Brewed Beverage of Choice: A Pint of Roots Toasted Coconut Porter (Stomach Thing-y finally gone!)
“Madmen govern our affairs in the name of order and security. The chief madmen claim the titles of general, admiral, senator, scientist, administrator, Secretary of State, even President. And the fatal symptom of their madness is this: they have been carrying through a series of acts which will lead eventually to the destruction of mankind, under the solemn conviction that they are normal responsible people, living the lives, and working for reasonable ends. Soberly, day after day, the madmen continue to go through the undeviating motions of madness: motions so stereotyped, so commonplace, that they seem the normal motions of normal men, not the mass compulsions of people bent on total death.” [Why do we allow these madmen to] “go on with their game without raising our voices? There is a reason: we are madmen, too…Our failure to act is the measure of our madness.” - Lewis Mumford, “Gentlemen: You Are Mad” (1946)
I came across this quote as I was riding the train to work this morning and it occurred to me that Lewis Mumford could have easily been speaking about the events in this decade rather than the onset of the nuclear age of the mid to late 1940s. The most important part of the quote to me is not about the madmen running around the hallowed halls of our government. It is the part about our “madness” for not acting on the measures in front of us.
For the past few years I have made the statement to many of my friends that the decade of the 2000s is truly the 1960s without balls. We are Eunuchs castrated by fear brought on by the McCarthy-istic Patriot Act. It shames me to admit that I am one of these Eunuchs. We were given a chance to look inward after 9/11 and we chose to look the other way. We have had chances to stop what has been progressing, but have failed to get up as much as a burp. We want to do something, but have no courage to stand up for what is right. If our society were the student at Tiananmen Square, we would have run far away from the tank.
But lately I have been kind of re-phrasing my comments. I still believe we are a society of eunuchs paralyzed by fear. But if we are a mirror to any decade it is the fifties: the decade of McCarthyism; the decade of the burgeoning arms race with the Soviets; the decade of the suburbs and financial prosperity in the middle class. But even with the modifications we are Eunuched grandchildren of the fifties because we do not have the Beats as our social conscious.
So far the best I have come up with as my revolt are the “What we need is another …” phrases which I use to raise awareness to our lack of action. What we need is another Malcolm X! What we need is another Cesar Chavez! What we need is another Beat Movement! It may be small, but it can be effective.
So I got off the train with a lot on my mind. If we truly are a mirror image of the fifties and things go cyclical, well then I guess the revolution is coming. Let us hope it as promising and we can all hop on the train as it passes.
Prost!
the confucian brewer