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There is something very safe, even if troubling,
about the past. We know it, its twists and turns,
the pitfalls and the potential highs. It provides
a foundation, a firm footing that in the best of
circumstances is a jumping off point for new and
unforeseen possibilities. The problem arises when
we become so entrenched in that past, that we can
not move beyond, can not shift our gaze from the
certainties to those possibilities.
I have often wondered to what extent the past has
a hold on us, influences the way we see the world,
and the choices we make. In political science there
have been volumes on social policy showing that
the options current generations have to choose from
were determined by the choices made in the past,
by the roads that were taken and the ones that were
left behind. That once an option is passed over,
discarded, it is hard if not impossible to ever
have it be a viable option again. This is especially
true for those choices made in the distant past,
where any record of the available alternatives has
been lost and forgotten.
This is not just true in political science, but
in other areas of human knowledge and history. The
same can be true for those of us on a spiritual
journey as well. To a large extent the spiritual
paths we have to choose from are influenced by the
choices and traditions that were laid out by previous
generations. So often they are depicted as the only
viable alternatives, with any thing else being demeaned
or degraded. Often the validity or legitimacy of
the course someone takes, and how well they follow
it, is judged in terms of how rigorously they keep
to the rituals and doctrines of that chosen tradition.
It is often a rare individual who is willing to
open her mind enough to see beyond the restrictions
and limitations.
To provide a point of departure let me turn back
to politics, especially to the recent presidential
election. I kept on feeling that I was stuck in
a time warp and that it was no longer 2004, but
the early 1970s, and I kept on wondering when we
were going to get out of Vietnam and face the challenges
and problems of the present day including the current
war in Iraq and the role of the US in post cold
war world. Instead we became obsessed with the choices
made by the two candidates as young men in response
to that earlier conflict. While this was an important
discussion in terms of describing the character
of these two men and as a way to frame the debate
over our current crisis, it turned out to be more
of a distraction, another way to avoid confronting
the difficult choices that need to be made and the
possible futures that could result.
In many ways we are still fighting the battles
that began over thirty years ago – the battles
over civil rights and women’s rights, the
role of the US in the world, the role of the government
in helping those who have been marginalized and
dispossessed. Was the last election just the latest
battle in this ongoing struggle? I believe it is.
But there is something else going on as well. Not
just that we are still struggling with these issues,
but that we were still stuck in that earlier time
looking not to resolve and move beyond them but
to have them fit into the comforting and familiar
solutions and approaches that in our minds we believe
work so well.
The critique that our nation’s politics are
stuck in an idealized version of the past is used
time and time again to describe the policies and
ideologies of those on the right who want to role
back the reforms and revolutions of the past thirty
years. They seem to want to reverse the changes
brought about by the social movements that arose
in the 1960s to expand the rights of women, minority
groups and gays; to reverse decades of environmental
legislation that is depicted as being bad for business
and limiting the possibility of a truly laissez
faire economy; to return to a time of small government
and the two parent nuclear family. But is it really
just those on the right that are stuck in the past,
but are those of us on the left also trapped in
an earlier and idealized worldview that is no longer
relevant to the present day?
Once again my thoughts go back to the 1960s, to
the wish that I and so many others have expressed
that we could somehow recreate the 1960s; somehow
recapture the energy, force and passion of those
days and the social movements that have come to
characterize that decade. I came of political age
in the 1960s. Though too young to have been active
in the civil rights and anti-war movements, when
I became old enough to become involved it was the
forms and ideas of the 1960s that shaped the ideologies
and strategies that we followed. My friends and
I would walk around Greenwich Village hoping to
find that place where the spirit of the 1960s lay
dormant and to discover what we could free it. What
we did not seem to get was that while we were inspired
by the past what we were doing, and needed to do,
was to create something new, a new way of seeing
and changing the world. Where we succeeded, where
we failed had nothing to do with the 1960s but with
our being able to connect with the spirit of the
times and fire imaginations. The world we created
was just as different from the 1960s as they were
from the times that came before.
For me and my friends and co-conspirators on the
left, the last few decades have been difficult ones.
Our nation seems to be marching straight forward
into yesterday, before the 1970s, before the 1960s
and in some ways before the 1930’s. So how
do you fight back against the past? One way is to
get caught up in the past, to recreate it, by chanting
the slogans, singing the songs, wearing the clothes,
recycling the causes, some how hoping that this
will be the secret to releasing the spirit of the
1960s, our golden era. All we end up doing is recreating
the forms, not the content.
It was exactly those things about the 1960s that
made it such an important and exciting time that
make it impossible to recreate. The passion and
spirit came from the concerted and spontaneous efforts
of a massive number of people to somehow come to
grips with the issues and problems they were facing.
Of course they took from the past, learned the lessons
passed down from previous struggles and movements
to address perceived wrongs and in some way change
the world. But if they simply tried to recreate
the 1930s, and there were some who tried to do exactly
that, that important time might never have happened.
Each change, each breakthrough, comes when a group
of people is willing to open up their minds, open
up their imaginations, to new possibilities. Living
in the past takes our time, our energy. By letting
go we become able to move ahead, to have the time
and energy to be creative, and find new solutions.
Perhaps that is the one lesson we should be taking
from the 1960s – that to change the world
we have to begin to re-imagine it and be willing
to leave behind the ways of the past that no longer
serve us.
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