[PREV - HEINLEIN]    [TOP]

HRESP

I posted that bit "Thou Art Mrs. Grundy"      STRANGER
to the net, and got a response...
                     

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: xrcjd@mudpuppy.gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles J. Divine)
Subject: Re: I am but an egg. (RAH flame attractor)
Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt MD
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1992 15:45:41 GMT
                     
What?  I must ask -- it is relevant in this case -- how old are you?  And, if
you are young (less than say, 30), what history have you read?
                     
I lived in the San Francisco bay area in the late 60s.  I participated -- to
some extent -- in the cultural and social experimentation of the time.  I
continued this experimentation when I moved to New York State and City in 
the 70s.             
                     
This is the kind of opposition we encountered:
                     
1.  Being sent to jail (the infamous drug war)
2.  Being fired from jobs (too much hair)
3.  The occasional officially sanctioned police riot (Chicago)
4.  Being sent to jail(not wanting to fight in Vietnam)
5.  Less violent pressures from family, friends, employers to conform
                     
There were problems with alternative lifestyles -- like there are with
traditional lifestyles.  But to say that they fizzled out purely from 
internal pressures is a very inaccurate rewriting of history.  Indeed, it
is still possible to see positive outcomes of those efforts today.
                     
>                                                       
>Like it or not, you carry your culture with you,
>wired into your consciousness...
>                    
>               Thou art Mrs. Grundy.

                     
This is true for us all in differing
degrees.  Some struggle against their
cultural conditioning -- reasonably
successfully, thank you.  If humans didn't
have the ability to change -- well, most of
us would still be living in Europe bowing
to kings and popes.  Mrs. Grundy is quite
real in the US.



(Talked to him awhile by email... it seems
he thought I was presenting a conservative
argument.  Anyway, he probably has a point
but I still say the Mrs. Grundy within is
stronger than that without.)

--------
                                  
[NEXT - HUGO]