of its measure of diversity.
Long ago, shoe-leather journalism was a small step up from being a bartender or stevedore.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/20105.Joseph_Campbell
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”
― Joseph Campbell
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
...
If you want to be alive, why dont some of you go and read the amazing books of fiction and poetry, and see how much your missing. Im reading this thread and this writing is gnarled or vague or hyperbolic like most of the assumptive lists by Ted Goia. For one thing, there are more novels and books of poetry that are NOT the same, but tell many wonderful, terrifying stories with TOTALLY original and HIGHLY ARTISTIC techniques not seen too often before or at best, rarely.
Go out and get yourselves a copy of current Cave Canem Leader Tyehimba Jess' OLIO, a rollicking kaleidiscope meticulously researched of African American artists in the nineteenth century, the tribulations and triumphs that combine to form the finest 'long poem"in the lasts fifty years or more of American literature. Or read the scathing poetry/political to the heart and blood books by Mai Der Vang- Yellow Rain-exposing the biological warfare bombs used by the US on the Laotian peope during the Vietnam War, complete with maps and Pentagon reports and crafted into a book that sits like a grenade similar to some of Arab-American Phi Metres work that includes a very skillfull use of the "erasure" technique. And how about Honore Jeffers' The Age of Phillis?, a very fine writer's description of the battles of the great poet Phyllis Wheatley who made Thomas Jefferson show himself for the biggot that he was. Go find the poetry of South Korean wizard Kim Hyesoon and have, per Emily Dickenson, the top of your head come off at the unsurpassable surrealist imagery. Bring much duct tape. You will need at least one roll for each of her seven books, plus her friends Kim Yideum and Don Mee Choi (also her translator). Top it off with Douglas Kearney's poetry, if only for mindboggling typography.
As a fully committed member of whatever counterculture still exists (Burning Ambulance - fully independent since 2010!), all these tweets say to me is that, to quote Irving Berlin, "popular music is popular because a lot of people like it." And who cares? Personally, I have no trouble finding low-profile ("underground"/"counterculture") art, and never have. Sure, a record or a book or a movie with a million-dollar PR and advertising budget is gonna be easier to hear about than something shoved into the world with nothing but the love of its creator to propel it. But that's all the more reason why I choose to write about the latter. Want to support the counterculture? Instead of wasting your time bitching about pop fluff, which ultimately means nothing, spend your finite mortal lifespan alerting people to the good stuff that's everywhere...if you know where to find it. I don't even write negative reviews anymore. There's too much good music I could be writing about instead.
You hit a key element there: "if you know where to find it." If you know anything about Ted Gioia, he is constantly on the lookout for new music and fresh ideas. Part of the point he is making (I think) is that even a lot of independent art is tired because its underpinnings are more tied to a hustle-culture mindset than to actually asking something of the experiencer.
Another key is knowing or at least having a sense that something is missing. I fervently believe a big issue is the subversion and subduction of arts education in K-12 for "computer literacy," which at this point comes naturally through modern living. Sure, if you dig deep enough, anything can seem derivative. But there's an element of fresh needing to also be at least slightly unpredictable if not a little uncomfortable at first. I'm not talking about shock value, which is banal and boring unless you've lived a Kimmy Schmidt life, but that brain tickle that happens with a moment of surprise that was generated by an effort of creative force. I am probably not making sense here, but hey... I tried. And thanks for efforts in promoting creative works. I could not find Burning Ambience when I searched for it. Print only? Cheers.
“Hustle-culture” is a good term.
The Burning Ambulance "media empire" (hope you like out jazz and death metal!):
http://burningambulance.com
http://burningambulance.substack.com
http://www.osirispod.com/podcasts/burning-ambulance/
http://burningambulancemusic.bandcamp.com
"systems colonize lifeworld" Habermas
translation:
morally unregulated commercial culture, plus technological change and disruption, result in a loss of "authenticity" (lifeworld)
See Howard Rheingold's book/site on "Virtual Community" and "Disinformocracy".
meta-note: anti-establishment commentary, such as this substack are, ironically, recycling Rheingold and Habermas and many other earlier thinkers in their analysis of how commercialism recycles/destroys authentic culture.
