The Sixties (15 page)
Authors: Jenny Diski
Whether it was our fault, or the fault of those other radicals of the Eighties and Nineties, the current situation seems to
be that those who are looking to be in charge of the world next are actually facing the prospect of not much world at all.
There are small signs that a new radicalism is developing, or at least desperate attempts, here and there, to resist the dying
of the planet. Gathering force, I hope. The Sixties generation are getting to an age where the world is beginning to look
quite baffling and alien. It happens to everyone as they grow older. People don’t notice you in the street, they aren’t very
interested in what you have to say. We complain about how things used to be and how they are now – better then, terrible now.
And it feels as if this is true. But perhaps it always feels true as the centre drifts away from you. Anyway, no one takes
much notice – they make TV programmes called
Grumpy Old Men
, as we used to sit around laughing at Alf Garnett and his ever-baffled missus.
*
What alarms me is how little has actually changed. There are new laws governing what can be said and ensuring that minorities
are treated better in the workplace, but even in the developed nations women are still paid considerably less than men for
the same work, millions of people are starving around the world and most of them are black, the wife of the first minister
of Northern Ireland felt able to call homosexuality ‘an abomination’ in 2008, the Market, whether it is up or down, controls
the lives of individuals, and vast corporations have consolidated their power over elected (and unelected) governments. In
addition the planet is frying. Some fine souls are still battling; most of us who had the good fortune to be part of the Sixties
are plain discouraged.
*
Schizophrenics, specifically; those of us who were depressives were merely dull.
*
In a British sitcom called
Till Death Us Do Part
, which portrayed a viciously racist, sexist working-class anti-hero as a lovable idiot, patronised by all around him.
Introduction
1
Rodrigo Fresàn,
Kensington Gardens
,
translated by Natasha Wimmer, New York, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2006.
Consuming the Sixties
2
Leviticus, 19:19.
Altering Realities
3
Timothy Leary, in Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain,
Acid Dreams
:
The Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties and Beyond
(New York, Grove Press, 1985), quoted in Jonathon Green,
All Dressed Up: The Sixties and the Counterculture,
London, Pimlico, 1999.
Body Work
4
Erica Jong,
Fear of Flying
,
New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973.
5
Jonathon Green (ed.),
Days in the Life: Voices from the English Underground 1961–1971
,
London, Minerva, 1988.
6
Ibid.
7
Roy Jenkins,
Is Britain Civilised?
,
1959, quoted in Green,
All Dressed Up
.
Remaking the World
8
Tariq Ali,
Street Fighting Years
,
London, Collins, 1987.
9
Ibid.
10
Henry James,
The Princess Casamassima
,
London, Macmillan, 1886.
11
Oz
, 32, quoted in Green,
All Dressed Up
.
12
The
Times
Leader article, written by William Rees-Mogg on 1 July 1967, quoted Alexander Pope in asking ‘Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?’ in response to the prison sentences handed out to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for possession of drugs.
13
David Widgery,
Preserving Disorder
,
London, Pluto Press, 1989.
14
Peter Buckman,
The Limits of Protest
, London, Gollancz, 1970, quoted in Green,
All Dressed Up
.
15
Widgery,
Preserving Disorder
,
London, Pluto, 1989.
16
Ibid.
Projecting the Future
17
Leila Berg,
Risinghill: Death of a Comprehensive School
,
London, Penguin Books, 1968.
18
Ivan Illich,
Deschooling Society
, New York, Harper & Row; London, Calder & Boyars, 1971.
19
Paul Goodman, John Holt, for example.
20
Illich,
Deschooling Society
.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.
Changing Our Minds
23
R. D. Laing,
The Divided Self
(London, Tavistock, 1960), Penguin Books, 1965.
24
R. D. Laing,
The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise
,
London, Penguin Books, 1967.
25
Joseph Cambell,
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
,
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1949.
26
Mary Barnes, Joseph Burke,
Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness
(1971), Free Association Books, 1991.
27
Ken Kesey,
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
, New York, Viking, 1962.
28
Thomas Szasz,
The Myth of Mental Illness
,
New York, Harper & Row, 1961.
29
Green (ed.),
Days in the Life
.
30
Widgery,
Preserving Disorder
.