Change and chaos: when dreams die the world dies a little, too
©
A good friend told me over coffee that he thought I might be focusing too much on dreams and not enough on practical ‘realities’. I got the point: dreams divert energy away from the business of just getting by.
But is that true? Dreams have shaped everything we are—and do. There would be no personal computers or, for that matter, death camps or civilization without them. One could argue that dreams have been the most positive and the most negative forces acting on human history.
Coincidentally, I watched a YouTube video that evening. The tune was the Stones’ Under My Thumb. As Mick sings a man in a loud green suit draws a pistol, aims at the camera and is stabbed by a Hells Angel. The scene is from the free concert at the Altamont Raceway in 1969. The man in green was Meredith Hunter, a black man who had been harassed by the Angels and wanted revenge. The Stones’ helicopter pilot refused to take the man to hospital, and he died on the stage behind the band.
The 1970 Mayles brothers-Stones “Gimme Shelter” documentary paints a sanitized version. In reality, Mick and the boys packed into the helicopter and never looked back. It was the last gig of their American tour that literally bagged $1.8 million—in a football-shaped handbag—that Mick carried to Switzerland the next day, after spending the night with singer Michelle Phillips. To this day Altamont marks the twilight of the peace-and-love 1960s generation.
Despite the flower-power fizz, it had been a tough decade. Altamont was preceded by the assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X. The Vietnam war was raging, and the Manson murders were still on the front pages.
If Altamont showcased the descent of the hippie dream into hedonism, there was a bigger story. The youth culture of the 1960s was a part of wide democratic movement that marched directly into the jaws of the system. The status quo reaction, now known as the neoliberal movement, informed by Frederich Hayek and Milton Friedman, was what James McGill Buchanan called an ‘excess of democracy’. Plutocrats like Charles and David Koch vowed “never again”, and began to organize, invested in think tanks and universities to influence both public opinion and education, and began funding both Republicans and Democrats, in what Chris Hedges, John Ralston Saul and Noam Chomsky call a ‘corporate coup d’etat’. The Nixon presidency was the end of the popular democratic dream in the US.
The 60s decade was a war between the dream and authority. Unlike the dream which thrives on creative anarchy and change, authority dislikes change. Authority wants control.
We see the results today in Charlottesville. Police response to the white racists’ violence in Charlottesville this week has been notably slow and anemic—unlike the military response to the Indigenous protests at the DAPL site in North Dakota. The white narrative obviously fits with the ruling status quo. Brown dreams for a healthier environment, not so much.
Over the past decade and a half we’ve seen the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the overthrow of Libya, the interference in Syria, and annihilation of dreams across the Middle East, while Kurds and ISIS fight to reestablish competing dreams with weapons left over from the departing Americans.
Back in the US widening income and wealth gaps, rising poverty rates, and income stagnation for the rest of the population—as the economy continues to Walmartize—have turned the American Dream into American Despair. Hopelessness fuels the fentanyl-opioid epidemic sweeping across the States and Canada. This is the aftermath of 40 years of authoritarian neoliberalism, culminating in 2008 with the big bank bailout and the eviction of millions of Americans from their homes during the sub-prime mortgage market meltdown. Welcome to a new era of untouchable wealth and permanent poverty.
Hopelessness isn’t restricted to personal misfortune. A listless guerrilla war sputters on, fighting against GMOs in our food, against pesticides on crops and forests, against the fossil fuel industry and its effects on climate change. The enemies are easy to identify. Jane Mayers, author of Dark Money, “reports that an E.P.A. database identified Koch Industries in 2012 as the single biggest producer of toxic waste in the United States,” writes a NYTimes reviewer.
Occasionally waking from our apathy we fight against our own politicians indentured to corporately captured state, who take instructions from paid lobbyists, international lawyers and fact-bending neoliberal think tanks like the Fraser Institute. It’s an elaborate undertaking by the monied class to retain wealth and control.
Control and authority limit choice under the banner of ‘practicality’ or ‘reasonable achievability’ or ‘reality’. The kind of dream matters. Dreams that require control are not shared dreams at all. They’re nightmares, no matter how artfully camouflaged.
We need aspirational dreams more than ever to envision new ways to move into the future. Even so, we’ll never get back what we’ve already lost.