Your post has me pondering what feels like an oxymoron: Is there such a thing as a powerful counterculture? And if there is such a thing then is there any powerful counterculture today? Though I’m not even sure how to define power. A few thoughts come to mind. There was a time when a major film studio would produce a movie like Taxi Driver. Remember when Snoop Dogg was dangerous? He’s now a spokesperson for multiple mainstream products. I think the mainstream distributors of art were once far more willing to take chances on the weird—the countercultural. But we live in a world where CODA is deemed to be the Best Picture.
why counterculture failed:
https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
(the author is a MIT PhD in AI/software developer, and practices tantric Buddhism)
If counter culture is dead then why did Substack succeed the way it has. Substack gave all of those cancelled by the MSM a place to be heard. Substack counter culture until very recently.
So you are into deconstructed analysis !o!
IF you keep reading the links to links to links to links, etc. you will find the author's views on postmodernism and the construction of culture.
The author's basic stand is one of "epistemological indeterminacy" and "patterned nebulousity".
Have you studied (MIT) graduate level AI or tantric Buddhism?
Evolutionary psychology? Cultural evolution?
-----
https://meaningness.com/images/metarationality/developmental%20landscape_999x383.png
the above graphic is linked from:
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
You guys are making it too hard on yourselves.
Already been there: tantric Buddhism, rainbow bridge.
"To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe — to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it — is a wonder beyond words."
JOANNA MACY
sputtering, blabbering ..........
Yeah, I agree with what you’re saying here. And I also wonder if, in a capitalistic country, we are forced to measure the power of a counterculture by its capitalist success? Or at least the size of the audience? If a counterculture happens alone in a forest, does it make a sound when it falls?
Any decent counter-culture doesn’t give a damn about capitalism, almost by definition… at least in the US. Also, in my limited experience with the C-C, people are mainly doing things for themselves or to impress a small group of peers without much regard to what the larger world thinks.
Another thing… the corporate monoculture creates its own version of a counter-culture to sell to people and many people can’t tell the difference.
All good points. I’m thinking of a counterculture that speaks to more than a small audience of like-minded folks. A counterculture that challenges and changes the dominant cultural. But that kind of counterculture does have a short shelf life, doesn’t it?
Countercultures do seem to burn out pretty quickly. Punk was, what ‘77 to ‘79? The movements get commodified and the frontier of dissent moves someplace else.
If a tree falls on a buddhist monk that is sitting in a forest clapping with one hand, will anyone hear the other hand clapping?
If you die alone in your room watching tv
Does the tv still make a sound ?
If captioning is on, does anyone hear the captioning?
If you die alone with domestic animals, and are not found for some period of time,
how long will it take for the dog(s)/cat(s) to eat your nose, tongue, eyes and other soft body tissue, before the police find your body?
At one point I saw I was using words like "fantastic" way too much in my reviews and wondered if I was reviewing records or just praising them. But after a few minutes, I came to the same conclusion you have; there's just a LOT of (objectively) good music out there.
I stopped writing book reviews over twenty years ago. And I’ve only provided about five book “blurbs” to be used to promote other people’s books. Why? I just got tired of seeing the word "essential” applied to everything out there.
Is anyone else familiar with the Little Village Foundation in the Bay Area? Run by a musician/producer, they produce CDs and concerts for musicians whose music is not in genres supported by the dominant paradigm. My roots guitarist friend Mary Flower literally received a surprise phone call from them a couple of years ago offering to produce a recording for her -- a great experience.
Kudos to Jim Pugh and his good works.
“Music of rebellion makes you wanna rage.
