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Countercultured
I live in the lap of luxury and liberalism. If you were to make a hybrid of Berkeley and Hollywood, you would get Marin County. It's where the serious celebrity activists reside, as opposed to the superficial stars whose political views are as much their own as the fashions they wear. Our local paper just did a feature on longtime resident and actor Peter Coyote. Here's an excerpt:
Coyote points out that the social changes the counterculture pioneered have succeeded in becoming part of mainstream America, unremarkable aspects of everyday life.
"The '60s changed the culture," he said. "We didn't change the politics. We thought we would end imperialism and capitalism, or moderate it, but we didn't do that. Those are huge historical forces that are going to take more than our generation to change. But if you look at what we did introduce to the culture - the civil rights movement, the organic food movement, the women's movement, alternative spirituality, alternative medical practices - these are huge. These are deep changes."
He's right. They are huge. Overgrown even (especially organic food). The women's movement encompassed not just equality for women (a good thing) but abortion rights and feminism (which I prefer to call masculinism). The civil rights movement didn't just help bring about equal and fair treatment of people of all races; it bred affirmative action and reverse discrimination. Alternative spirituality is now mainstream spirituality and Christianity is suspect. Alternative medicine and natural products have become commercialized and cost as much if not more than conventional treatments.
These ideals (and many more that took root in the sixties) were/are good--equality, holistic health, natural food, and freedom of worship--but they all contain a fatal flaw, which is why they have morphed into such extremes. They are principles that have been detached from the God who created them and used to elevate his creation (human beings, animals, the environment). Liberty is for free will's sake. Goodness is for pleasure's sake. Stewardship is for beauty's sake. Everything meant to glorify God is rerouted to glorify people.
As soon as the immortal is mortalized, it begins to decay. The trick of the devil is to make it look like growth. Which is why should hold all things up to the light of God's word written in ink and on our hearts, instead of blindly feeling our way around in the darkness of the culture, grasping for truth and meaning in the temporal and the tangible.
Marla, great thoughts! This is another obvious example of man's self-idolatry. But I have one question....who is Peter Coyote?? :)
Ah, humanism. Sharp, beautifully written post, Marla. And I echo Sarah's question...?
Thanks, ladies :)
Peter Coyote is the guy that's in every movie and tv show, but he's rarely the lead character, so no one knows his name (except me because I'm a name buff). His voice is his most distinctive feature (he's narrated a lot of stuff) but his face should be familiar also.
The last thing I saw him in was A Walk To Remember (he played the reverend), but he's in a TV series right now called "The Inside."
Here's his pic and his credits at the Internet Movie Database:
http://imdb.com/name/nm0001075/
Funny story. When I signed on to Flickr, I saw a member profile of someone who selected Peter Coyote as a favorite actor, so I emailed her because I liked her photos and I mentioned that I live where her favorite actor lives . She wrote me back to tell me that he's her brother. We chit chatted a little (she's a writer/editor) so I guess you could say that now I know Peter Coyote's sister. Small world.
Oh, and I guess he's also on the brain because we watched Cross Creek (Mary Steenberg as Marjorie Holmes who wrote The Yearling) where he plays Norton, the leading man. It's from the early 80s but we borrowed it from the library a few months back.
I've often thought the members of the Sixties generation were reacting against very real, very serious problems. But the answers they came up with, divorced from God, lead them to create more problems than they solved.
I think the lack of depth to what many were doing was demonstrated when we saw so many of the hippie activists of the 70's turn into the materialistic Yuppies of the 80's.
Marla, you are searingly on target here. Beautifully written post, too.
Great post Marla - Having been part of the hippie alternative revival in Oregon for a while, I desire to reclaim what was good in those movements and what is, I think part of a 'thinking', Christian world view - such as healthy organic food, wholistic and 'natural' medicine. Using God's Word and Christ as the foundation, which part of these movements is good and ought to be led by Christians instead of Buddhists?? I am as skeptical of the food and marketing industry as I am politics, and I am growing more skeptical of some medical research as well. Money gets involved and makes things messy. Did you know that people make billions off you being sick and wanting their pills??? But I digress. . . . Especially about organic farming, Christians ought to be at the forefront of good stewardship, using it as an opportunity to proclaim God and His goodness and the true hope of our salvation (not save the earth by killing the people).
