By the early 1970's so many of the Me movements had reached this Gnostic religious stage, they now amounted to a new religious wave. Synanon, Arica, and the Scientology movement had become religions. The much-publicized psychedelic or hippie communes of the 1960's, although no longer big items in the press, were spreading widely and becoming more and more frankly religious. The huge Steve Gaskin commune in the Tennessee scrublands was a prime example. A
New York Times
survey concluded that there were at least two thousand communes in the United States by 1970, barely five years after the idea first caught on in California. Both the Esalen-style and Primal Therapy or Primal Scream encounter movements were becoming progressively less psychoanalytical and more mystical in their approach. The Oriental “meditation” religionsâwhich had existed in the United States mainly in the form of rather intellectual and bohemian zen and yoga circlesâexperienced a spectacular boom. Groups such as the Hare Krishna, the Sufi, and the Maharaj Ji communes began to discover that they could enroll thousands of new members and (in some cases) make small fortunes in real estate to finance the expansion. Many members of the New Left communes of the 1960'S began to turn up in Me movements in the 1970's, including two of the celebrated “Chicago Eight.” Rennie Davis became a follower of the Maharaj Ji, Jerry Rubin enrolled in both est and Arica. Barbara Garsonâwho with the help of her husband, Marvin, wrote the agitprop epic of the New Left,
MacBird
âwould later observe, with considerable bitterness: “My husband, Marvin, forsook everything (me included) to find peace. For three years he wandered without shoes or money or glasses. Now
he is in Israel with some glasses and possibly with some peace.” And not just him, she said, but so many other New Lefters as well: “Some follow a guru, some are into primal scream, some seek a rest from the diasporaâa home in Zion.” It is entirely possible that in the long run historians will regard the entire New Left experience as not so much a political as a religious episode wrapped in semi-military gear and guerrilla talk.
Meanwhile, the ESP or “psychic phenomena” movement began to grow very rapidly in the new religious atmosphere. ESP devotees had always believed that there was an
other order
that ran the universe, one that revealed itself occasionally through telepathy,
déjà vu
experiences, psychokinesis, and the like. It was but a small step from there to the assumption that all men possess a
conscious energy
paralleling the world of physical energy and that this mysterious energy can unite the universe (after the fashion of the light of God). A former astronaut, Edgar Mitchell, who has a Doctor of Science degree from M.I.T., founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in an attempt to channel the work of all the ESP groups. “Noetic” is an adjective derived from the same root as that of “the Noösphere”âthe name that Teilhard de Chardin gave his dream of a cosmic union of all souls. Even the Flying Saucer cults began to reveal their essentially religious nature at about this time. The Flying Saucer folk quite literally believed in an
other order
: it was under the command of superior beings from other planets or solar systems who had spaceships. A physician named Andrija Puharich wrote a book
( Uri )
in which he published the name of the God of the UFO's: Hoova. He said Hoova had a herald messenger named Spectra, and Hoova's and Spectra's agent on earth, the human connection, as it were, was Uri Geller, the famous Israeli psychic and showman. Geller's powers were also of great interest to people in the ESP movement, and there were many who wished that Puharich and the UFO people would keep their hands off him.
By the early 1970's a quite surprising movement, tagged as the Jesus People, had spread throughout the country. At the outset practically all the Jesus People were young acid heads, i.e., LSD users, who had sworn off drugs (except, occasionally, in “organic form,” meaning marijuana and peyote) but still wanted the ecstatic spiritualism of the psychedelic or hippie life. This they found in Fundamentalist evangelical holy-rolling Christianity of a sort that ten years before would have seemed utterly impossible to revive in America. The Jesus People, such as the Children of God, the Fresno God Squad, the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation, the Sun Myung Moon sect, lived communally and took an ecstatic or “charismatic” (literally: “God-imbued”) approach to Christianity, after the manner of the Oneida, Shaker, and Mormon communes of the nineteenth centuryâ
and, for that matter, after the manner of the early Christians themselves, including the Gnostics.
There was considerable irony here. Ever since the late 1950's both the Catholic Church and the leading Protestant denominations had been aware that young people, particularly in the cities, were drifting away from the faith. At every church conference and convocation and finance committee meeting the cry went up:
We must reach
the urban young people.
