VLVL(6) - The Children of the 60's

[David Morris]

Sebastian Dangerfield:
>In the PR(cubed) we have a campus in revolt, not over
>the War, but, as we are told repeatedly, over getting laid,
>listening to the stereo, weed, and--did I mention?--getting laid. [snip]

>But, at this ill-formed stage of my thoughts on the subject, I don't see
>VL's take on this phenomenon as the kind of free and liberatory, though
>absurd spectacle of Athene in full hormonal revolt.  He's giving us, I
>think, an empty revolt, disconnected from any Grand
>Politics--self-absorbed and, in the bad sense, childish.

and later:
>I think that what I'm getting at is that part of the VL project is
>certainly a de-mythologization of the sixties, telling us that it really
>wasn't all about the War . . . that the sixties was the outhouse of the
>postwar soul...  [snip] ...that vanity of vanities sayeth the preacher,
>all is vanity . . .

Me:
Try to imagine our present without that past.  Far from vain, the 
revolution won many battles.  The hemorrhage in Vietnam was stopped. 
 Tricky Dick was booted.  Many prohibitions were swept out the door as it 
was opened to let in so many new possibilities.  Many vanities indulged 
along the way, certainly, but all those possibilities once glimpsed, could 
not be completely squelched, and we are the richer for their advent into 
the common consciousness.

A kind of religious fervor permeates the PR3 revolution:
(208.36) Meanwhile, ominously, the education denied them now proceeded, as 
enough of them saw how deep, how empty was their ignorance.  A sudden lust 
for information swept the campus

Rex Snuvvle's revolutionary vision also has a religious hue:
(208.5) If such an abstraction could have for a while found residence in 
this mortal world, then - of essence to Rex - one might again...
   So did he envision himself counseling and educating Weed Atman

Contrast this idealistic/naive zeal with the zeal exhibited by Brock Vond, 
so cynical and corrupt.  Childish were the children of the sixties, but 
Jesus suffered the little children to come to him...