Pop as a Pillar of Liberalism

How do people (young people, because they have to be got when they are still young) become such good (although unthinking) liberals and such willing accomplices in the growth of a meaningless system? Since liberal inidividuality is not a natural given it must be cultivated anew with each generation. The question is: How? The answer must lie in some experience (or set of experiences) that effectively forge a mentality which would feel revulsion at the mere thought of identifying with a role in an old-fashioned organic community.

All of us (with some exceptions) necessarily begin in an old-fashioned organic community: the family. The current status quo requires that the individual be wrenched from that (sometimes) cosy Sittlichkeit, not to take her place in a wider organic community but to become a good liberal individual who can say a resounding "Yes" to alienation.

It may be that the experience of being a pre-teen shopper plays a role in the process, but as long as kids are buying things that their parents vaguely approve of or tolerate I can't see that this will disturb the psychic equilibrium of the family.

The experience of a multicultural society could also play a role. Zizek (in "Violence" pp120-1) makes a connection between liberalism and an experience of how one's own tradition is no bettter than those of others. He quotes an interesting passage from Descartes's "Discourse on Method" (not because Decartes was a prominent liberal but because he illustrates the same cultural rift).

"...I recognized in the course of my travels that all those whose sentiments are very contrary to ours are yet not necessarily barbarians or savages, but may be possessed of reason in as great or even greater degree than ourselves."

However, this presupposes a willingness to understand the other - at least a curiosity - which so often seems lacking. It may be that the very proximity of the "foreigner" in a multicultural society - in which your neighbours are the very people Descartes had to travel to meet - dampens any curiosity. There can be too much that is irritating.

A multicultural education could conceivably play a role, with lessons in comparative religion, for instance, but in my experience the influence of what is actually said in formal lessons is minimal. The same applies to science, which might otherwise have been a critical force but certainly isn't when it is simply experienced as a series of propositions that have to be memorised in order to make the grade. Even kids who do get switched onto science - perhaps with picturebooks about dinosaurs or astronomy - are not thereby led into a conflict with their parents.

A much more powerful experience is provided by pop or rock - call it what you will, and Allan Bloom was right to regard popular music as a much more significant force than television. Pop music doesn't just dumb down; it also splits off. While Chinese kids are frog-marched around various parade grounds and are coaxed with both the stick and the carrot to take their place in the industrial ranks, Western kids get the message that there is a life of passion rar removed from labour (both physical and mental) and any of the onerous aspects of life, including social obligations. This - almost inevitably - puts some distance (even if there is not much kicking and screaming) between themselves and their parents (who have shouldered a massive responsibility and have accepted the need to work hard if only to provide for their kids). With the pop-constructed standpoint of an imaginary world of uncomplicated passion the young person is alienated, but in such a way that alienation seems more preferable to a difficult life in the society from which they now feel cut off.

In other circumstances such alienation could lead to a much more thoughtful critical engagement with the status quo and perhaps open up possibilities for the future but the lure of pop is entirely sensuous - it offers an imaginary immediate gratification primarily through dreams of romance, outbursts of aggression, or by switching off both thought and imagination in response to the drum and bass of dance music. The alienation that seems so sweet is thus antithetical to thought and so antithetical to any genuine critical engagement. Furthermore, pop and rock are conservative (however much voices are raised) because the alienated life of pure passion posited by pop is inevitably tied to its antithesis: the passionless social mechanism. The former cannot appear without the latter being recognised in the background (as it often is in pop videos) so the blind idealism of pop goes hand in hand with a thoughtless realism when it comes to taking a stand on the prevailing social system.