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A L S O
About Camille Paglia
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Dear Camille:
After clandestinely watching the exiting crowd from the Dalai Lama's lecture
here in oh-so-politically-correct Madison, Wisc., I am curious as to
what your take is on such currently trendy cultural practices as
eco-feminism, "natural living" and the broader New Age movement. I for one
am paralyzed by the emphasis on "healing" -- are we all so hurt? -- the
Mother Nature rhetoric, the narcissistic fetish for self-empowerment and
the anti-urban, anti-sex ideology that seems to secretly lie at the heart
of it all. What's the deal?
A gay male punk lost in the organic garden (save me ...)
Dear Lost Punk:
Insofar as the New Age movement follows directly from the visionary and prophetic side of the 1960s (which hailed a dawning "Age of Aquarius"), I approve of it.
As a college student, I became very interested in astrology, as well as esoteric folk-sciences like palmistry and Asian forms of divination like the I Ching. I loved the shift toward Asian theories of holistic medicine and Zen-based meditation practices, originating in California, with its rich heritage of Chinese and Japanese immigration. At its best, New Age trance music, which fuses Eastern and Western tonalities (in the Debussy manner), is gorgeous, though it has unfortunately degenerated into the monotonous banalities of Yanni and John Tesh.
We have the New Age movement to thank for the fact that Chinese acupuncture is increasingly an accepted therapy in orthopedic sports medicine and that nutrition is no longer confined to the female ghetto of "dieticians" but has been incorporated into the basic education of physicians. The back-to-nature element in the 1960s, while it had too much sentimental Rousseauism (which misses nature's destructive barbarism), also helped to sound the alert about toxic and carcinogenic pollutants in our air and water after the industrial revolution.
The complex mind-body continuum, which was neglected in Western medicine, with its Cartesian dualism, needs much more systematic investigation. Many apparently telepathic or occult phenomena -- another 1960s theme I have never surrendered -- can probably be explained in scientific ways, if a satisfactory experimental apparatus could be devised (as was attempted, with poor results, at Duke University).
What you find nauseating -- and I utterly agree with you -- is the grim, granola brigade in eco-feminism, with its rigid groupthink and hostile indifference to art. These are the sad-sack people who think the deadly earnest, message-mad Indigo Girls, with their ham-handed strumming, are great musicians. (Send for the vinegar and aspirin!)
The rise of the lipstick lesbians of the 1990s has certainly pushed that kind of separatist, political lesbianism to the periphery, but it still thrives, or should I say suppurates, in insular pockets like Madison or Northampton, Mass., which the tabloids like to call "Lesbianville, USA." Unfortunately, the lipsticks on the whole are so airheaded and have accomplished so little in artistic or intellectual terms that the fascist eco-feminists, with their outmoded communitarianism, still have the ideological advantage.
The worst aspect of this movement is, as you suggest, the obsession with "healing," which predicates modern life (where Western women are the freest of any in world history) as inherently destructive. At its origins, New Age was about expanding consciousness to cosmic range, integrating humanity with nature at its vastest and most awesome. Alas, today's New Age has shrunk down to pampering the wounded "inner child," yet another in the endless American parade of victims.
Dear Camille:
Riddle me this: Is it my imagination, or has America become even
MORE materialistic than during the much-maligned '80s? I find this talk of
an ever-expanding stock market misleading and discomforting. Are we
building a society that is so dependent on material goods that it will not
know how to function during a war or famine or both? Human nature (and
Mother Nature) has not changed to the point where we can rule out either
one in our or our children's lifetimes. I find myself ready to start
stuffing the mattress with gold coins. Perhaps millennium fever is starting
to get to me. What do you think?
Hoarding in Honolulu
Dear Hoarding:
Yes, I agree with you that the present jubilation over "an ever-expanding stock market" is very shortsighted, in view of the cyclic pattern of prosperity and economic collapse in history. Everyone who has heavily invested in mutual funds, whether on an individual basis or via a pension fund, is gambling that international politics will remain stable and that there won't be abrupt climatological changes that disrupt the distribution chain and food supply.
You're so right that neither human nature nor Mother Nature has changed (a constant theme of my work). Surely the fact that you live amid the fabled grandeur of Hawaii, with its violent volcanic past and ever-present fiery magma flows, has helped persuade you of this great truth!
When the stock market crashes in 1929 in the movie of Patrick Dennis' "Auntie Mame" (that font of wisdom), actress Vera Charles smugly proclaims, "And everyone said I was such a fool, spending all my money at Tiffany's!" The rise and fall of nations and empires around the world for the past 5,000 years must teach us how fragile culture is. Paper currency, paper certificates, paper contracts, computerized databases: How quickly they can be swept away, like cuneiform mud tablets, in the extremity of war or famine. Even diamonds and gold coins would count for little in a postapocalyptic wasteland where we are scrabbling like animals to survive.
Philip Cary, "teaching English and flyfishing in Patagonia County" in Santiago, Chile (how farflung is Salon's reach!), asks if I have "a book list of recommended reading." While such a list, like those compiled by "Cultural Literacy" author E.D. Hirsch or my mentor Harold Bloom, seems like a very good idea, I have yet to make one. In the meantime, let me highly recommend a reading program heavy on ancient, medieval and premodern world history -- the kind of books that give one a sobering sense of the magnitude of the political landscape and of the shattering ruin of culture after culture that believed itself eternal and insuperable.
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