It became an obsession, this business of the “urban young people.” The keyâone and all decidedâwas to “modernize” and “update” Christianity. So the Catholics gave the nuns outfits that made them look like World War II Wacs. The Protestants set up “beatnik coffee houses” in the church basement for poetry reading and bongo playing. They had the preacher put on a turtleneck sweater and sing “Joe Hill” and “Frankie and Johnny” during the hootenanny at the Sunday vespers. Both the priests and the preachers carried placards in civil rights marches, gay rights marches, women's rights marches, prisoners' rights marches, bondage lovers' rights marches, or any other marches, so long as they might appear hip to the urban young people.
In fact, all these strenuous gestures merely made the churches look like rather awkward and senile groupies of secular movements. The much-sought-after Urban Young People found the Hip Churchman to be an embarrassment, if they noticed him at all. What finally started attracting young people to Christianity was something the churches had absolutely nothing to do with: namely, the psychedelic or hippie movement. The hippies had suddenly made religion look hip. Very few people went into the hippie life with religious intentions, but many came out of it absolutely
righteous
. The sheer power of the drug LSD is not to be underestimated. It was quite easy for an LSD experience to take the form of a religious vision, particularly if one was among people already so inclined. You would come across someone you had known for years, a pal, only now he was jacked up on LSD and sitting in the middle of the street saying, “I'm in the Pudding at last! I've met the Manager!” Without knowing it, many heads were reliving the religious fervor of their grandparents or great-grandparents âthe Bible-Belting lectern-pounding Amen ten-finger C-major-chord Sister-Martha-at-the-keyboard tent-meeting loblolly piney-woods shareit-brother believers of the nineteenth century. The hippies were religious and yet incontrovertibly hip at the same time.
Today it is precisely the most rational, intellectual, secularized, modernized, updated, relevant religionsâall the brave, forward-looking Ethical Culture, Unitarian, and Swedenborgian movements of only yesterdayâthat are finished, gasping, breathing their last. What the Urban Young People want from religion is a little â¦
Hallelujah!
⦠and
talking in tongues! ⦠Praise God!
Precisely that! In the most prestigious divinity schools today, Catholic, Presbyterian, and Episcopal, the avant-garde movementâthe leading edgeâis “charismatic Christianity” ⦠featuring talking in tongues, ululalia, visions, holy-rolling, and other non-rational, even anti-rational, practices. Some of the most respectable old-line Protestant congregations, in the most placid suburban settings, have begun to split into the Charismatics and the Easter Christians (“All they care about is being seen in church on Easter”). The Easter Christians still usually control the main Sunday-morning serviceâbut the Charismatics take over on Sunday evening and do the holy roll.
This curious development has breathed new life into the existing fundamentalists, theosophists, and older salvation seekers of all sorts. Ten years ago, if anyone of wealth, power, or renown had publicly “announced for Christ,” people would have looked at him as if his nose had been eaten away by weevils. Today it happens regularly ⦠Harold Hughes resigns from the U.S. Senate to become an evangelist ⦠Jim Irwin, the astronaut, teams up with a Baptist evangelist in an organization called High Flight ⦠singers like Pat Boone and Anita Bryant announce for Jesus ⦠Charles Colson, the former hardballer of the Nixon Administration, announces for Jesus ⦠The leading candidate for President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, announces for Jesus. O Jesus People.
In 1961 a copy writer named Shirley Polykoff was working for the Foote, Cone & Belding advertising agency on the Clairol hair-dye account when she came up with the line: “If I've only one life, let me live it as a blonde!” In a single slogan she had summed up what might be described as the secular side of the Me Decade. “If I've only one life, let me live it as aââââ!” (You have only to fill in the blank.)