It’s made by millionaires nearly twice your age.” - Steven Wilson
It strikes me that having a counter-culture requires having a culture — that is, having a commonly accepted set of standards and ideals and cultural norms in general. "When everybody's somebody, then nobody's anybody." If anything goes, then there is no grain to go against — it's just a cultural hodge-podge.
the culture *was* modern-rationalism and systematics (managerial capitalism for instance) plus, the moral infrastructure of mythic religion.
counter-culture was a reaction to the "crisis of meaning" that resulted from postmodern social conditions (suburban consumerism, rapid technological disruption of legacy "sense making", hierarchies of curated expertise) and the failure of rational systems.
https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
You've stated well and succinctly the reason that "counter-culture" no longer has any real meaning: there is no specific culture to which a counter-movement is possible. What we have now is a collection of cultures, many of which are counter to others. Some stick with some set of old traditions, others embrace some new combination of mores, beliefs, and values.
yes, and one of the weird things about it is that the counterculture was a reflection of postmodern social conditions, which only arise in suburban consumer culture as the "information" economy has displaced much of the legacy farming-manufacturing economy.
the incoherence of suburban consumerism being the cause of counterculture led to most of the disasters that are being discussed as related to the "crisis of meaning".
It's interesting that we could have gone another direction (though I'm sure that any direction has its pitfalls): https://www.orionmagazine.org/article/the-gospel-of-consumption/
If there is no counter culture then why has Substack been so successful? It was Substack that gave those cancelled on the msm a place to speak to those looking for alternatives. Unfortunately Substack is no longer that place. The sheep are now gaslighting us on Substack.
This is a great point.
I think this is way underexplored and I’m looking forward to reading more of your analysis. I pulled together some relevant data here: https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/pop-culture-has-become-an-oligopoly?r=15aiai&utm_medium=ios
Howard Rheingold's comments on "Disinformocracy" is a good summary, it includes an explanation of Habermas' idea that "systems colonize lifeworld" (H. has uses specialized definitions for each word, but basically says that morally unregulated commerce, plus technology, causes disruption and the destruction of the cultural processes that generate authentic meaning).
Ever occur to you that if you’re not aware of the counter-culture, then you’re not part of it? That, perhaps, you’re the culture they’re currently counter to? It’s not for you, that’s why you can’t see it or recognize it. Why would you expect it to take the same forms it did from 1950 to 2000, or whatever span of time you want to refer to? The world has changed. Alt-weeklies? Seriously? Weekly publications, much less monthly ones, are irrelevant before they hit the press.
You keep on blaming the ‘culture,’ and young people for the corporate consolidation of various creative industries that was largely perpetrated by people in your generation. I went to APW in Portland in 2019 and I was amazed by all the indie publishing that’s happening. Yeah, cinema isn’t what it was, but again, capitalism. At some point they decided that every movie should make a billion dollars and be bland enough to past muster in totalitarian regimes.
And sure, comics are finding it harder to make jokes that punch down at people who have been marginalized or even victimized. You have a problem with that? Personally I don’t. Generally a lot of people are sick of a culture that finds humor in making fun of queer kids, etc. you might even say that they’re “counter” that culture. Oh my, are they part of a counter culture?
Do you think your grandparents’ generation understood or approved of your youth culture?
Vapid comment.
Saying that critics of the cultural-left are "threatened" makes you sound like a totalitarian neo-marxist obsessed with "power".
You like to make assumptions. I just found his use of an ad hominem weak.
You like to deflect and marinate in denial and infantilism.
Your original comment WAS vapid drivel, as are most of your comments, they are just memetic replication of idiotic, standard, reactionary leftist blather about 1/2 a step away from idiotic Soros troll scripts.
I find your use of ad hominems weak too. You’re also an asshole.
I don't know what your cultural preferences are, but I agree with you.
I am part of a sub-sub-culture.
Very little on the streaming channels or in the movies is part of that.
I watch my alma mater channel which has clean funny innovative programming.
