It was an obscure
documentary the other evening about the late 60’s and all the unrest that was
taking place during that era; not just in the United States where we tend to
focus on, but in many parts around the world; South America, France, Japan.
Where have all the angry young voices of long ago gone? All the pseudo leaders
who were going to change the world? The ones who spoke in front of crowds and
preached Marxism, Communism, peace or whatever it was they were trying to
spread? A million young voices screaming to be heard as the song goes. Almost all are now just footnotes in the past. Did most of them give up
and grudgingly join the masses? The megaphones have been put away. The hair has
turned gray and perhaps some of these people realized that getting by day to
day was truly the great struggle. Where are the crowds that cheered them? They
have dispersed and gone home; their ideas smothered or replaced by other ideas,
some which may not have entirely been altruistic. And what about those laying
dead in the street; anonymous prone bodies captured by the camera; forgotten by
all but their families perhaps. Was it worth it? There has been some change but
that change is inevitable. All that energy that was maybe dissipated by
disillusionment with the cause or the leaders of such cause, or maybe by the
fact that the mountain was simply too high to climb. Or maybe you just get
older and don’t care as much anymore.