I like CA, we want to go to a Seminary there but don't think we can afford to live there!
I recently was doing some study at Oxford and heard this during a lecture on Daniel chapter 1. There is a tendency to make the absolute, relative. You use the words the “Immortal is mortalized.” When something absolute or immortal is relativised there is at the same time, the result which makes something relative, absolute, or immortal.
In Nebuchadnezzar's case the Tempple vessels which were sacred were placed in the museum/temple of one of Babylon's gods and thus relativised. In place of that absolute, there was substituted the image of gold which was to be worshipped - the relative was absolutized.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Marla!
Lot of West Coaster's in this crowd. Are you still in Orygun Annie. (Im in Portland area)
Christians have always been at the front of poverty and some social service issues; but Annie is right - Christians should be huge in environmental issues.
This wouldn't be my mission field - but I asked one of my church elders one time whether I was missing something scripturally here. His response was he doubted Christians would be very welcome. I suppose his take would have been the counter-culture meets the church encounter might not be a pleasant meeting
I was not aware of Coyote's acting carreer, but I have always assumed he is everyone's favorite narrator on numerous PBS-aired productions. I thank the Lord for his failure at eradicating capitalism.
Lots of "food" for thought in these comments.
Annie, I didn't mean to sound negative about organic food--I would buy more of it if I could afford it, but the farmer's markets here are even more pricey than the organic section of the grocery store, and Whole Foods is out of the question. Also, I often go through spells of not having much produce (it's a baby/kid thing) and just throwing frozen veggies and meat in the crockpot!
I think it's the word "organic" and the attitude that tends to accompany its usage that bugs me. But that's a whole nuther post.
David, I hadn't thought of it from that angle, but now that you mention it, I can see that also. Except that when the relative becomes "immortal" or "absolute", it's only in earthly terms, so it's not really real. Thus the devil's sham.
Shannon, me, too :)
Marla,
Serious question: living "in the lap of luxury and liberalism," how do you avoid spiritual oppression/depression?
More on the effect of the 60's at http://www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/mohler, Al Mohler's 7/18/2005 entry called "Two Competing Religions -- The Legacy of the 1960's". In it, Mohler cites a Stanley Kurtz article in which Kurtz posits that the classic liberalism of the 60's has, for some, become unmoored and morphed into a not-very-tolerant religion.
Gray, we moved here when I was three, and my mom and stepdad were evolving from counterculture lifestyle to Christian lifestyle (the whole process took about ten years, though it didn't really finish with my stepdad until he died six years ago--repurcussions of his drug use in the 60s). Anyway, growing up in that kind of environment, as well as in two households (one dysfunctional Christian, one dysfunctional secular) and going through public school up through my masters at Berkeley pretty much primed me for staying here, though I was determined (as a teenager) that I would get out and stay out. I couldn't stand the hypocrisy (rich people preaching socialism) and the spiritual oppression grated on me, too. But somehow through it all, God was using it to equip me to be here--we can't leave this area due to our business and my stepson--so we know this is right where God wants us. And my husband led a very worldly (though not luxurious) existence before I met him, so our marriage partnership is a good balance. But there are definitely times when I dream of living in the country somewhere that's still stuck in 1950...but truth be told, I probably would feel like a fish out of water. I seem to thrive on going against the flow :)
Marla - I didn't read you as being too negative toward organic.
Fleetguy - No I am not in Oregon anymore. :-( I was a professed Christian for part of my time at UO and I found people to be very responsive to Christian involvement in environmentalism, even pleasantly suprised. I think that and my nose piercing helped to break their sterotypes and enabled me to have a loving voice.
