I have recently gone through my current list
of friends to estimate the number who have been affected by reality in
the past twenty-thirty years. The measure is simple: do they still
hate Nixon, oppose the Vietnam War and believe humans are bringing
about the end of the world? Of course you know that the name Nixon is
now Bush, Vietnam is now Iraq and the Apocalypse is the Greenhouse.
Other than the names, nothing has changed for 90% of my friends.
That causes me much pain.
Could I have picked more friends who were alive and responsive to the world like the tiny minority I ended up with?
As I've pondered this question, I'm forced to answer "no." The reason relates to an old acquaintance of mine, Lyall Watson, who promoted the idea of the 100th monkey in his 1979 book Lifetide.
After the
New Age magical nonsense about the 100th monkey died down, it turned
out that the new technique the monkeys had learned (washing dirty
potatoes in the river) was only learned by the young monkeys, never by
adults.
That seems to be the lesson: most of my friends are hard-wired to never learn anything new about the world after they reach adulthood.
That reality is even more painful than the observation I began with. But it accounts for the reason people keep their hair, make-up and clothing style the same the rest of their lives.