Counter-Culture vs Transformative Culture

Epilogue from One City:
A Declaration of Interdependence

Ethan Nichtern: Sometimes I see my own (broadly defined) generation through two remarkably different lenses. When I feel a little cranky and depressed and I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in a while, it seems like we're all just going through the motions, endlessly surfing and browsing only to find the same old page all over again, twiddling our thumbs, tracing random doodles on mental sketch-pads, dressing up and striking wasted poses that someone else has struck a thousand times before, just to somehow feel momentarily original within the hopeless unoriginality we've inherited. Sometimes it feels like we're subconsciously awaiting the arrival of an apocalypse that for some reason just won't get here and let us off the hook.

Then I take a nap, blink, breathe and look again, and I see nothing but incredibly talented and creative people who are each fumbling in their own brilliance for ways to think, speak and live from a deep and unyielding intention to exist meaningfully and compassionately for ourselves and others. We just aren't always on the same page about how to accomplish this.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, but like everything else that arises in the network of interdependence, it all depends on your perspective. Because I'm a reluctant optimist, and because my Buddhist teachers have hammered it into my head, I lean toward the latter way of looking as much as I can. If the world really is ultimately a co-production of the mind-states of all those individuals inhabiting it, then there is always hope for us, as long as each individual begins to feel the need to train his or her own mind. If we keep developing communities that organize around this principle (and if you can't find any, keep looking, they're there) - each individual taking the time to care for her own mind and then taking the time to care about the impact on others of her actions - things might start getting a lot brighter in a hurry.

We don't have the luxury of creating a counterculture anymore. The wish to erect a utopian counterculture that stands in opposition to a hated mainstream society falls apart on the ultimate level of interdependence; after all, these two cultures would depend on each other for their oppositional identities. Whatever language, symbolism, style of dress and multimedia we could use to define ourselves as authentically "alternative" would be branded and sold back to us at retail before we even got our act together. It's happened so many times already. There's no way to counter the mainstream. Even the word alternative means "mainstream" now. This only leaves us with one choiceless choice: instead of countering the culture, we have to transform it. We have to use existing cultural forms to peel back the layers of the blazing digital facades and reveal the beating heart underneath.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a facade. The only problem with a facade arises when there's nothing but self-deception lying underneath. If our cultural symbols point to the heart of the matter, then they can transform self-absorption into the substance of real compassion every day of the week. To steal a line from the poet Saul Williams, in an age where everyone is trying to be hardcore - hardcore progressive, hardcore conservative, hardcore bungee jumper, hardcore punk, hardcore rap, hardcore vegetarian, hardcore Zen - we can consistently train in being "heartcore". Learning the shapeless difference between self-deception and authentic presence is the real work of fearlessness. If we master that process, our lives will become blazing four-dimensional billboards for the truth of interdependence, the embodiment of heartcore.

The Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy said something in response to the slogan of many progressive movements, the oft-used "Another world is possible". She said, "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing." The universal truth of interdependence might add one more layer to this sentiment:

Another world is definitely possible; it looks just like this one."

something unstoppable set into motion
nothing is different, but everything's changed
- Paul Simon
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