(BYUTV)
Their comedy show Studio C is skit driven like SNL, but I can watch it with my young grandchildren ages 10 & 12. It's their favorite show. Lots of insider cultural references, too. They re-did the Joan of Arc story as a docudrama, they have a western series, an outer space series, a knight in shining armor series, and a kids solving mystery series, but all driven with values that are counter-culture, and spiritually oriented.
I think the Christian culture in general is now counter-culture, and that mainstream media conglomerates have no use for it.
Regnery is the publishing house that has all the conservative books on it.
Evangelical counter-culture (good-vs-evil) started in the 60s as a mirror image of the left-counterculture (relativism).
https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
(duplicate)
The hippie family who invented contemporary conservatism
[ Francis Schaeffer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Schaeffer ]
https://meaningness.com/schaeffers-religious-right
"The hippie family who invented contemporary conservatism"
https://meaningness.com/schaeffers-religious-right
excerpt:
The [Francis] Schaeffer family created the American Religious Right. Without the Schaeffers, more famous campaigners like Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, and Anita Bryant would never have reached mainstream political audiences.
The Schaeffers were hippies. Too late, they realized they had created a monster. I found their story extraordinarily compelling: a tragedy in the mode of Ancient Greek drama.
There are two parts to this. The first is the remarkable tale of their lives and works.
The second concerns Francis Schaeffer’s analysis of the history of meaningness ...
why the evangelical-christian "right" is/was an actual counter-culture
https://meaningness.com/monism-dualism-countercultures
excerpt:
This page explains what made the “hippie” counterculture monist, first; and then what made the “Moral Majority” counterculture dualist. We’ll see also that the monist counterculture had some dualist elements; and that the dualist counterculture tacitly accepted some “hippie” monist boundary-blurrings.
Much of this material is controversial. Reading it, you may have strong emotional reactions, categorizing particular countercultural moves as good or bad. I would suggest trying to suspend such judgements. Each had, I think, both good and bad effects.
I hope you will recognize that I do not support either counterculture against the other. I find some aspects of each attractive, and some repellent. Overall, it is most important to understand why both were wrong, and both failed. But it is also valuable to understand what was right in each, and what might be worth saving from their wreckage.
On this page, I go into the history of the dualist counterculture in somewhat more detail, because it’s probably less well-known to most readers, and because I’ve written about the monist-countercultural religious left extensively elsewhere. If I seem critical of the 1980s Religious Right here, I assure you that I was just as hostile to the monist left there.
...
---end excerpt---
the above is a subtopic under:
https://meaningness.com/countercultures
excerpts:
Countercultures: modernity’s last gasp
The countercultural mode of the 1960s-80s marked the final attempts to rescue the glory of systems from the maw of nihilistic collapse. It failed, and we live in its wreckage.
It would be polite to say “enduring influence” but I’d rather call it “wreckage.” As civilization burned, we built two vast, fantastical, ornate galleons as escape ships. But they were not the slightest bit sea-worthy; and they collided and broke up in the harbor. The crash left a floating mass of broken spars and tangled lines, choking access to the exit.
Millions of people are still trying to live on that flotsam ...
Although both countercultures developed impressively thick and wide approaches to problems of meaning, both failed, for the same reason. Systematicity can never succeed on its own terms; it cannot be absolute. Reality is nebulous, and systems cannot fully grasp its variability. The universalism of the countercultures was their undoing. They could not accommodate the growing demand for cultural, social, and psychological diversity. Subcultures could, and did.
...
yet another example of the totalitarian neo-marxist obsession with "power"
Project much? Who doesn’t object to being oppressed?
denial much?
obsessions are pathological. leftists are pathological.
https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/large-study-indicates-left-wing-authoritarianism-exists-and-is-a-key-predictor-of-psychological-and-behavioral-outcomes-61318
infantile drivel and deflect much?
You think you’re elevating the discourse by quoting Habermas or whomever, but you’re actually shutting down discussion and making this place less fun.
