I was born fifteen years after the Summer of Love, in
1982. I didn't even exist on the same planet with John Lennon,
who died two years before I was born, or Bob Marley, who died a
year later. In other words, I missed the hippie boat by a long
shot. But as I attempt to survey the spiritual landscape of
young people today, I realize that landscape is under the shadow
of this cultural milieu. The words “the sixties”
don't just refer to a time in history to me. Instead, they
connote a collective mood, one that was informed by idealism,
originality, possibility, and the naïve self-assurance and
spiritual curiosity of thousands. A mood that was always just
out of reach in my own experience growing up. And just so you
know, I'm not one of those
credit-card-carrying-Phish-show-attending neo-hippies who are
trying to relive the sixties in their own ironic way. But
there's no denying the nostalgia, intermixed with cynicism, that
the period inspires in me, emotions I couldn't make sense of
until this topic came up during a conversation with one of my
favorite writers, the philosopher, teacher, and cultural critic
Thomas de Zengotita. He said to me, “You not only have to
live with the memory, you have to live with endless
representations of it, which are diverse enough and rich enough
that you can feel nostalgia for a time you never lived through.
And that's a very strange position to be in. It makes it very,
very hard for you guys to feel like, 'Okay, we can wipe the
slate clean and start again.'” As it turns out, I've just
got a case of postmodern envy: the envy of anything real.
Don't get me wrong. The question is not whether young
people at the beginning of the twenty-first century can
re-create the spiritual enthusiasm or cultural revolution of the
sixties, but whether these lofty terms can attain new meaning
and relevance for those of us born in the age of irony and
relentless skepticism. Can we afford to believe in
change—again? Can we afford to believe in anything, if
what Zengotita called “our ironic defense against the
possibility of being duped” has become our most useful
asset, an impenetrable method of psychological survival? For a
long time now, the answer has been no—and the
characterization of Generation X as lacking moral fiber and
spiritual ambitions, or ambitions of any kind, is a testament to
that. But will the next wave of youth, my own Generation Y,
follow in their footsteps, as we have done in so many other
ways? Or will we stake new ground? Never before has this
question been so critical. In their recent book, The World's
Youth, scholars Reed Larson and T.S. Saraswathi write,
“In the end the future is in the laps of young people. We
are handing the next generation of youth a world rife with
serious problems—global warming, looming environmental
catastrophes, poverty, numerous international
conflicts—just as similarly daunting problems were handed
to us. Nothing less than a full mobilization of all young people
to higher goals and ideals is required for humankind to make it
through the new century.”
As the pressures of the present moment in history
become more and more overwhelming to contemplate, our ironic
defenses seem increasingly absurd in contrast. Faced with an
unprecedented complexity of horrors, nothing could be more
frightening than to think of ourselves as the vanguard
generation, responsible by default for the future of the human
race. In fact, it sounds like a joke. With originality and
idealism left as luxuries that young people in the sixties were
fortunate enough to enjoy, all we have in our arsenal as the
most privileged youth on the planet is irony and a lack of
purpose.
However, recently I've wondered if those qualities
that characterized young people in the sixties—unabashed
idealism, thirst for change, and a willingness to challenge the
status quo—can really be gone. Isn't it more like we've
stalled, so to speak, in the midst of the postmodern
mood—a mood that Zengotita described as, “Hey! Wait
a minute. Chill man.” And if these qualities aren't gone,
then what is keeping them from reemerging, especially at a time
when positive participation and change is so painfully and
desperately needed? As Zengotita pointed out to me, “This
mood in particular is very hard to overcome—it's like you
can't be a virgin again. You know enough history to know how
typical it is for human beings to fall into mass delusion and
commit horrendous acts. This is what really shaped postmodernism
to begin with.” The present mood of hyper-apathy among us
has created terrible conditions for spiritual pursuits, to say
the least. But perhaps we've reached a breaking point. Recently
there has been a deluge of books about young people and
spirituality, often written by those chill Gen X'ers themselves.
In 2002, Radical Spirit: Spiritual Writings from the Voices
of Tomorrow was published, containing testimonies written
by, for example, Ocean Robbins, Julia Butterfly Hill, and Stuart
Davis. Blue Jean Buddha: Voices of Young Buddhists
follows the same anthology-style format, but is written by
those who have followed the Buddhist spiritual path. Noah
Levine, the 31-year-old author of Dharma Punx, is
included in Blue Jean Buddha, as are other young
authors like Diana Winston. And then there is an entire genre of
Christian literature written by and for young people, including
Red Moon Rising: How 24-7 Prayer is Awakening a Generation,
and The Rock Cries Out: Finding Eternal Truth in
Unlikely Music. Could books such as these be evidence that
today's youth are beginning to want or need a larger spiritual
context for our lives? I decided to investigate a couple of them
and speak with their authors with one purpose in mind: to find
out if the mood among us was shifting and, if so, to discover
where it was headed.