class in the late 1950’s and early 60’s, it had achieved ancritical mass; conventional notions were simply blown away.n(Remember the collapse of university administrations in thenface of student revolts?) That explains the phenomenon ofnolder people who were suddenly 60ed, who sported beardsnand sandals and love beads, and who doggedly whined thatn”the kids are trying to tell us something”; aging Lennysnfreed from ritual observance of conventions they had longnceased to believe in.nWhen we think of the 60’s, not as the beginning ofnsomething but as the culmination of a long process ofndisintegration wrought by a radical cultural force, as the finalntriumph of that force, then it is apparent that the 60’s arenstill working themselves into every nook and cranny ofnmiddle-class society, rooting out the last vestiges of decency,ninstitutionalizing the rites of the new paganism. Probablynnot many of its adherents at any time thought of culturalnmodernism as the repeal of the Decalogue and the hardwonnmillennia of civilization that went with it, but so it isnturning out. Nevertheless, there is hope: Remember thatnthe 60’s are an end, not a beginning, that the intellectualnforce of modernism was spent a long time ago (witness thenbarrenness in the arts), and that there is a growing realizationnof the terrible price we paid for our dubious freedomnfrom the old conventions. The 60’s are not dead, but thenintellectual weapons that will finally lay them low are beingnforged today.nWhat motivated my 60’s people was always the pipendream of freedom from constraint, whether the chains tooknthe form of farm work or monogamy or intellectual effort orndemocratic politics or anything at all. There would be a newnheaven and a new earth and we would all be liberated asnnew beings. Which is why, to answer the question thatnseemed most puzzling to me at the beginning of this essay,nnearly everyone cheered on the 60’s people and no onendeeply criticized them. It was not the startling transformationsnor the fog of phoniness or even the wish to believe thatnbemused observers and assured a protective press for then60’s, but an instinctive sense that all of us were somehowninvolved, implicated in a way that we could feel but notnunderstand. And of course we were, because no one,nwilly-nilly, could escape some participation in the longnprocess of cultural erosion that has been going on sincenbefore we were born. No matter how we judged the 60’s ornconsciously thought of them at the time, we unconsciouslynwelcomed them. They fulfilled the spirit of the age. Wencould not have wholeheartedly repudiated them — whichnwould have meant a root and branch job — without repudiatingnourselves. So we cheered them on or we acquiesced ornwe laughed or we criticized certain aspects of the 60’s, andnthen we passed on and acted as if the decade was justnanother dusty item in the faintly ridiculous past, along withnthe Charleston, zoot suits, and antimacassars. We will nevernbe able to confront the 60’s successfully, as they exist now innour culture, until we reexamine cultural modernism and ournrelation to it — in other words, until we face the 60’snourselves.nThe reaction to AIDS is a striking illustration of thisnpoint. Why is it that even the most obvious commonsensenmeasures, once applied to other threats to public healthn(e.g., venereal disease), like the registration and reporting byndoctors of all AIDS eases, cannot be done? To point to thenhomosexual lobby as the answer is inadequate, because thennwe must ask why the lobby is so powerful that it can suppressnour sense of self-preservation. The homosexual movementnis a foremost example of the drive for freedom fromnconstraint, and AIDS is one of the consequences ofnuninhibited indulgence in that freedom. The outspokennapostles of cultural modernism, largely intellectuals andnacademics, will brook no interference with any of thenconsequences because they are afraid that the cause itselfnwill then come under attack, threatening not merely thenhomosexual crusade but the entire movement of radicalnpolitics and cultural anarchism. But without the middleclassntroops, the apostles are weak, and the troops, convertednonly in the last generation, are uneasy. Right now, they arentaking only individual practical steps, i.e., doctors are beingnselective about their patients, friends agree to swap bloodntransfusions, and so on. Lacking understanding of how ideasnwork in society, they can only dimly see, or rather feel, thatnsome dangerous notions are abroad today. That the ideasncurrently derive most of their tyrannic power from the factnthat they are lodged in their own hearts and minds, and thatnthe social despotism can be overthrown only when theynbegin to exorcise it from themselves, these thoughts are, asnyet, far from their minds.nI would be remiss if I did not take note of what wasncertainly my country 60’s people’s greatest contribution tonthe era, the bringing together of nature worship andnMarxism, a synthesis that is the apotheosis of 60’s-ism. Annunlikely yoking, one would think, but the two bodies ofnthought share a great deal of common ground. Both, forninstance, are shot through with fantasies, superstitions, andnfetishistic thinking, though laying claim to the strictestnrationality. Modern nature worship, the apocalypticnenvironmentalism of the last 25 years, is well-known for itsnglib show of scientific evidence, while Marxism (as no onenneeds to be told) has always vehemently insisted on itsnscientific character. In both cases, however, this is cuckoonscience, the product of ideological thinking, magical reasoning,nfull of symbols, talismans, and taboos. Furthermore,nthe nature worshipers look to Marxism as the meansnto achieve nature’s ends (an idea that was not foreign tonMarx, by the way). Since the reverse side of naturenworship is hatred of the works of man, in particularn”exploitive” man, Marxism, with the fierce power of itsndestructive animus, is very attractive to the nature worshipers,nlured by the feeling that this is the force that willnutterly crush capitalism and the corrupt world it has made,nreplacing it with a Utopia so vague as to fit the pipe dreamsnof every Friend of the Earth. Marxism, it is fondly hoped,nwill put us under the aegis of nature, where all the artificialnconstraints (even perhaps human contingency itself) ofnso-called civilization will fall away.nWhenever I recall my country 60’s, one symbolic figurencomes to mind, a man who embodied not just the 60’s butnthe long preparation, too, and whose later career is anperfect demonstration of the sweeping success of the 60’s,nas revealed in the happy stupefaction of the observers andnadmirers from the wider, supposedly saner, world. ScottnNearing was an early admirer of Stalin, later of Mao, andnfinally of Enver Hoxha. For a while he was a Communist,nnnFEBRUARY 1988 / 29n