I think you're giving way too much credit to "counter culture" as a "frontier or artistic production that's building new and exciting ways of understanding the world." Counter-culture is dope, sloppy dress, 'free love', and lack of visible means of support, all whilst demanding the mainstream majority give them respect for freeloading and breaking stuff that is vital to a healthy ongoing culture.
Wow, you must really hate Jesus, it’s hard to think of a more countercultural figure than him. My goodness, what are you even doing here? No counter-culture, no jazz, no Ted Gioia, no newsletter on which to make strange comments.
The cultural-left seems to always project its own spiritual pathologies and obsession with "power" onto people that it categorizes as "oppressors", via conformism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism and psychological violence (bullying).
The more radical-extremist the cultural-left becomes, the more it aligns with mental illness:
https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/large-study-indicates-left-wing-authoritarianism-exists-and-is-a-key-predictor-of-psychological-and-behavioral-outcomes-61318
-----
From another discussion:
Leftist/ Cultural Marxist, PC left, CRT/SJW/BLM rhetoric*, explained:
000. use absurd SMEARS
00. project
0. gaslight
......
1. Deflect from what was actually said/done (move goal posts)
2. Distort or lie about facts and evidence (such as straw manning)
3. Cherry pick evidence to fit the (victim/diversity) narrative / shift goal posts
4. Engage in emotive, feel good bs (special pleading) rather than use rational, objective thought
5. Use guilt by association ("you are a K-K-K/n-a-z-i") to smear people that dare to criticize PC/SJW leftist ideology.
[->] Use groupthink and scapegoating to marginalize critics of the PC left.
6. Demonize the personalities of opponents/critics.
7. Destroy the reputation, character and career of critics of the PC left
8. Use psychological violence, which could include doxxing, and threats of actual violence, against critics of the PC left.
-----
*Note: the above can be generalized to fit any ideology.
Your endlessly repetitive, and mud-slinging rants are quite one-sided. Of course far-left radical extremists are all that you say, but so are the far-right, radical extremists! I was part of that "counter-culture" of the late '60s/early '70s, and I learned long ago, that those who are on either extreme resemble each other far more than the group they claim to align with.
While at UCLA, in the midst of demonstrations protesting the Vietnam War, and Kent State shooting of unarmed students, I met a fiery leftist, who had just transferred from Yale or some other Ivy League school. At some point, he shared that at his previous school, he had been a big supporter of the war, and quite the conservative. It became quite clear that jumping from the extreme right to extreme left was as easy as changing his shorts!
That you reveal your disgust with extreme leftists, while giving a pass to extreme right-wingers, even defending extreme evangelicals (who only in a Bizarro World, could possibly see in Trump, some kind of Christ-like being)... Yet you flail away on the biases others may display, as if you're Mr. Objective. Quit pretending, you are highly biased, and you also resemble many of the things you are calling others. But then we know that is was that master propagandist, Goebbels, who advised their extremists to, "Accuse your opponent of that which you are guilty of."
Something which extremists, whether of the left, or the right, appear to be following quite zealously these days...
Kinda my thinking as well.
I think the counter-culture of today is Analog, and therefore very difficult to perceive from a "remote" location.
Counterculture has always been hyperlocal and invisible until it percolates up into NYC or LA and thence into mainstream exposure via the media apparatus in those cities.
A fascinating take on a deep-seated problem. This monoclonal culture seems to be everywhere and nowhere; and I think it's "nowhere" only because too few actually discuss it openly. Aren't universities supposed to be where young minds discover new things and are challenged? We all know that's not the case as speakers who are "controversial" are run off campus amid riots, in some cases. And words themselves are deemed unspeakable, without any consideration that a word is a snapshot of an idea, so by extension when you "cancel" words you are canceling ideas. At some point, you start running out of ideas! (That you can talk about.) Very interesting post.
Chris M
yep.
https://whocanceledroland.com
Who Canceled Roland Fryer?
