Printed in the Fall 2019 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editor's Desk " Quest 107:4, pg 2
This is an issue on ancient civilizations, but I hope you will indulge me if I talk about our present one.
Like me, many readers of this magazine came of age in the 1960s and ’70s, at the crest of the New Age movement. At the time many were hoping that civilization was advancing to a higher consciousness. This hope was fueled by the nascent environmental cause, the push for racial and gender equality, and a growing interest in alternative spirituality of the sort long embraced by Theosophy.
Many believed that the last quarter of the twentieth century was a precursor of this coming New Age. Once the third millennium arrived, these ideals would come to fruition.
Such has not apparently been the case. The twenty-first century has been a disappointment. In this country, the age has seen increasing division and turmoil. The 9/11 disaster looked (and still looks) like an omen of ills to come. The United States pursued unnecessary and criminal wars. Inequality of income increases. Environmental crisis is no longer a matter of speculation: it is a present reality. In some respects, the country is more divided than it has been since the Civil War.
So what happened? Did the New Age fail to show up? Was it yet another ridiculous hope to be dashed by the grim world? So it might appear, but I don’t think the answer is that simple.
Attitudes in America certainly have polarized furiously. The battle lines are drawn, and, it would seem, are being reinforced with every news report, every Facebook post. This trend does not appear to be abating, but that is illusory: all trends abate. Often they generate movements in the opposite direction. Everything reverses itself; every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This is as true in the affairs of humans as it is in Newtonian physics. I think it is unwise to ignore this fact, and yet we do this frequently. We assume the current trends are going to continue. But the only thing we can foresee about the future is that current trends will not continue. They are always forestalled by unforeseen events.
Nothing is more obvious, and nothing is more frequently forgotten. This truth might—and probably should—console those who despair about current events. But of course this sequence never stops: every event evokes a counterresponse, which provokes a counterresponse in turn. There is no end to this process, at any rate not on the plane of material reality.
In any case, many New Age ideas have entered the mainstream. Meditation is no longer regarded as an eccentricity. The need for environmental cleanup is evident to everyone who does not have a vested interest in pollution. Zen and Tao have become clichés. We see mindfulness practices taught in the workplace, and even occult subjects like the Tarot and the Kabbalah are familiar to millions. The organized religions are, for better or worse, caving in faster than anyone could have imagined.
Of course, even positive trends have their unfortunate sides. Corporate culture has embraced mindfulness to help staff deal with stress, but some have asked whether this isn’t a cynical way to avoid cutting the workloads of overtaxed employees. The Wall Street Journal informs us that “mindful snacking . . . is being promoted by companies who want to convince increasingly health-conscious customers that indulging in cookies, crackers and candy is OK to do sometimes.” Environmental solutions often come with their own costs: LED bulbs have cut power use, but they have enabled cities to put on many more streetlights, so that light pollution is far worse than it was even in 2010.
So the New Age has, in a sense, come. It was naïve to assume that it would come easily and simply; it has been a struggle, and a struggle that is far from over. The baby-boom generation—those born between 1945 and 1965—has been, so to speak, the field of Kurukshetra on which this battle is taking place. There are many ranged on each side. For reasons of my own, I suspect that this clash will reach a crisis point between now and the middle of the next decade.
After that, we shall see. The baby boom now rules the nation: every president since Bill Clinton has been a baby boomer. But this generation is now well into retirement age, and it is beginning to pass from the scene. I believe that many of these conflicts will pass with it.
What will be left? The millennial generation and Gen Z, whose values are quite different from those of their parents, and, I suspect, far less extreme and confrontational. In a 2015 study, the market-research firm Wildness said, “This is a generation of CCs (Culture Creators) . . . The CCs are empowered, connected, empathetic self-starters that want to stand out and make a difference in the world. They have created a new Cultural Currency that values uniqueness, authenticity, creativity, shareability and recognition. What’s different for this generation is not as simple as the internet or technology.”
The question is an ancient one: do problems get solved, or do they merely fade away?
Another question remains unanswered; maybe it is unanswerable. Civilizations have a lifespan of their own: they are born, mature, decay, and perish. Why? Possibly we can find an answer in the playroom. A child builds an elaborate structure with its blocks, admires it for a few minutes, then knocks it down and starts again. What if all of human history is like that?
Richard Smoley