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Barry Metzger, 21, who as a Princeton undergraduate analyzed the new radicals in his senior thesis, breaks them down into a "Programmatic Left" (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Students for a Democratic Society); a "Far Left" (Communist-lining groups such as the Progressive Labor Party and the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs); and the "Pot Left"—the alienated who totally condemn society but do not believe anything can be done about it.
Those who believe something can be done are, however, turning away from traditional areas of commitment such as religion. Harvard-based Lutheran Chaplain Paul Santmire, 29, finds that "these kids have been fed a Milquetoast gospel in a modern world; they view religion with a certain anthropological sophistication. Yet they are past Nietzsche, because they really would like to believe." More than 250,000 students are helping tutor children in depressed areas. A more immediately fruitful area for social involvement is the campus itself—a malleable microcosm of an existing and perfectible world. Harold Taylor, former president of Sarah Lawrence College, observed recently: "The student has become the most powerful invisible force in the reform of education—and, indirectly, in the reform of American society."
The Bunk Detector. What the Now Generation possesses in every stratum is a keen ability to sense meaning on many levels at the same time. In its psychological armory it counts a powerful array of weapons—both defensive and offensive. Foremost among them:
a built-in bunk detector for sniffing out dishonesty and double standards.
When the Now People go on the offensive, they break out three very effective weapons: the Put-On, the Gross-Out, and the In-Talk. The first, which they adapted from the American Negro and learned during the civil rights marches, is the technique of the elaborate lie, the phony story that is aimed at gulling the listener and shaming him without his knowing it. The Gross-Out —or "garbage mouth"—is a blunter weapon. A group of young people in a club dominated by adults will suddenly begin chanting four-letter words, louder and filthier all the time, until they have completely disrupted the scene.
Both the Put-On and the Gross-Out are part of the Now Generation's "language bag"—a constantly changing lingo brewed from psychological jargon, show-biz slang and post-Chatterley obscenity. What the 1920s admiringly called a "good-time Charlie" is today Freudianized as a "womb baby," one who cannot kick the infantile desire for instant gratification. Anyone who substitutes perspiration for inspiration is a "wonk"—derived from the British "wonky," meaning out of kilter. The quality an earlier generation labeled cool is "tough," "kicky," "bitchin'," or "groovy." But the most meaningful facet of In-Talk is its ambiguity, a reflection of youth's determination to avoid self-definition even in conversation. "Up tight" can mean anxious, emotionally involved or broke; to "freak out" can mean to flip, go high on drugs, or simply to cross the edge of boredom; a "stud"