Woodstock - The Message of History's Biggest Happening

(4 of 5)

In its energy, its lyrics, its advocacy of frustrated joys, rock is one long symphony of protest. Although many adults generally find it hard to believe, the revolution it preaches, implicitly or explicitly, is basically moral; it is the proclamation of a new set of values as much as it is the rejection of an old system. The values, moreover, are not merely confined to the pleasures of tumescence. The same kind of people who basked in the spirit of Bethel also stormed the deans' offices at Harvard and Columbia and shed tears or blood at Chicago last summer—all in the name of a new morality.

To Historian Theodore Roszak, the militancy of the student New Left and the dropped-out pacifism of the turned-on types are two sides of what he calls a "counterculture" by which almost everyone under 30 has been affected. Like the poor urban black, this counter-culture is an alienated minority within the Affluent Society, even though it is made up primarily of the sons and daughters of the middle class. They have seen suburbia, found it wanting, and have uttered "the absolute refusal," as New Left Guru Herbert Marcuse calls it, to modern urban technology and the civilization it has produced. With surpassing ease and a cool sense of authority, the children of plenty have voiced an intention to live by a different ethical standard than their parents accepted. The pleasure principle has been elevated over the Puritan ethic of work. To do one's own thing is a greater duty than to be a useful citizen. Personal freedom in the midst of squalor is more liberating than social conformity with the trappings of wealth. Now that youth takes abundance for granted, it can afford to reject materialism.

It is easy enough for adults to reject the irrationality and hedonism of this ethic. But the young are quick to point out that the most rational and technically accomplished society known to man has led only to racism, repression and a meaningless war in the jungles of Southeast Asia. If that is oversimplification, it is the kind around which ringing slogans are made.

Youth has always been rebellious. What makes the generation of the '60s different, is that it is largely inner-directed and uncontrolled by adult doyens. The rock festival, an art form and social structure unique to the time, is a good example. "They are not mimicking something done in its purest form by adults," says one prominent U.S. sociologist. "They are doing their own thing. All this shows that there is a breakdown in the capacity of adult leaders to capture the young." Some other observers agree that the youth movement is a politics without a statesman, a religion without a messiah. "We don't need a leader," insists Janis Joplin. "We have each other. All we need is to keep our heads straight and in ten years this country may be a decent place to live in."