counter-cultural rebels
I liked this post by Sarah Hoyt. Key quote:
Rebellion has become conformism. The pierced kids with multiple tattoos? They’re the ones doing what their boomer parents and teachers tell them. “Rebel, stick it to the man. Refuse to grow up.”
Also:
I say rebel for real. Love your husband. Don’t sleep around. Grow up. Think of your husband and family before you think of your own little psychodrama…
And maybe learn to enjoy hanging out with your family. Maybe don’t do pot just to conform. Maybe don’t get drunk and talk dirty just because it’s expected of you. Maybe find out who you are for real and enjoy that.
It’s okay to enjoy being an adult. A lot of us do.
Oh, I know, it’s not hip or cool and the entertainment establishment will think you’re hopeless. Have you noticed those guys are not so important anymore? In fact, you could say they were withering away, and old fashioned.
They are the man. The man wants you to dope and fornicate and get drunk.
Don’t do it. Stick it to the man. Speak truth to power.
I got to thinking about this because you see this a lot in SF/F – a book that claims to be “subversive” and “groundbreaking” is in fact a same rehashing of the tired tropes from the sixties. God is dead, free love is awesome, we can build a perfect society, the ends justifies the means when the protagonist does it, there’s no such thing as heroism, blah, blah, blah.
A really counter-cultural book would be the opposite of all that.
The linked post above was a reaction to this article. All I can say about that article is that I was a history major in college, and while this did not enhance my employment prospects, it did leave me with a sense of perspective. It is hard to find a life with adequate food and housing a soul-crushing prison after reading about the Great Famine of the 14th century, the Holodomor, and any of the other myriad miseries humanity has inflicted on itself.
-JM
Wait…I’m not alone?! There are more people out there like me? Thank God!
Though I may be young, I never bought into the whole “rebellion” thing, not one bit. Why? Too many reasons to name them all. I had good parents (ones who never bought into the rebel charade either, none of their families did in fact), so I’m sure that helped. But it also really comes down to the fact that I really just didn’t believe in it, quite to the contrary, I believed in what the rebels were rebelling against.
Guess I’m just an old soul born into a young body 😉
I try to stay away from the SF/F that peddles in that stuff, but sometimes it’s not always so easy, sometimes those themes don’t get rolled out until the end of the story, or worse, a later addition in the series (that really is the worst, it only amps up the disappointment factor by that much, not to mention staining your memory of the previous books, even if they were generally free of the junk). What do you do in that situation? Do you keep on reading the series, or just drop it altogether?
You can also add Genghis Khan to that list of disasters, the amount of people that died as a result of his conquests would not be surpassed until horrors of the 20th century. Speaking of Mongols, did you ever read the Mongoliad series (written by a team of writers), it looks like it may be good, so I pre-ordered the nice CE edition that is coming out in September.
“What do you do in that situation? Do you keep on reading the series, or just drop it altogether?”
Generally, I stop reading it.
I saw the Mongoliad turn up at the local library, so I may give it a spin.
Should you happen to get your hands on the Mongoliad before I do (the version I pre-ordered is not released until the end of September, and then there is the waiting game of shipping, so I’m guessing it will be October), can you post about whether it was good or not?
Will do!