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Show FOCUS 72 No better by Mark Gustavson After the end of the Second World War, thousands of soldiers beat a frenzied path home, fired with the elation of having won an "idealistic" war and tempered by the realization that the conflict claimed millions. Many headed for college and proclaimed that theirs would be the generation that would finally herald the human millenium. The same is true today. Our generation is sure of its superiority and contemptuous of an older generation gen-eration that looks upon us with patronizing pat-ronizing bitter-sweet smiles, deploring de-ploring our excesses but" secretly envious of our energy. It has been this way always: we are of no different dif-ferent flesh. Each new generation dead has the mass of men realized their mistake: Man, as a whole, has always hated and despised those who could have saved us from our individual and collective stupidities. stupidi-ties. Alone in the history of the human race, there have only been a few genuises who sought to build a more beautiful building, to create better music, to sculpt a better form, and, above all, to think better thoughts. And there will come a day when the creative men, the men of vision, will tire of the hatred, suspicion and persecution that has been their eternal companions and tell the world to go to hell - which it will. If this is an elitist attitude, I accept ac-cept that charge. It must not be is sickened by the mistakes of its i elders, but forgets that its views are intrinsically tied to the system and people it so despises: without the system - the values, mores, etc., -there could be no protest against the core of that society. Additionally, Addition-ally, each generation is disgusted at the exploitation and racism of its elders, but fails to either perceive the same ills within itself or to realize real-ize that that generation has created its own prejudices: suspicions borne of differing world-views, competing moral perceptions and divergent philosophical systems. If each generation puts to rest some of the old horrors, creates a few new ones and maintains the system pretty much the way it has "always" been, it is because that the birth pangs of each generation's genera-tion's suddenly- realized consciousnesses conscious-nesses are lost in the brave assertions as-sertions and vacuous claims that do not lead to much accomplishment. The majority of each generation forgets for-gets its youthful, radical zeal - if indeed they ever possessed it or even glimpsed it - and falls back into the comfortable modes of living liv-ing that only change slightly from generation to generation. Thus you have the constant re-creation of a middle class - a middle class not defined by economic status, but based upon intellectual capability i and aesthetic appreciation. In many senses, the constant re-creation of the middle class is a kind of soc- ietal meritocracy - those of greater intellectual capacity tend to form their own clique and those of mediocre medi-ocre ability find their own level and those of little mental capacity ' balance the chart out at the bottom. This is so, not so much because only a certain number of people can be properly termed "intellec-, "intellec-, tuals", but because only a few take seriously their youthful beliefs that Man can alter the world, that each '.Man lives for his .own sake and that no one can lay claim to what " he produces, and that through the ' employment of reason and logic, 1 Man is, in the words of Pico, "the .measure of all things." There are only a few of each ' generation who carry the world ''along and raise the average of the :' human race. Every advancement in ' history - philosophical, technological, technologi-cal, aesthetic - has been accomplished accomp-lished by a small cadre of individuals indivi-duals who refused to accept standard stand-ard explanations and mass culture e and were, for their societal "her-'.esy',' "her-'.esy',' persecuted, despised and ignored. Only when such men were thought that I am not a believer in a democratic form of government nor is it true that because some among us have superior intellectual ability that they ought to be pede-stelled pede-stelled and worshipped by the masses. Every human being, by the nature of his existence and consequent con-sequent potential, is to be accorded accord-ed the full privileges of liberty and the absolute right to control his own destiny. But I defend a democratic demo-cratic form of government primarily primari-ly because it is simply the best available method of insuring the freedom of those who make the world function. Additionally, and most importantly, democracy makes possible the opportunity for the geniuses among us to think in their own way and allows any men of vision, trapped within the smolder ing and festering middle class, to escape that bondage and secure their freedom among their intellectual intellec-tual equals. It must never be forgotten for-gotten that the greatest moments in Man's history have been written by individuals with superior senses of aesthetics and superior intellectual perceptions. I think, then that our generation genera-tion is neither better nor worse than any other. We will have our geniuses, geni-uses, as has every other age, and we will have our slobs, as has every other age. And that is why things change and improve so slowly: a few carry the world on their shoulders and sponsor the improvements while the Middle Class, bitching some, but eventually accepting the inevitable, seeks to destroy the men of genius. |