(5 of 5)
At least two national figures have been able briefly to capitalize politically on the idealism of the young. The knight-errant campaign of Eugene McCarthy was, his enemies said, something of a Children's Crusade. Bobby Kennedy, like his brother Jack, was also able to speak to the Now Generation in language that it heard and heeded. Clearly, the passions of the Bethel people are there to be exploited, for good or ill. It is an open question whether some as yet unknown politician could exploit the deep emotions of today's youth to build a politics of ecstasy.
The rock festival has become, in a way, the equivalent of a political forum for the young. The politics involved is not the expression of opinion or ideas but the spirit of community created—the good vibrations or the bad ones, the young in touch with themselves and aware. If Bethel is any proof, this kind of expressive happening will become even more important. "This was only the beginning," warns Jimi Hendrix. "The only way for kids to make the older generation understand is through mass gatherings like Bethel. And the kids are not going to be in the mud all the time. From here they will start to build and change things. The whole world needs a big wash, a big scrub-down."
The Hunger of Youth
Psychoanalyst Rollo May describes Bethel as "a symptomatic event of our time that showed the tremendous hunger, need and yearning for community on the part of youth." He compares its friendly spirit favorably with the alcoholic mischief ever present at a Shriners' convention but wonders how long the era of good feeling will last. Other observers wonder about future superfestivals, if they become tourist spectaculars for adult hangers-on. The Hashbury began to die when the bus-driven voyeurs came by and the hard-drug addicts took over.
It is beyond argument that the generation attuned to rock, pot and sex will drastically change the world it grew up in. The question is: How and to what purpose? Columbia Sociologist Amitai Etzioni applauds the idealism of the young but argues that "they need more time and energy for reflection" as well as more opportunities for authentic service. Ultimately, the great danger of the counter-culture is its self-proclaimed flight from reason, its exaltation of self over society, its Dionysian anarchism. Historian Roszak points out that the rock revolutionaries bear a certain resemblance to the early Christians, who, in a religious cause, rejected the glory that was Greece and the grandeur of Rome. Ultimately, they brought down a decaying pagan empire and built another in its place. But the Second Comings of history carry with them no guarantees of success, and a revolution based on unreason may just as easily bring a New Barbarism rather than the New Jerusalem. As Yeats so pointedly asked:
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?