Back then – Moderates United

I’m continuing to read my Beat book. Neal Cassady had a fucking hard childhood. If he was a narcissist, and functionally he clearly seems to have been, there was a reason. There is hard, then there is growing up on the street with your wino dad in Denver during the Depression, with a mother who died before you could speak hard. Given the circumstances of his early life, it seems obvious he had severe Developmental Trauma.

But I meant to post on something else. Here is an excerpt from a Berkeley literary magazine, published around 1948:

Writers

There is a struggle going on for the minds of the American people. Every form of expression is subject to attack of reaction. This attack comes in the shape of silence, persecution, and censorship: three names for fear. In the face of this fear, the writer can speak. We believe in the possibility of a culture which fights for its freedom, which protects the economic interests of its workers in all fields, including the arts, and which can create for itself new forms and new voices, against reaction, and against the threat of war.

I could go several directions with this, but the point I wanted to make is that they GOT the freedom they wanted. It is like being a child demanding to stay out later, then you get that freedom. And what, in turn, does that get you? What good have these people done, really?

And I will add that “attacking reaction” is very much still with us. I don’t know how this election will go, but this mindset of being outsiders is still very much with the political Left. They don’t know how to govern: they just know how to oppose. Hating Trump, as I’ve said. was their platform this cycle. But if they could crash the economy so they could blame the Republicans then use the claim that they will grow the economy to get votes, they would.

There are people who are genuinely creative, who do truly benefit from greater freedom. But I think attacking “convention” for the uncreative came at some point to be seen as creative in its own right. What can I tear down today, they ask themselves. What and who can I ruin?

I’ll leave it there. I know I repeat myself, but this theme–which amounts to the artist as human being, as libertine, as anti-bourgeoisie–is everywhere, and is everywhere pernicious to genuine creativity, and to genuine humanity and Humanism.

Look to the middle. Always look to the middle. Moderation, clarity, curiosity and persistence. If you have genius, it will be found. And if you do not, nothing and no one will be destroyed by your reckless imitation of it.