Just to codify it for myself, and because I know it annoys some of my more idealistic (about which I will shortly argue) friends and I would like to explain myself
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I feel like the current generation of radical youth are looking back to the 1960s at the wrong group. Instead of the meaningful boycotts, sit-ins and other gestures of civil disobedience which took place during the Civil Rights movement, the focus tends to be on the hippies and the summer of love, a period of time that rivals the antebellum south in how romanticized it's become. While the summer of love, Woodstock, and other such things could be considered part of a meaningful cultural and artistic movement, it generally accomplished nothing in terms of politics. Yes, the hippie movement had substance at the time and for what it was, but the Vietnam war ended six years after Woodstock and eight after the summer of love. In contrast, the Montgomery transit system was desegregated after a year of boycott.
However, even looking back at the Civil Right movement does not work. There isn't much now to which civil disobedience can be applied (to clarify, purposefully getting arrested at a rally is not civil disobedience). There's no draft, no legal segregation, no Jim Crow. Despite cries of "patriot act", we're living in the most free and open society to ever exist in this country. Yes there are still major problems facing us as a generation, but we have to use the resources and methods of our own time to affect the change we need.
Honestly, I've been thinking about this for a while, but I think you've made all the points pretty well. We've talked before about Old Irony and (without my realizing it) New Sincerity, and my opinions on the matter stand.
I've found it really surprising recently how much our thinking on these sorts of things has become more and more similar.
Your point about looking back to the wrong inspiration is one I wanted to make more clearly. Todays youth are protesting without fear of any real repercussions. I would argue that there is a place for civil disobedience (especially in countries with a more repressive and wrongheaded government) but that those situations are far removed from the lives of the peergroup at which this diatribe was targeted. It is the threat of very real consequences on the part of the party being protested that gives civil disobedience it's psychological weight and fuels pressure from the citizenry of a nation and the international community into forcing a government to change it's policy.
College-educated students need to realize that the tools they are given as a consequence of their extremely lucky station in life are great and that they need not endlessly parade an inappropriate response to real problems in order to both feel like and truly be a responsible citizen.
However, even looking back at the Civil Right movement does not work. There isn't much now to which civil disobedience can be applied (to clarify, purposefully getting arrested at a rally is not civil disobedience). There's no draft, no legal segregation, no Jim Crow. Despite cries of "patriot act", we're living in the most free and open society to ever exist in this country. Yes there are still major problems facing us as a generation, but we have to use the resources and methods of our own time to affect the change we need.
Honestly, I've been thinking about this for a while, but I think you've made all the points pretty well. We've talked before about Old Irony and (without my realizing it) New Sincerity, and my opinions on the matter stand.
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Your point about looking back to the wrong inspiration is one I wanted to make more clearly. Todays youth are protesting without fear of any real repercussions. I would argue that there is a place for civil disobedience (especially in countries with a more repressive and wrongheaded government) but that those situations are far removed from the lives of the peergroup at which this diatribe was targeted. It is the threat of very real consequences on the part of the party being protested that gives civil disobedience it's psychological weight and fuels pressure from the citizenry of a nation and the international community into forcing a government to change it's policy.
College-educated students need to realize that the tools they are given as a consequence of their extremely lucky station in life are great and that they need not endlessly parade an inappropriate response to real problems in order to both feel like and truly be a responsible citizen.
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