Additional reading:
A good friend told me over coffee that he thought I might be focusing too much on dreams and not enough on practical ‘realities’. I got the point: dreams divert energy away from the business of just getting by.
But is that true? Dreams have shaped everything we are—and do. There would be no personal computers or, for that matter, death camps or civilization without them. One could argue that dreams have been the most positive and the most negative forces acting on human history.
Coincidentally, I watched a YouTube video that evening. The tune was the Stones’ Under My Thumb. As Mick sings a man in a loud green suit draws a pistol, aims at the camera and is stabbed by a Hells Angel. The scene is from the free concert at the Altamont Raceway in 1969. The man in green was Meredith Hunter, a black man who had been harassed by the Angels and wanted revenge. The Stones’ helicopter pilot refused to take the man to hospital, and he died on the stage behind the band.
The 1970 Mayles brothers-Stones “Gimme Shelter” documentary paints a sanitized version. In reality, Mick and the boys packed into the helicopter and never looked back. It was the last gig of their American tour that literally bagged $1.8 million—in a football-shaped handbag—that Mick carried to Switzerland the next day, after spending the night with singer Michelle Phillips. To this day Altamont marks the twilight of the peace-and-love 1960s generation.
Despite the flower-power fizz, it had been a tough decade. Altamont was preceded by the assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X. The Vietnam war was raging, and the Manson murders were still on the front pages.
If Altamont showcased the descent of the hippie dream into hedonism, there was a bigger story. The youth culture of the 1960s was a part of wide democratic movement that marched directly into the jaws of the system. The status quo reaction, now known as the neoliberal movement, informed by Frederich Hayek and Milton Friedman, was what James McGill Buchanan called an ‘excess of democracy’. Plutocrats like Charles and David Koch vowed “never again”, and began to organize, invested in think tanks and universities to influence both public opinion and education, and began funding both Republicans and Democrats, in what Chris Hedges, John Ralston Saul and Noam Chomsky call a ‘corporate coup d’etat’. The Nixon presidency was the end of the popular democratic dream in the US.
The 60s decade was a war between the dream and authority. Unlike the dream which thrives on creative anarchy and change, authority dislikes change. Authority wants control.
We see the results today in Charlottesville. Police response to the white racists’ violence in Charlottesville this week has been notably slow and anemic—unlike the military response to the Indigenous protests at the DAPL site in North Dakota. The white narrative obviously fits with the ruling status quo. Brown dreams for a healthier environment, not so much.
Over the past decade and a half we’ve seen the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the overthrow of Libya, the interference in Syria, and annihilation of dreams across the Middle East, while Kurds and ISIS fight to reestablish competing dreams with weapons left over from the departing Americans.
Back in the US widening income and wealth gaps, rising poverty rates, and income stagnation for the rest of the population—as the economy continues to Walmartize—have turned the American Dream into American Despair. Hopelessness fuels the fentanyl-opioid epidemic sweeping across the States and Canada. This is the aftermath of 40 years of authoritarian neoliberalism, culminating in 2008 with the big bank bailout and the eviction of millions of Americans from their homes during the sub-prime mortgage market meltdown. Welcome to a new era of untouchable wealth and permanent poverty.
Hopelessness isn’t restricted to personal misfortune. A listless guerrilla war sputters on, fighting against GMOs in our food, against pesticides on crops and forests, against the fossil fuel industry and its effects on climate change. The enemies are easy to identify. Jane Mayers, author of Dark Money, “reports that an E.P.A. database identified Koch Industries in 2012 as the single biggest producer of toxic waste in the United States,” writes a NYTimes reviewer.
Occasionally waking from our apathy we fight against our own politicians indentured to corporately captured state, who take instructions from paid lobbyists, international lawyers and fact-bending neoliberal think tanks like the Fraser Institute. It’s an elaborate undertaking by the monied class to retain wealth and control.
Control and authority limit choice under the banner of ‘practicality’ or ‘reasonable achievability’ or ‘reality’. The kind of dream matters. Dreams that require control are not shared dreams at all. They’re nightmares, no matter how artfully camouflaged.
We need aspirational dreams more than ever to envision new ways to move into the future. Even so, we’ll never get back what we’ve already lost.
Additional reading:
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