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
I followed the Scorsese thread from Discussing Film to IndieWire. I enjoyed that very much. One's age is definitely a factor in whether or not you view these times as lacking a counter culture. I was in college when one of my best friends was being shot up in Vietnam. I was fortunate to draw a high number in the first draft lottery. My formative years were filled with high profile assassinations. There were people in the streets and an accompanying soundtrack. What I was not aware of at the time was that we were "driving into the future while looking in the rearview mirror." The music that I listen to now, other than straight ahead jazz, blues & funk, is not in English. Around 1990 I discovered a whole new universe of music that I loved. It came from Guadeloupe, Martinique, T&T and Haiti. I then ventured into Africa and found some of the best music that I had ever heard. Some of it was retro like classic pre-Castro Cuban big band. As I age I think my appreciation for various art forms craves authenticity in whatever medium. These are my personal feelings. YMMV. I am sure that counter culture exists and will inform the future in uplifting transcendent ways. At least I hope that this is the case because the soul of the world needs it badly.
Disruption of the legacy sense-making system (modern-rationalism, managerial capitalism), resulted in the reaction of counterculture.
But as disruption expanded and mutated, it caused the failure of counterculture, and then its absorption into commercialism and loss of authenticity.
In other words, counterculture became the failed post-legacy system because it was not anymore anti-fragile to disruption that the legacy system.
The desperate search for meaning that resulted lead to fragmentation and social atomization.
The alt-countercultures that had emerged before WW2, such as Sri Aurobindo and Jean Gebser's were extremely demanding in their call for deeper transformation, and thus they were not compatible with the easier forms of counterculture that were compatible with the formation of a "controlled opposition" on the cultural-left from the 1960s on, so such alt-countercultures remained obscure until the 1990s and early 2000s when they became useful to some of those opposed to cultural-leftism ("PC") and neomarxism.
I just read that he did know Jung and taught at the Jung Institute for a time.
Yes, before the Spanish Civil War (1930s) he was in the culture ministry of the Republican govt. (at that time, the Spanish Republic govt. was reformist, liberal-left-progressive, and had nothing to do with the USA Republican party.)
His most well known book in new age/consciousness-studies circles is Ursprung und Gegenwart ("The Ever Present Origin"), which was a reframing of earlier sociologists' work, such as Karl Jaspers, Max Weber, Nietzsche, etc. and an attempt to synthesize western rationalism and eastern mysticism and mysticism to explain what would now be thought of as cultural evolution. Gebser actually semi-rejected the use of cultural evolution because he was critiquing the rational-scientific paradigm as being to "linear" in its framing of time-space.
Gebser preferred the "circular" model of the kosmos in pre-modern, eastern cultures, so he called cultural development "unfolding" (ever-present).
In my opinion, the "unfolding" of the awareness of the kosmos in waves can be seen as "nesting" within "linear", evolutionary process, which is known through physical evidence (fossils, etc.).
The insights that developed in the 1970s/80s from sociobiology were not available to Gebser from the 1930s-60s, but toward the end of his life, his thinking was probably shifting in ways that would have been compatible with sociobiology (dual-inheritance theory: gene-culture co-evolution.)
This is great, though it doesn't entirely fit with my experience as a consumer of culture. In the last year I've read a few excellent self-published novels, gone to a few indie rock shows that are decidedly not mainstream, and enjoyed a wide variety of online writing.
I wonder then if there *is* a counterculture but that it is thinly spread across dozens of different niches and genres. Countercultural art is out there, but it can't coalesce. This is no better when it comes to pushing back on mainstream culture, and monoculture amounts to a landgrab against a weak and divided enemy.
Substack is actually then a great example of this. Lots of great nonmainstream writing happens on Substack, but the individual support for writers doesn't easily translate into the Substack Monthly periodical or anything like that.
counter culture exists in reaction to the collapse of the legacy cultural system, it is not a cultural system itself.
the collapse of the legacy culture becomes the collapse of the counter culture, which then results in a reaction, as you say, that is more fragmented and atomized, and a "crisis of meaning" (John Vervaeke).
