CENTURY'S
END (December 1999)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY
PETER KURTH
From
Vicky to Ricky -- how far we've come!
Tired
of millennial predictions? Sick of retrospectives? Crossing that bridge with
both eyes covered? Welcome to a last, fearful look at the 20th century.
Most
retrospectives start at the beginning and move on to the end, like this: In 1900, there were 76 million Americans.
Eighty percent of us lived in the country and 20 percent in the towns. Queen
Victoria was still on her throne, planes didn’t fly until 1903, we suffered a
Great Depression and two world wars, women got the vote, Prohibition failed,
plastics were invented, antibiotics appeared, sex made a comeback, we went to
the moon, we lost our innocence in Dallas/Watergate/Vietnam, television took
over, Reagan became President, everyone got wired and that was that.
But
I think different, as the commercial says. History’s for chumps. I’ve organized this review by social
category, beginning with the most urgent. What can you say about an
"American Century" that ends with the announcement that 22 percent of
the population is mentally ill?
Mental
Health.
It’s worse than you think. According to a recent report from Surgeon General
David Satcher, "One in every five Americans experiences a mental disorder
in any given year, and half of all Americans have such disorders at some time
in their lives." Most of the afflicted never seek help, however, because
they don’t know they’re crazy. Also, not many people can afford treatment over
the long haul (see Rich vs. Poor, below).
Mind
you, the definition of mental illness is now so broad as to be meaningless,
ranging from psychoses, schizophrenia and bipolar disorders to Alzheimer’s,
depression, anxieties, phobias, "low self-esteem," addictions,
compulsions, "disthymia," narcissism, A.D.D., S.A.D., "quiet
desperation" and "the universal neurosis," or whatever it was Freud
said about the human condition.
In
1900, mercifully, no one had heard of Freud outside medical circles. But I’m
sure if we went back one century with a current diagnostic manual we’d find
lots of people in need of psychotherapy. Just about everyone, in fact. That’s
the beauty of having no definitions and regarding people as machines, engines
that can be made to run efficiently with the right lube job. All mental illness
is "biological," Satcher says, no matter how it began. So "seek
help if you experience symptoms," take your pills, and good luck with the
HMO.
Mental
Health Millennial Event: General introduction of Prozac, 1992.
Grade:
D-minus.
The
Children.
A flat-out disaster. No sooner did the Surgeon General tell us that one-fifth
of all Americans are nuts than another study appeared, purporting to show that
Ritalin, with or without additional therapy, is the best way to deal with
attention deficit disorder, or A.D.D. — a condition not known to exist until
pills came along to relieve it. A large percentage of our future mental cases
are currently in school, and more and more of them are being drugged to keep
them in line. Side-effects of Ritalin include loss of appetite, sleeplessness,
nervousness, hypersensitivity, stomach ailments, "occasional tics,"
high blood pressure, anxiety, tension and the evaporation of personality.
Earlier
in the century, when a kid cut up in class, his teacher gave him a look (these
were scary). If that didn’t work, she might rap him on the knuckles, haul him
to a corner, put a dunce cap on his head or otherwise cow him into submission.
All parents supported her in this. These were the poor abused children who grew
up to be The Greatest Generation, as
Tom Brokaw's bestselling book would have it.
Next
time your child gets fidgety, take a look at her outside influences. Start with
the fact that she lives in a world of images and illusions — TV, video and
HTML; magazines with text, graphics and ads jumbled together; the permanent
noise of shrieking music, whistles, bells and beeps; the disorientation of
hand-held cameras and whacked-out frames; foul-mouthed cartoons posing as
cultural commentary; pictures lasting no more than a second on the screen,
jerking and jumping, with no point or purpose beyond selling a product; violence
promoted as the ultimate thrill; a culture drenched in sex,
"abstinence" pushed in the schools; everything new, everything cool,
everything cheap, fast and dead.
Millennial
Event: "
Grade:
F, and that’s not saying nearly enough.
Education.
See above.
A complete abrogation of social responsibility, becoming more dangerous by the
minute. Knowledge is replaced by "information," out of context and
directed nowhere. A passing grade reflects the ability to find the right Web
page and get along with others. Public
schools have become social processing centers and mental-health clinics,
rewarding conformity, erasing identity and pathologizing any child who doesn’t
toe the line. No wonder they’re shooting each other.
According
to census figures, only 11 percent of American teenagers were enrolled in high
school in 1900; today, it’s more like 93 percent. Teachers, too, no less than their students,
are required to have the "right" personality — an
"inclusive" disposition and sunny indifference to distinctions that
supposedly inspires children to learn on their own. It’s rainbows and slogans
all over the place, with a premium on docility.
Millennial
Event: "
Grade:
Off the scale.
Science
and Technology. Up
to no good, if you ask me. According to a report in Science magazine,
"Geneticists are close to whittling down the bare minimum set of essential
genes for a bacterium to live, a first step toward one day allowing scientists
to create a living organism from scratch." It’s only a matter of time.
What can be done, will be done -- ‘twas
ever thus. Less and less is there
protest about ethics, much less a call for controls.
Recently,
scientists completed the first successful embryo transferal between species,
"bringing a rare African wildcat to term in the womb of an ordinary house
cat." Just think: Soon you’ll be able to breed your own fur, no questions
asked. Like all scientific "miracles," the cross-cat experiment is
promoted as a service. "If extinction happens in the wild, the technology
will be there to bring the species back.’’
