Childhood Illnesses
My mother used to have hippies come visit – I remember their names, and the general timber of their conversations, but it is impossible to replicate their words in any specific detail, so much time has passed. The early parts of my life, as I re-create them here, seem less of a documentary, and more of a “based on a true story” narrative – I suppose that is inevitable, given the number of years that have passed, my lack of desire or ability to consult with those who were there – or to trust what they would say, and the nature of memory itself, which is a narrative designed to protect us in the future, rather than objectively identify the past.
These hippies had the typical Jim-Morrison-Jesus-beard look going, and seemed vaguely indifferent to personal hygiene, and ate enormously, and scratched endlessly, and listened raptly, barely blinking, while barely seeming to take in any words at all.
They sat around our dining room table, devouring loaves of sour, black German bread, fingering their ears, gesturing with shiny fingertips, each attempting to climb on the mad platonic language of the others, to create a near-infinite tower of Babel of polysyllabic meaninglessness.
Their conversations – for want of a better word – generally centred around the dismantling of sense-evidence in the unraveling of any kind of objective metaphysics. Everyone had a story about a friend who had foreseen some terrible event – thus dismantling the objectivity of time. Other stories involved secondhand reports of psychic experiences – thus dismantling the objectivity of science and language. (Also evolution – any tribe which somehow developed the capacity to silently transfer thoughts would have dominated the planet, since they would be so much better at hunting and war.)
Other times, they would discuss the inevitable “higher realities” – the word had to be plural, because one higher reality would not be nearly enough for their fevered imaginations.
They were highly verbally adept, but utterly undisciplined intellectually. Their words were compelling – I sat sometimes on my mother’s lap, sometimes on a chair, and sometimes on the floor, watching their legs jiggling under the table, as if they were slowly pumping up the helium nonsense of their language – but nothing they described had any kind of centre.
This was quite common in the 70s – it didn’t just happen in my home. UFOs, pyramids, psychic phenomena, radical environmentalism, Marxism, socialism, leftism of every kind, feminism – all sorts of randomized ideas floated through the social ether. It’s sort of felt like the giant brains of Western civilization had cut loose their moorings, and now floated like hot air balloons in a landscape without gravity, in both senses of the word.
As an adult, when I worked a human resources, I went to a conference, and gave a speech, with no real knowledge about what I was talking about. I just spewed up some platitudes and arguments and data, and got warm applause and positive feedback, which left me with little respect for the discipline of human resources. I couldn’t imagine doing that at a physics conference, for instance.
What were the standards of truth in these wild and woolly conversations? What did it mean to be accurate, or in error? No one ever really disagreed with anyone else – but no one ever really agreed with the specifics of what was said, but only the generalities, the general methodology. If I had been older, and wiser in the ways of philosophy, I would have argued back against the crazed assertions and undisciplined chains of pseudo-logic – and then, as one, they would have united against me, having finally found someone they could call wrong and blind and prejudiced and narrowminded. Any mad statement could be made with impunity, but any demand for reason and evidence was met with outright contempt and hostility...
