Counterculture Through the Ages : From Abraham to Acid House

Rating:
Summary: From Socrates to Brand, Sterling, and Rheingold: Good Stuff
Review: <P>
I found this book in an airport, and bought it for three reasons: 1) because Bruce Sterling plugged it; 2) because my 15-year old is well on his way to being part of the emerging counter-culture; and 3) because I do believe that "power to the people" is now imminent--not if, but when.

It starts slow, quickly improves by page 50, and as I put down the book I could not help but think, "tour de force." This is both a work of scholarship and an advanced commentary that puts counter-culture movements across history into a most positive context.

Across the ages, the common currency of any counter-culture is the will to live free of constraints, limiting the impositions of authority. Indeed, it is very hard not to put this book down with an altered appreciation for hippies, war protesters and civil rights activists, for the book makes it clear that they are direct intellectual, cultural, and emotional descendants of both Socrates and the Founding Fathers, especially Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson.

From Socrates to Taoism, Zen, Sufis, Troubadours, the Enlightenment, the Americans, Bohemian Paris, and into the 1950's through the 1970's, the author's broad brush review of the history of counter-culture in all its forms is helpful to anyone interested in how the next twenty years might play out.

The bottom line is clear: we need the counter-culture, and it is time for this century's culture hackers--of whom Stewart Brand may be the first--along with the author--to rise from their slumber.

Some side notes:

1) An underlying theme, not fully brought out, is that anything in excess or without balance can be harmful. Absolute dictatorship by religions is as bad as absolute secular dictatorship. Science without humanity, humanity without science.

2) The Jewish religion is favorably treated in this book as perhaps the most counter-cultural and individualistic of the religions. I found this intriguing and was quite interested in some of the specific examples.

3) I disagree with the author's attack on Roger Shattuck's "Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography," and would go so far as to say that the two books should be read together, along with "Voltaire's Bastards," "Consilience," and a few of the other books on my information society list.

The author concludes somewhat somberly, not at all sure that there is much good ahead. He very rationally notes that before we begin the next big counter-cultural movement we should probably focus on fundamentals first: do we have enough water, energy, food, medicine?

I agree with that, and I agree with John Gage's prediction in 2000, that DoKoMo phones in the hands of pre-teens, and Sony Playstations at $300 with access to the Internet, are irrevocably changing the balance of power. Jonathan Schell is on target in "Unconquerable World: Power, Non-Violence, and the Will of the People," and both Tom Atlee ("The Tao of Democracy") and Howard Rheingold ("Smart Mobs") as well as James Surowiecki ("The Wisdom of the Crowds") all show us clearly that information is going to out the corrupt and restore balance to our lives. It is not a matter of if, but when. Collective intelligence--public intelligence--is here to stay.

Rating:
Summary: Why Be Normal?
Review: Here Ken Goffman (apparently coauthor Dan Joy worked at the conceptual level only) has created a fast-moving and fascinating discussion of countercultures throughout history and what they have in common. The most interesting aspect of this book is the locating of ancient groups, like followers of Socrates and even the original Jews, that fit the modern definition of counterculture. Goffman even includes the Enlightenment thinkers of Europe, who even though they ended up being the establishment, definitely started out by countering the dominance and dogma of the Catholic Church. Goffman finds that these and modern countercultures, such as hippies and ravers, share an anti-authoritarian worldview and a love for individualism and nonconformity, which are central to the human condition in all regions, time periods, and political environments.

Unfortunately there are some problems with this book, inherent in the methods followed by Goffman and Joy. Goffman states in the introduction that it would be impossible to describe all the countercultures the world has ever seen, so representative examples have been chosen that most illustrate the basic arguments being advanced. This works reasonably well, to the extent described in the last paragraph, but still leads to a somewhat distracting sense of arbitrary and fragmented history. More specifically, the inevitable coverage of the hippie/new left movements of the 60s and 70s is highly politicized and personalized (not a problem for most of the rest of the book), and Goffman even accidentally says "we" a few times when describing the countercultural participants of that and the current era, damaging the observational integrity of some portions of the book.

On the writing side, Goffman has fun playing with the academic language that this kind of study engenders, and can sound funny (and purposefully ironic) when spewing professor-speak like "a complex exegesis would be required to do complete justice to this peculiar conundrum." But on the other hand, he is also prone to that same type of over-analysis, such as describing an off-hand onstage comment by Janis Joplin as "subvert[ing] the very division of time into discrete units." Goffman tends to make gigantic postmodern connections, such as 12th century French troubadours to Jefferson Airplane or Picasso's cubism to hip hop beats; he's prone to incessant name-dropping (see the index for dozens of names that appear on one page only); and he can't stop quoting Bob Dylan. Luckily, these pervasive flaws in method don't significantly damage the main points Goffman is making about countercultures, and his book is a fascinating treatise on those of us who will never be happy with normal conformity. [~doomsdayer520~]

Rating:
Summary: Good, but a little arbitrary
Review: I found this book admirable for several reasons--above all, its wide historic sweep. Goffman goes all the way back to Abraham and Socrates, and brings things up to the black bloc and acid house. I also learned a bit about Taoism and Sufism. Also, I found his political assessments well-founded and judicious. His critiques of the 'freak left' of the late sixties are not glib, but help us understand the limits of that moment. What troubled me was the exclusions in the book. Why Abraham but not Jesus? Why the troubadors but none of the medieval heresies? The Enlightenment/Voltaire but not the Renaissance/Montaigne? And the history of the modernist and sixties countercultures is a little conventional. Goffman hints at the need for a more global perspective on these moments, but doesn't achieve it. Indeed, maybe the most striking omission of all is Rastafarianism, which continues to be a central influence in youth culture worldwide. Go to any youth hostel anywhere in the world and see if you can spend 24 hours without Bob Marley's greatest hits wafting out of someone's sound system. If a global perspective were truly achieved, would the white men at the center of his account (Picasso, Joyce, Dylan, Abbie Hoffman, etc) look a little smaller? maybe.