Editor’s note: This commentary is by Tom Fels, an independent curator and writer, and author, most recently, of “Buying the Farm: Peace and war on a sixties commune,” (UMass Press, 2012). He lives in North Bennington.
The party’s over:
Government unable to afford basic services.
Millions unemployed.
Pensions withdrawn, savings eviscerated.
Education inadequate, and later unaffordable.
Business and politics no longer conducted for the public good.
Lobbies and wealth rule.
Citizens powerless.
Apathy and complicity rampant.
Vision rare, responsibility a heroic exception.
How did we get here?
For one of my post-war baby boomer generation this is a pressing question.
Looking at recent history, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the detritus littering the current social landscape today is simply the result of a lengthy national spree.
A generation ago Americans were filled with hope. Parents moved ahead after the devastation of two world wars and a depression; their children thrived under a new regimen of freedom and imagination. Dr. Spock instructed us on an enlightened way to raise children. Summerhill offered insight into teaching and learning. Education and the arts expanded, equality was pursued. The needy were offered assistance. Even outer space was explored, satisfying our thirst for further inquiry and knowledge spurred by the atomic age.
In those not so distant days there seemed to be answers to the questions of the time, and society at large pursued them: for war, peace; for poverty, opportunity. For government and business, accountability as well as profit; for unions, advancing the well-being of their members.
When I saw the first aging corpulent American male gazing discontentedly out of a downsized Buick or Oldsmobile I knew that the future I had envisioned had begun to arrive.
Over the years progress was made on many such fronts, and certainly Vermont was a leader in these, yet somewhere along the path passion cooled and as a nation we lost our way. We stopped thinking of each other as members of a large community and launched ourselves instead on a vicious cycle that has ended up separating us: those in power who have, and the rest who in varying degrees have not. Business objectives were reduced to a short term view – profits, the bottom line; gratification was rarely delayed. Self-aggrandizement succeeded community as an ideal, as if we each lived only in the silo of a private world. Governments, in their generosity – calculated to keep us happy and themselves in office – managed to sidestep their responsibility to eventually pay their debts. Large businesses undercut the lives of their employees to benefit themselves. Customers were treated as data: My Internet bill arrives with a stunning photo of the company’s new skyscraper, as if an image of corporate power and news of their latest billion dollar takeover would somehow offset the poor service and high prices they offer end-users like myself.
As early as the 1970s one could read of wholesale layoffs in American industry. “That’s odd,” I thought. It didn’t make sense if life was to continue in the way most of us knew it. There were limits, I thought, to the value of efficiency and the benefits of outsourcing and lower prices; others would surely see them. But before long I could go shopping and not find anything made in the United States. Then it dawned on me: Things were not going to be the same.
Looking back on the past from the privileged position of today, we seem to be approaching the trough of a long decline. Until recently the American way of life had been progressing upward for as long as most could remember. Looking even farther back, with a few notable exceptions – the Depression, occasional recessions – it had been doing so for two centuries or more. We had our televisions; we had our automobiles; we had our large houses and pools. Our cities and suburbs grew; we made the desert bloom.
But much of the world didn’t have a comfortable house, much less a car, personal computer, television or pool. As this sector of the world’s population began to rise there was no other course for us, given the unsustainable approach we take to life, than that of decline. Jobs offered to others abroad led to lower employment at home, a path first forged by mechanization and then amplified by computerization and finally capped by “free trade.”
Reading the signs, it was clear more than 30 years ago that the post-war boom would have to end, and that over a period of years the American standard of living would likely decline. As the evidence now shows, no one cared enough, or was prescient or powerful enough, to forestall this apparently inexorable tide.
For me, as a former communard and scion of the counterculture, it made little difference. I had lived my life, and would continue to live it, as simply as possible, using as few resources and requiring as little capital as I could. Shopping was done only when absolutely necessary, advertising ignored as the manipulation it is meant to be. I haven’t watched television in any serious way for over 50 years. For me and those of my ilk on the fringes of the economy the decline in the American standard of living would only bring others to the place we had always been ourselves.
But this is not the important point. That was: the shock the society at large would experience at all the unwanted and surprising changes to come, and the unavailability of any obvious solution. It would take a while, but it would happen; millions would be disrupted and wonder why.
When I saw the first aging corpulent American male gazing discontentedly out of a downsized Buick or Oldsmobile I knew that the future I had envisioned had begun to arrive. It took some time to play out, but here we are today. Many are without jobs or security due to outsourcing and other self-interested business strategies. Large corporations and privileged individuals hold disproportionate power and wealth. The education necessary to advance the culture and sustain the economy is inadequate. Destructive weapons are widely available and often used. Life-threatening drugs are rampant and a thriving business as well. The mentally ill are on the streets and in emergency rooms, virtually public wards; for-profit prisons are crowded and their inmates often released uncorrected.
For a member of the post-war generation the questions loom: Where did all the hopeful energy go? And what is the source of the self-serving, short sighted behavior that followed? Is this simply American character? Is there no cure?
But problems, it is often observed, can provide opportunities as well. We can’t change the situation we’re in now overnight. We can, however, begin to restore equilibrium, more fruitful planning, generosity, common sense. Cleaning up the detritus of this decades-long revel, the empty bottles and stray crushed kernels of excess gone wild, will be the challenge of generations to come and the prelude to a new era of increased responsibility. But for now we need to remember:
The party’s over,
They’ve burst your pretty balloon.
The candles flicker and dim.
Now you must wake up,
All dreams must end.
The piper must be paid.
It’s all over, my friend.
— Lyrics adapted from “The Party’s Over,” by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, music by Jule Styne (1956).
