27th July 2011

Today I read the obituary of Theodore Roszak.

My copy of Roszak's book, The Making of a Counter Culture, is the first British Edition published in 1970. I seem to think that I replaced an earlier paper back which I bought at college in the 1960's with a hard back because I felt that the book was both a classic and its thesis important.

The sub title of the book, Reflections on the Technocratic Society & Its Youthful Opposition describes both Roszak's thesis and the purpose behind the book.

In the book Roszak describes how in his view young people are making not only the news but leading the way in creating a new culture, a culture which is described in almost apocalyptic terms as a 'new heaven and a new earth'.

For Roszak technology was not an unmitigated blessing.

He chronicled the summer of love, the birth of flower power and the rise of the innocent dream of a future communicated through buttons, slogans on T Shirts and the lyrics of pop songs.

Sadly what happened, as we know only too well, the counter culture was countermanded by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the UK and President Ronald Reagan in the USA.

What had been the promise of a future free of war, dedicated to peace and music, a world that looked and felt like a permanent Woodstock or Glastonbury without the rain.

But Roszak was also an early eco warrior who suspected that technology would in the end destroy not only the innocence of the youthful counter culture he was describing but that its impact on the worlds ecology would be a negative one.

He went on to write further about this and was at the forefront of thinking about the threat of climate change and dismissed the internet as 'electronic graffiti' something with which Bill Gates and Steve Jobs clearly disagreed.

But reading his obituary made me think again about those heady days, the summer of love is now a memory for most people, and the French, soixante huitards, are largely in the conservative mainstream. The generation that listened to the music and dreamed of change, the baby boomers, have now retired and are dependant on their pensions and the NHS to maintain the quality of their lives as they look forward to living longer in their retirement communities, their GT's have become G&T's as life slows down or maybe like Sir Mick Jagger, they launch another super group.

The tragic events in Norway and the news of the continuing and worryingly stagnant British Economy reflect two aspects of how the counter culture has unravelled with the far right elements in Europe seeking to misrepresent the teachings of of Islam as somehow undermining western values and the whole capitalist economic banking nexus beginning to show signs of unsustainability.

It is interesting to contrast the Islamic view of money and lending and its antipathy to punitive interest rates something which, as in Marxism, differentiates between price and value and which lies at the heart of current western economic difficulties as we struggle to grow our way out of our indebtedness.

Perhaps if we wish to get our big society back on track we would do well to recall and practise the ideal contained in the final words in Roszak's book, quoting an old Pawnee Shaman: to approach with song every object we meet.