the movement sensibility has been lost

re: https://davidkorten.org/great-turning-book

What was inspiring about “the Sixties” (circa 1960 to 1975, from the election of Kennedy to the debacle of the loss of the War in Vietnam) was a sense of being part of a movement that involved a significant number of others (many millions).

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2558823.The_Movement_Toward_a_New_America

It felt like it was going to become a world-historical movement.

Precedents:
. Hellenism circa 400 B.C.E. to 100 C.E.
. Christianity circa 50–1300 C.E.
. Islam circa 630–1450
. Protestantism circa 1520–1800
. Enlightenment circa 1650–1850
. scientism circa 1650–1950
. socialism/communism circa 1850–1990
. feminism circa 1850–2000
. nationalism circa 1800-present
. decolonization circa 1920-present

The above were/are movements where masses of people felt part of a wave of social-change impact: Something’s Happening, Something New, Something Transformational.

Circa 1970, we felt like we were involved with a movement for cultural transformation. Direction: communitarian, ecological, anti-militaristic. We thought it would achieve critical mass to become a world-historical movement. But it didn’t.

This song defines a new sensibility. We thought it would be the anthem of The Movement:

I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
I asked him, “Where are you going?”
And this he told me:
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s Farm
Gonna join in a rock and roll band
I’m gonna camp out on the land
And try and get my soul free.
Can I walk beside you?
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog
In something turning.
Maybe it’s just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of Man …
I don’t know who I am
But life is for learning.
We are stardust, we are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
All around us there was song and celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
Turning into butterflies
Above our new nation.
We are stardust (billion year old carbon)
We are golden (caught in the devil’s bargain)
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.

* * * *

The “greening of society” is about “getting back to the garden.” It does have the feeling of an incipient movement. But it does not [yet] have critical mass.