Hope, Then and Now

Staying strong in darkened times

Some things defy rational understanding. Like why humans as a species can be so violent. Or why so many are prone to hate and anger. Or why societies that have progressed so far in science and reason can’t seem to find their way to preventing environmental disaster.

We are so used to hearing that catastrophic events are “unprecedented” that we stop looking for the precedents. But while the threats facing the world today are surely ominous, now is not the first time they have felt that way. And the greatest threat we face is a misguided sense of hopelessness.

That Was Then

My generation (the Baby Boomers) understood something about hopelessness. We grew up in a time of war. Video footage of young men shooting guns in jungles populated the nightly news. American boys in their late teens were conscripted into service and sent half a world away to kill an enemy they didn’t know. More than fifty thousand of them were killed serving a cause many did not understand or believe in, while back home, some of the protestors who wanted to bring them home were brutally beaten. Although we were not yet close to having the type of 24/7 news channels that both serve and plague us today, every night the network news programs that did exist brought the war, with all the fear and anger it inspired, into our living rooms.

Those nightly images and the ever-present threat of conscription inspired a peace movement like none the nation had witnessed before or has witnessed since. The constant presence of war as an American phenomenon gave rise to a counter-culture that expressed itself in rebellion to societal norms. Some members of the new counter-culture only cared about the hedonism it engendered (as in the mantra of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll”), while others also cared about such serious matters as peace, freedom, racial justice, environmental protection, and the avoidance of nuclear holocaust.

Yet, with the end of the draft and, ultimately, the war, dedication to issues of social justice largely faded. Many who had participated in anti-war and civil rights protests quickly turned their attention away from foreign and domestic affairs and toward navigating the mundane concerns of ordinary life. A generation that had adorned itself in utopian ideals settled into an ethos characterized by pragmatic material concerns.

This transition was captured poignantly in two rather pessimistic songs from the late- and post-Vietnam-War era. The first, “American Tune,” was written by Paul Simon in 1972, just after Richard Nixon’s election to a second term as President. Simon released it as a single and as a track on his third solo album, “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon,” in 1973, the year America withdrew from Vietnam and one year before Nixon resigned. (More accurately, Simon wrote the lyrics, and attached them to the hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.”)

Simon’s words are moving not only because of their poetic power, but also because they captured the feelings of many young Americans who were living through those turbulent times. He expresses the weariness of a generation disrupted by war and doomed (they thought) to another four years of an administration they abhorred, an indefinite prolonging of the war, and a wayward path for their country. He muses:

I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees

Their despondency is symbolized in the narrator’s dream of an out-of-body experience in which he looks down to see the Statue of Liberty “sailing away to sea.” In the end, his weariness is evident in his attitude of resignation:

Oh, it's alright, it's alright
It's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all, I'm trying to get some rest

A few years later, another songwriter captured this same spirit of the war-weary generation. In his song “The Pretender,” which became the title of his 1976 album, Jackson Browne, like Simon, used first-person narrative to describe young Americans’ malaise. Like Simon’s narrator, Browne’s is an everyday working man, someone who’s going to rent “a house in the shade of the freeway,” pack his lunch each morning and go to work each day. At the end of the day, he’ll go home, rest, and then repeat the routine. Still, he doesn’t understand what happened to the idealism of his youth:

I want to know what became of the changes
We waited for love to bring.
Were they only the fitful dreams
Of some greater awakening?
I've been aware of the time going by.
They say in the end, it's the wink of an eye.
When the morning light comes streaming in
You'll get up and do it again.

Like Simon, Browne uses the metaphor of dreams sailing out to sea. He writes of lovers who are left with “nothing but to choose off and fight,” and who “tear at the world with all their might, while the ships bearing their dreams sail out of sight.” But while Simon’s song hints at the narrator’s submission to material needs, Browne’s more overtly depicts a character who has traded his ideals for a life whose only purpose is material gain:

I'm gonna be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim
To the heart and the soul of the spender
And believe in whatever may lie
In those things that money can buy
Where true love could have been a contender.
Are you there? Say a prayer for the pretender
Who started out so young and strong only to surrender.

If boomers were once the generation of "peace, love, and understanding," to quote Nick Lowe's 1974 song, they soon became the generation of conspicuous consumption. As Lowe wrote longingly of those times, "where are the strong, and who are the trusted? And where is the harmony, sweet harmony?" One might add, did anyone other than these songwriters and their fans ever really care?

This Is Now

When I look at the shape of the world and our nation today, I hear Simon's, Browne's, and Lowe's lyrics not only as descriptive but, to some extent, prophetic. There was a time when the Baby Boom generation held so much promise. They seemed committed to a better world. And while they should not be idolized, idealized, or judged too harshly, I had hoped that they (or should I say "we"?) would have been more successful in setting the world on a better path. In no small part, we failed.

And yet, the news is not all bad. Many of us, and many of those who have come after us, are still fighting the good fight. Complacency often overtakes us, but not all of us, and not all the time. Society has made slow and unsteady progress in attacking poverty, racism, and environmental degradation, but there has been progress nonetheless. And while that progress has been inadequate, there are still people working both visibly and behind the scenes to build on it. I see them among the lawyers I know, law students, administrators, and professors, today's youth, and goodhearted people of countless trades and professions. Even in those politicians of either party who continue to uphold the ideals and responsibilities expressed in their oaths of office.

For every act of violence, there is at least one act of healing. For every hateful word, there are words of compassion. For every push against environmental activism, there are environmental activists, scientists, governments, and industries making advances. The world will never be fully at peace, and hunger will never be fully satisfied. But each of us can do our part, and many are doing theirs, to make the world a better, safer, and more just place.

In the 1960s and 1970s, we thought we were living in the darkest of times. Nuclear confrontation seemed close at hand, and we were just beginning to understand the environmental consequences of our dependence on fossil fuels. While we Baby Boomers never arrived at, or even shared, a utopian vision, and never solved the problems plaguing our society, some among us did make valiant strides. And even though we think the threats facing us today have never been more ominous, we have felt that way before, and still we have endured and, in many times and places, thrived.

To borrow a somewhat more hopeful phrase from one more song, the 1965 tune “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the Byrds (which itself borrowed from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible), to everything there is a season, “a time for love, a time for hate, a time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.”

The Statue of Liberty still stands in New York Harbor. The ship of dreams has not sailed away. And the fundamental goodness in the hearts of most people remains in place. We just may need to strain our eyes a little harder now to see it.