Here is one way of seeing all that from a meta-perspective (systems theory, evolutionary psychology):
https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
No one can afford to be countercultural - everything but the air (stay tuned) has been monetized, so it costs too much just to survive. We're all wage slaves now.
The culture around squatting has certainly diminished in the UK since the 1980's. Economic & Policy changes affecting housing, welfare rights and living wage opportunities have sadly eroded the chances of many young original minds & creative thinkers/musicians/writers/performers/artists/artisans etcetera who can think for themselves, ......
- (without being 'taught' how to regurgitate recycled countercultural theories & academic jargon through university systems)...
......of actually having the time and space to be creative unless, perhaps, they are living in a tent city & possibly being creative with a bottle of methadone.
Actually the counterculture itself has been commercialized, heavily.
But commercialization inevitably leads to a loss of authenticity.
-----
the collapse of the legacy culture becomes the collapse of the counter culture, which then results in a further reaction that is more fragmented and atomized, leading to a "crisis of meaning" (John Vervaeke).
Here is one way of seeing all that from a meta-perspective (systems theory, evolutionary psychology):
https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
I've been thinking about this topic after attending a "Start-up" workshop for founders...
They are all standing on the mobius strip believing that they are thinking outside the box. .
Sounds like the same thing as the "spiritual" new age Boomer stuff: it gets reduced to a business template for how to make money on "life coaching" and similar commercializations of the rejection of an earlier form of commercialization (LOHAS - lifestyles of health and sustainability).
These 14 tweets are all about media of one kind or other. Of course, over the past seventy years we have become a media-obsessed society. One could argue that our concept of a counterculture stems from the time of the Beats, a media-oriented bunch, although there are deeper arguments of a much longer oppositional stance to the straight world, which I think is the essence of a counterculture. See Ken Goffman’s “ Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House” among others. (Goffman is better known as R.U. Sirius, a media counterculturalist of some note.) However, one might also argue that culture is a different thing from media, that culture is a matter of the way one actually lives, not just how one presents to the world.
It is quite possible that the last place to find a meaningful counterculture is in media, particularly social media. Perhaps it’s hiding in all the outlying agricultural areas of new, young farmers trying to grow food in more sustainable ways. Of course, they communicate with various publications and are social, but they’re the ones with an oppositional stance to the way things are done and an eye to the future. And, yes, they have their own music! I’m pretty sure that sniffing around large corporate media operations will only show you the corpse of last year’s sensation, not the living, breathing mess that future life will be. Nothing wrong with being a little covert these days.
Yes, this was my thought throughout the article and subsequent discussion.
Dominant culture is "content"-driven, networked, and digital.
Therefore, the counter-culture must by its nature be local, analog, and driven not by the production of media content, but objects. Because it is analog, it's difficult to perceive unless personally and physically observed.
It is craft-making.
I also skew agricultural in this regard. Those who plant orchards and make cider, or the Catholic Pastoralism movement, those who forage for wild plants and make distilled spirits from them...these are the counterculture. It all requires the production of interesting objects, not of interesting media content.
I wonder if the sameness of media and entertainment is a consequence of shareholder primacy (SP) business culture. Under SP culture the objective of business is shareholder value; financial metrics are prioritized above all else.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-economic-culture-evolves
Fifty years ago, business culture was stakeholder capitalism. This link shows a brief description of who economic policy before 1980 selected *against* shareholder primacy.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/what-is-neoliberalism-an-empirical#:~:text=CEOs%20could%20not,shareholder%20primacy%20culture.
In the 1980's policy changed to create an environment that selected from SP culture. The culture was maximally SC in the 1960's and 1970's, and maximally SP in the 1910's & 1920's and 2010's and 2020's see figure.
As far as media and culture industries are concerned today, under SP culture, predictable profitability is paramount since these two things are most rewarded by the stock market. Under SC culture the emphasis is on beating the competition as measured by a variety of metrics, not just share prices.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ad6d961-0868-4a57-92cc-27180a766f40_642x256.gif
Fascinating insight, thank you.