Adam Blatner

Allee & I read in bed: One flosses, the other reads. Right now it’s Bobos in Paradise, Bobos being Bohemian Bourgeosie. It speaks to the sociological shifts of the late 1950s through the early 1970s. We only vaguely knew this was going on. The American culture was shifting from subtle aristocracy to meritocracy. More Jews rising in the class structure, for example. Most interesting bit of intellectual history.

What struck me was two things. One is that every fifty year period had its own culture changes, but it’s hard to get the history clear. 894 – 924? (Just making these years up.) Maybe then, too, parents didn’t know what to make of their kids. This cartoon illustrates this and the second thing: The limited perspective of the young mixed with the unconscious need to experience life anew:

I’d put it this way, as an Islamic “Sufi” mystic put it: “A pickpocket at a convention of saints would only see their pockets.”