First Off Two URL's I would like to pass along from Jonathan Shay
http://www.duke.edu/jscope/Shay97.htm#TOC
http://uhs.bsd.uchicago.edu/~bhsiung/tips/ptsd.html
They deal with Jonathan's current work with the Military in
regards to addressing the Psychological Prevention Issues, and
the later the General Discussion about the use of chemo-therapy to
deal with PTSD.
Having sent Jonathan a brief five page review of his outline to
the USN, I have begun to reactivate my concerns in this area. One
of my points to him, that remains germaine to this group, is that
we in the Military Community have a Moral Obligation to First take
care of our own, and Secondly to pass along such useful information
as we develop to the civilian community for help them improve.
One of the Chief Horrors of the History of Modern Medicine remains
the volume of material that is 'war related' Starting with the transition
to the Surgeon as Prima Donna that owes it's roots to the Napoleonic
Campaigns. That Gen. Patton is well remembered for his imfamous 'slapping'
incident in Sicily, made more public again during the vietnam era by
the Movie, does not take into account, that Patton would RamRod efforts
to resolve what caused 'combat fatigue' and what could be done to
prevent and deal with it.
In this area I have still open concerns that I shall now hang under
the title of
'people in self-destruct mode'
since clearly there were 'combat casualties' from both the 'war on
drugs' as well as the 'sexual revolution' that we as a community need
to address. Just as the Military is culpable in it's abandonment of
veterans, having failed to develop any solid prophylactic procedures
to address systemic Socio-Cultural Flaws that troops brought with them
into the military. So Too does the civilian community have it's own level
of culpability for having emparted such 'unstable' propositions to begin with.
It was easy at the PopKulturMediaBlitzSoundByteLevel to be able to do
the trendy hip concern about 'kids with drug problems' - just so long
as no solid in depth analysis would provide any vectors back to the
failures of the Nice Suburban World and therein raise the questions that
perchance Suburbia was NOT a good Idea to Begin With!
In like manner it has been rather simplistic to containerize the evil
RadFemRedLesbianManHatingBallKrushingDykeWannaBeSurfNazi's as the cause
of all 'women problem' and the 'collapse' of the family and all that crap.
As we begin to differenciate between the 'hippies' as a socio-cultural
movement, independent of the 'anti-war' movement, perchance we will be
able to deal with the unresolved questions for which the 'hippies' were
an effort to provide an alternative solution. In this process we need to
review what worked, what failed, and why. Where along the line did we
merely replace one set of 'suburban values' for another set of 'suburban
values' without really addressing the underlying weltanschaung and wether
or not it was operable to begin with.
How Much of the White Flight to the Burbs, and it's counter point, the
'gentrification' of the Urban Center, has been a nice way of avoiding
the questions of what is Community. A core issue from the 'Real Hippies'
I knew along the trail. How much of the Urban Blight Problem rests on
the Failures of Integration to retain Community, while those who could
join the Black Exodus to the Nice White Neighborhoods BUGGED OUT. Which is
to wonder aloud about the calls for a 'black power' movement independent
of the Nice White Liberals.
In short, how much of the 'self-destruct mode' did people Drag With Them
from their 'former life' and how much of the Sixties Culture was merely
an effort to
SETENV AUTO-DESTRUCT OFF
and find a way to actually LIVE, as human beings, and not merely as
economic units in a Macro/Micro Economy - whether Kapitalist or Marxist.
{ which is to say, I tip my hat to my Hippies, as the first collection
of WACKO's to accept that althrough they personally might wish to follow
the way of the sword, they could understand that it was my Dharma. }
In one sense we need to build a bridge to our past, so that we can
reclaim our common grounds, and from there work on building a bridge
to our as yet unseen future.
And somewhere in the process, perchance, resolve some of the core
issues of the Sixties that have remained unresolved to this day. As I
have mentioned, I have a Mother who survived the various Chemo-Therapies
that were hip from the fifties forward, and has a physiology that ranks
with some of my hard core drug addict friends. As I have a daughter
coming up the line, I will BE DAMNED if society gets to Mess With Her
in that manner! Her Mother has been through enough CombatTime dealing
with a society out of balance, and we OWE it to our kids to try to
get More of this Settled so that we do NOT infect them with the comedy
of errors that we made.
We can either replicate the Parents we hated as children, or learn
from them, and try to find a better way. The Cold War is OVER, both
at home and abroad, so it is time to collect up our wounded. To
learn from them as best we can, so that next time around we do not
take the same foolish casualties.
ciao
drieux
ps: to tilt towards an answer for Sally Merry, given that I am one
of the walking wounded from the Era, I would have to say,
What Idealism?
that was a luxury lost between the Emergency Clinics and Covert
Operations, that I was not always able to keep in touch with.