This formula accounts for much of the popularity of the women's liberation or feminist movement. “What does a woman want?” said Freud. Perhaps there are women who want to humble men or reduce their power or achieve equality or even superiority for themselves and their sisters. But for every one such woman, there are nine who simply want to
fill in the blank
as they see fit. If I've only one life, let me live it as ⦠a free spirit!” (Instead of ⦠a house slave: a cleaning woman, a cook, a nursemaid, a stationwagon hacker, and an occasional household sex aid.) But even that may be overstating it, because often the unconscious desire is nothing more than:
Let's talk about Me
. The great unexpected dividend of the feminist movement
has been to elevate an ordinary statusâwoman, housewifeâto the level of drama. One's very existence as
a woman â¦
as
Me .
. . becomes something all the world analyzes, agonizes over, draws cosmic conclusions from, or, in any event, takes seriously. Every woman becomes Emma Bovary, Cousin Bette, or Nora ⦠or Erica Jong or Consuelo Saah Baehr.
Among men the formula becomes: “If I've only one life, let me live it as a ⦠Casanova or a Henry VIII!” (instead of a humdrum workadaddy, eternally faithful, except perhaps for a mean little skulking episode here and there, to a woman who now looks old enough to be your aunt and needs a shave or else has electrolysis lines above her upper lip, as well as atrophied calves, and is an embarrassment to be seen with when you take her on trips). The right to shuck overripe wives and take on fresh ones was once seen as the prerogative of kings only, and even then it was scandalous. In the 1950's and 1960's it began to be seen as the prerogative of the rich, the powerful, and the celebrated (Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Show Business figures), although it retained the odor of scandal. Wife-shucking damaged Adlai Stevenson's chances of becoming President in 1952 and 1956 and Rockefeller's chances of becoming the Republican nominee in 1964 and 1968. Until the 1970's wife-shucking made it impossible for an astronaut to be chosen to go into space. Today, in the Me Decade, it becomes
normal behavior
, one of the factors that has pushed the divorce rate above 50 percent.
When Eugene McCarthy filled in the blank in 1972 and shucked his wife, it was hardly noticed. Likewise in the case of several astronauts. When Wayne Hays filled in the blank in 1976 and shucked his wife of thirty-eight years, it did not hurt his career in the slightest. Copulating with the girl in the office, however, was still regarded as scandalous. (Elizabeth Ray filled in the blank in another popular fashion: “If I've only one life, let me live it as a ⦠Celebrity!” As did Arthur Bremer, who kept a diary during his stalking of Nixon and, later, George Wallace ⦠with an eye toward a book contract. Which he got.) Some wiseacre has remarked, supposedly with levity, that the federal government may in time have to create reservations for women over thirty-five, to take care of the swarms of shucked wives and widows. In fact, women in precisely those categories have begun setting up communes or “extended families” to provide one another support and companionship in a world without workadaddies. (“If I've only one life, why live it as an anachronism?”)
Much of what is now known as the “sexual revolution” has consisted of both women and men filling in the blank this way: “If I've only one life, let me live it as ⦠a Swinger!” (Instead of a frustrated, bored monogamist. ) In “swinging,” a husband and wife give each
other license to copulate with other people. There are no statistics on the subject that mean anything, but I do know that it pops up in conversation today in the most unexpected corners of the country. It is an odd experience to be in De Kalb, Illinois, in the very corncrib of America, and have some conventional-looking housewife (not
house-wife,
damn it!) come up to you and ask: “Is there much tripling going on in New York?”
“Tripling?”
Tripling turns out to be a practice, in De Kalb, anyway, in which a husband and wife invite a third partyâmale or female, but more often femaleâover for an evening of whatever, including polymorphous perversity, even the practices written of in the one-hand magazines, such as
Hustler
, all the things involving tubes and hoses and tourniquets and cups and double-jointed sailors.
One of the satisfactions of this sort of life, quite in addition to the groin spasms, is talk:
Let's talk about Me.
Sexual adventurers are given to the most relentless and deadly serious talk ⦠about Me. They quickly succeed in placing themselves onstage in the sexual drama whose outlines were sketched by Freud and then elaborated by Wilhelm Reich. Men and women of all sorts, not merely swingers, are given just now to the most earnest sort of talk about the Sexual Me. A key drama of our day is Ingmar Bergman's movie
Scenes from
a
Marriage
. In it we see a husband and wife who have good jobs and a well-furnished home but who are unable to “communicate”âto cite one of the signature words of the Me Decade. Then they begin to communicate, and thereupon their marriage breaks up and they start divorce proceedings. For the rest of the picture they communicate endlessly, with great candor, but the “relationship”âanother signature wordâremains doomed. Ironically, the lesson that people seem to draw from this movie has to do with ⦠“the need to communicate.”
