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More: Society had slumped into a posture of cynical disbelief; no, the search for spiritual illumination was epidemic and had grown so fervent (so Columnist Harriet Van Home claimed last week) that it was endangering the state-church separation. The moral permissiveness achieved in the '60s was ripening into generalized decadence; no, not only was fidelity growing fashionable once again, but television was even cutting back on sex and violence for fear of losing the mass audience.
Clearly this social flux consisted more of motion than of movement. The women's liberation movement may turn out to be profoundly epochal, but neither it nor any other trend gripped or provoked the nation as did, say, the now quiescent civil rights crusade. Surely no single label or slogan could possibly embrace such a diffuse drama, and efforts to encapsulate these times in a single-shot insight have been quite unconvincing.
Some have called it the "apathetic age," but to accept this is to be blind to boundless activity by innumerable social and political groups. In its farewell issue, New Times depicted this as a "decadent" age; yet the magazine itself, though born out of the sensibilities of the '60s, went out sounding a faintly puritanical note that was proof that not everything had been infected by decadence. American journalism has always been inspired more by the Mafia than by the Gray Ladies. Moreover, it has a recurring weakness for the kind of tunnel vision that imagines a glimpse into Plato's Retreat reveals the daydreams of the inhabitants of Texarkana. So it is useful to remember the warp of many impressions of the '70s that have gained currency. Some result from the tendency to mistake the new and exotic for the prevalent and enduring.
Many commentators, all too many, have followed the lead of New Journalist Tom Wolfe and accepted the '70s as the "me decade." Wolfe's term has been useful, but anyone who imagines that it is definitive has swallowed a dose of glib chic whole. The discovery of the insuperable self-centeredness of human nature did not await the '70s. Neither did the national habit of self-improvement, which was going strong when Public Man Ben Franklin was its high priest. Broadly, the premise of the "me decade" view is that great numbers of people are disdaining society to pursue existence as narcissistic massage buffs, om-sayers, encounter groupies and peacocks. The type is to be found, true, but the number seems very small. A thousand times as many Americans are to be found at any time —around hospitals, churches, offices, schools, neighborhoods —all as lost as ever in the volunteerism that has been a striking phenomenon of the national character since Tocqueville came meandering about. Thank God he did not get his information from the crowd at Elaine's.