So
don’t worry about a thing. As soon as they find an environment for the creatures
to live in, resurrection will be their top priority.
Millennial
Substance: DNA.
Grade:
Incalculable.
The
Environment.
Don’t ask. Instead, get a copy of Susan Strasser’s Waste and Want: A
Social History of Trash You’ll
be amazed at what thrifty, prudent, frugal and responsible consumers Americans
used to be. The price of progress is a sea of junk.
Millennial
Event: Global warming.
Grade:
Incomplete. Too little, too late.
Health
Care. No
question, we’re talking about huge advances. In 1900, the average life
expectancy for men was 46 years; for women, 48. Today it’s 74 and 79,
respectively. In 1918, influenza claimed more victims than died in World War I
— more than 40 million people in one epidemic. If it weren't for antibiotics,
we’d still be dropping like flies.
On
the other hand, in 1900 doctors made house calls, their fees were reasonable,
and your expectations were a lot lower. You had a different idea of medicine
altogether. You didn’t expect it to do the impossible. For that you went to
funerals, county fairs and temperance lectures, as most people still do.
The
downside of longevity, of course, has been an eruption of entirely new
diseases, unheard of even 30 years ago. Bacteria and viruses outwit antibiotics
and now appear in forms more deadly than before. In 1999 alone, 5.6 million
people around the world became infected with HIV; 2.6 million died from it.
Hardly anyone who needs them can afford AIDS medications, developed with your
taxes but now owned lock, stock and barrel by the pharmaceutical industry,
whose annual profits routinely morph into the stratosphere: $26 billion for
Merck alone in 1997.
About
the cost-saving benefit of managed care, I’ll just say it’s the best scam yet
perpetrated on a clueless population. Make no mistake: Your health is a slave
to the profit motive. You are a machine, to be tuned-up in accord with your
worth.
Millennial
Event: Permission to advertise prescription drugs on television.
Grade:
Too complicated. Needs to
simplify.
Rich
vs. Poor. The
same as ever, only worse. Yes, the economic miracle continues, the boom booms,
never have so many people lived in such prosperity, et cetera. At the same
time, not since the Depression have so many people fallen through the cracks.
Homelessness is up in all major cities. More than ten percent of American
children live in poverty. Twice that number routinely don’t get enough to eat.
And while more and more are profiting from the current "expansion,"
it's at the price of record levels of bankruptcy and debt. Charitable
contributions are down across the board. "Need continues to
skyrocket," says the Salvation Army. "Demand for services is through
the roof."
In
this regard, we’re essentially in the same position we were in the 1890s, the
age of the robber barons. Landmark protections for consumers and the poor have
been systematically overturned. "Mega-mergers" assume forms that
would have made Rockefeller blush. Bankruptcy laws are being tightened to make
sure you don't ever escape your debts. The IRS, crippled by a Republican
Congress, has announced that in the future it won’t be auditing the rich or the
major corporations. Instead, it will focus its collection efforts on "the
working poor." I kid you not: What the corporation wants, the corporation
gets.
Millennial
Event: Deregulation.
Grade:
Money is not subject to grades.
Work. Still a great way to
escape the family! Self-help manuals warn about "workaholics," but no
one can afford to take this seriously. According to Newsweek, a third of
all Americans now work more than 50 hours a week.
In
1900, only 800,000 wives and mothers worked outside the home. Today, 34 million
do. "It’s a terrible cruelty of predatory capitalism," says
psychologist James Hillman. "We’re miserable partly because we have only
one God, and that’s economics. Economics is a slave-driver. No one has free
time; no one has any leisure. The whole culture is under terrible pressure and
fraught with worry. That’s the dominant situation all over the world."
Millennial
Event: Carpal tunnel syndrome.
Grade:
Irrelevant. You’re stuck with it.
Politics. In a coma. In 1896,
presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan spoke for a rising tide of
populism when he listed among the legitimate duties of government “the putting
of rings in the noses of hogs.” Economic
reforms ensued, lasting at least until Jimmy Carter left the White House. We
have a long time to wait before the cycle repeats itself, if it does. A century
of cataclysmic change, huge ideas, ardent politics and noble dreams now ends in
an orgy of shopping and smut. If your idea of the good life is more money, more
cars, more houses and more things, you’re in the right place. Thus is democracy
changed to self-interest.
Millennial
Event: Water- and all the other -gates
Grade:
Needs to work harder.
Marriage.
Dead as a
doornail. In 1900 there were 200,000 divorces annually in the
Millennial
Event: The drive for same-sex marriage rights.
Grade:
Skip it. It’s only for extra credit.
Art. Valuable now only for
investment purposes. Overwrought, like toothbrushes and sneakers. Works
increasingly with new media — for instance, computer animation and elephant
dung.
Millennial
Figure: Andy Warhol, who proved you can make buckets out of soup cans.
Grade:
A for manipulation.
Happiness. Generally regarded as a by-product
of prosperity. Not important for its own sake, but only as a carrot to keep the
economy moving. Last summer, a spunky gal out West, Pam Johnson, asked all 50
So
happy…uh…prosperous millennium. As the New Agers say, we chose it ourselves.
"No
people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election
on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument
[of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can
depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything
traditionally American. And nobody will ever say `Heil' to him, nor will they
call him `Führer' or `Duce.' But they will greet him with one great big,
universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of `O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna,
Chief! Oh Kaaaay!'" -- Dorothy Thompson, 1935