Scenes from
a
Marriage
is one of those rare works of art, like The Sun Also Rises, that not only succeed in capturing a certain mental atmosphere in fictional form ⦠but also turn around and help radiate it throughout real life. I personally know of two instances in which couples, after years of marriage, went to see
Scenes from
a Marriage
and came home convinced of the “need to communicate.” The discussions began with one of the two saying, Let's try to be completely candid for once. You tell me exactly what you don't like about me, and I'll do the same for you. At this, the starting point, the whole notion is exciting. We're going to talk about
Me!
(And I can take it.) I'm going to find out what he (or she) really thinks about me! (Of course, I have my faults, but they're minor ⦠or else exciting.)
She says, “Go ahead. What don't you like about me?”
They're both under the Bergman spell. Nevertheless, a certain sixth
sense tells him that they're on dangerous ground. So he decides to pick something that doesn't seem too terrible.
“Well,” he says, “one thing that bothers me is that when we meet people for the first time, you never know what to say. Or else you get nervous and start chattering away, and it's all so banal, it makes me look bad.”
Consciously she's still telling herself, “I can take it.” But what he has just said begins to seep through her brain like scalding water. What's he talking about?âmakes
him
look bad? He's saying
I'm unsophisticated
,
a social liability and an
embarrassment. All those
times we've gone out
,
he's been ashamed of me!
(And what makes it worseâit's the sort of disease for which there's no cure!) She always knew she was awkward. His crime is: he
noticed!
He's known it, too, all along. He's had
contempt
for me.
Out loud she says, “Well, I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about that.”
He detects the petulant note. “Look,” he says, “you're the one who said to be candid.”
She says, “I know. I want you to be.”
He says, “Well, it's your turn.”
“Well,” she says, “I'll tell you something about when we meet people and when we go places. You never clean yourself properlyâyou don't know how to wipe yourself. Sometimes we're standing there talking to people, and there's ⦠a smell. And I'll tell you something else: People can tell it's you.”
And he's still telling
him
self, “I can take it”âbut what inna namea Christ is
this?
He says, “But you've never said anythingâabout anything like that.”
She says, “But I
tried
to. How many times have I told you about your dirty drawers when you were taking them off at night?”
Somehow this really makes him angry ⦠All those times ⦠and his mind immediately fastens on Harley Thatcher and his wife, whom he has always wanted to impress ⦠From underneath my $350 suits I smelled of shit! What infuriates him is that this is a humiliation from which there's no recovery.
How often have they sniggered about it later?
â
or not invited me places? Is it something people say every time my name comes up?
And all at once he is intensely annoyed with his wife, not because she never told him all these years, but simply because she knows about his disgraceâand she was the one who
brought him the bad news!
From that moment on they're ready to get the skewers in. It's only a few minutes before they've begun trying to sting each other with confessions about their little affairs, their little slipping around, their little coitus on the slyâ“Remember that time I told you my flight from
Buffalo was canceled?Ӊand at that juncture the ranks of those who can take it become very thin indeed. So they communicate with great candor! and break up! and keep on communicating! and they find the relationship hopelessly doomed.
One couple went into group therapy. The other went to a marriage counselor. Both types of therapy are very popular forms, currently, of
Let's talk about Me.
This phase of the breakup always provides a rush of exhilarationâfor what more exhilarating topic is there than â¦
Me?
Through group therapy, marriage counseling, and other forms of “psychological consultation” they can enjoy that same
Me
euphoria that the very rich have enjoyed for years in psychoanalysis. The cost of the new Me sessions is only $10 to $30 an hour, whereas psychoanalysis runs from $50 to $125. The woman's exhilaration, however, is soon complicated by the fact that she is (in the typical case) near or beyond the cutoff age of thirty-five and will have to retire to the reservation.
Well, my dear Mature Moderns ⦠Ingmar never promised you a rose garden!