The golden anniversary (50 years) of Woodstock is winding down, and with it, hopefully, the end of the glamorization of the wild bacchanalia. The thing has been raised to the status of near-religious icon. I must admit that I’m in a mood for a little iconoclasm similar to Byzantine plebes and peasants smashing icons in the 8th century AD. Woodstock doesn’t deserve anything “golden”.
Let me take that back. Some of the music was great. But let’s be honest, Woodstock and its aftermath for a couple of decades was hedonism with a beat. As it would turn out, the only ones to profit were the media moguls and the purveyors of Hep C treatments.
For the rest of us, we got a poisoned culture. We’re still trying to live down an epidemic of out-of-wedlock births, drugs as recreation, sex as recreation, a “me” culture, and a rash of self-centered materialists. The cultural ooze swamped civil society with its families, churches, neighborhoods, and voluntary associations. For many, they inhabit a culturally deracinated war zone.
The same rationale that stripped our culture of its moral moorings on Yasgur’s farm also is pushing for government as mommy and comforter-in-chief to pick up the pieces. Besides detonating any concept of fiscal limits, the ultimate result is to freeze us in amber as perpetual adolescents. I sense a return of aristocratic condescension and noblesse oblige without much of an independent middle class. A resurgence of feudalism anyone?
Thanks Woodstock for the great music, but no thanks for the scorched earth culture.
RogerG