THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 20, NO. 12 / DECEMBER 1987

Tom Wolfe

THE GREAT RELEARNING

The twentieth century is over.

n 1968, in San Francisco, I came cedented start from zero—seems to me design man could free himself from the Relearning on the wing, the architects I across a curious footnote to the psy- to be the leitmotif of our current inter- dead hand of the past. By the late are off on a binge of eclecticism com- chedelic movement. At the Haight- lude, here in the dying years of the 1970s, however, architects themselves parable to the Victorian period's a cen- Ashbury Free Clinic there were doctors twentieth century. were beginning to complain of the dead tury ago. who were treating diseases no living hand of the Bauhaus: the flat roofs, In politics the twentieth century's doctor had ever encountered before, which leaked from rain and collapsed great start from zero was one-party diseases that had disappeared so long "QJ tart from zero" was the slogan of from snow, the tiny bare beige office socialism, also known as Communism ago they had never even picked up O the Bauhaus School. The story of cubicles, which made workers feel like or Marxism-Leninism. Given that sys- Latin names, diseases such as the how the Bauhaus, a tiny artists' move- component parts, the glass walls, which tem's bad reputation in the West today mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, ment in Germany in the 1920s, swept let in too much heat, too much cold, (even among the French intelligentsia), the thrush, the scroff, the rot. And how aside the architectural styles of the past too much glare, and no air at all. The it is instructive to read John Reed's Ten was it that they had now returned? It and created the glass-box face of the relearning is now underway in earnest. Days That Shook the World—before had to do with the fact that thousands modern American city is a familiar The architects are busy rummaging turning to Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Ar- of young men and women had mi- one, and I won't retell it. But I should about in what the artist Richard chipelago. The old strike hall poster of grated to San Francisco to live com- mention the soaring spiritual exuber- Merkin calls the Big Closet. Inside the a Promethean worker in a blue shirt munally in what I think history will ance with which the movement began, Big Closet, in promiscuous heaps, are breaking his chains across his mighty record as one of the most extraordinary the passionate conviction of the Bau- the abandoned styles of the past. The chest was in truth the vision of ultimate religious experiments of all time. haus's leader, Walter Gropius, that by current favorite rediscoveries: Classical, human freedom the movement believed The hippies, as they became known, starting from zero in architecture and Secession, and Moderne (Art Deco). in at the outset. For intellectuals in the sought nothing less than to sweep aside West the painful dawn began with the all codes and restraints of the past and publication of the Gulag Archipelago start out from zero. At one point Ken in 1973. Solzhenitsyn insisted that the Kesey organized a pilgrimage to Stone- villain behind the Soviet concentration- henge with the idea of returning to camp network was not Stalin or Lenin Anglo-Saxon civilization's point zero, (who invented the term concentration which he figured was Stonehenge, and camp) or even Marxism. It was instead heading out all over again to do it bet- the Soviets' peculiarly twentieth- ter. Among the codes and restraints century notion that they could sweep that people in the communes swept aside not only the old social order but aside—quite purposely—were those also its religious ethic, which had been that said you shouldn't use other peo- millennia in the making ("common ple's toothbrushes or sleep on other decency," Orwell called it) and re- people's mattresses without changing invent morality . . . here . . . now . . . the sheets or, as was more likely, with- "at the point of a gun," in the famous out using any sheets at all or that you phrase of the Maoists. Today the re- and five other people shouldn't drink learning has reached the point where from the same bottle of Shasta or take even ruling circles in the Soviet Union tokes from the same cigarette. And and China have begun to wonder how now, in 1968, they were relearning . . . best to convert Communism into some- the laws of hygiene ... by getting the thing other than, in Susan Sontag's mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, phrase, Successful Fascism. the thrush, the scroff, the rot. The great American contribution to This process, namely the relearning the twentieth century's start from zero —following a Promethean and unpre- was in the area of manners and mores, especially in what was rather primly Tom Wolfe is author of The Right called "the sexual revolution." In every Stuff, From Bauhaus to Our House, hamlet, even in the erstwhile Bible Belt, and, most recently, The Bonfire of the may be found the village brothel, no Vanities (Farrar Straus Giroux). longer hidden in a house of blue lights

14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1987

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED or red lights or behind a green door but mosphere. People of the next century, destroy the planet itself—but also the back in awe . . . without the slightest openly advertised by the side of the snug in their Neo-Georgian apartment capacity to escape to the stars on space temptation to emulate the daring of road with a thousand-watt back-lit complexes, will gaze back with a ghast- ships if it blew. But above all they will those who swept aside all rules and plastic sign: TOTALLY ALL-NUDE GIRL ly awe upon our time. They will regard look back upon the twentieth as the tried to start from zero. Instead, they SAUNA MASSAGE AND MARATHON EN- the twentieth as the century in which century in which their forebears had will sink ever deeper into their Neo- COUNTER SESSIONS INSIDE. Up until wars became so enormous they were the amazing confidence, the Promethe- Louis bergeres, content to live in what two years ago pornographic movie known as World Wars, the century in an hubris, to defy the gods and try to will be known as the Somnolent Cen- theaters were as ubiquitous as the which technology leapt forward so push man's power and freedom to lim- tury or the Twentieth Century's Hang- Seven-Eleven, including outdoor drive- rapidly man developed the capacity to itless, god-like extremes. They will look over. • ins with screens six, seven, eight storeys high, the better to beam all the moist- ened folds and glistening nodes and stiffened giblets to a panting American countryside. Two years ago the porno- graphic theater began to be replaced by the pornographic videocassette, which The non-issue in Alaska could be brought into any home. Up on the shelf in the den, next to the set Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) a peak rate of about 1.5 million barrels a day— of The Encyclopedia Brittanica and the has in recent months been much shrouded in about a fifth of U.S. production—but will soon great books, one now finds the cas- controversy. Much of this controversy has cen- enter its inevitable period of decline. The real settes: Shanks Akimbo, That Thing tered on whether a relatively small portion of issue in Alaska is whether or not America should with the Cup. My favorite moment in these lands—1.5 million acres along the Beaufort maximize its economic domestic oil and gas Jessica Hahn's triumphal tour of Me- Sea Coastal Plain, out of a total of 19 million production to reduce the nation's dependence on dialand this fall came when a ten-year- acres—should be opened to oil exploration. foreign oil and its negative balance of pay- old girl, a student at a private school, One of the latest salvos fired by the anti- ments—and do so in an environmentally accept- wearing a buttercup blouse, a cardigan development forces came in the form of a letter to able manner. an influential newspaper by a spokesman for an What about the environment? Would it truly sweater, and her school uniform skirt, environmental group. The letter makes a couple be despoiled, as the environmentalists state, if approached her outside a television of statements worthy of examination. drilling were to take place? studio with a stack of Playboy First, the writer states that there is "only a 19 A major issue environmentalists raise con- magazines featuring the famous Hahn percent chance of finding any oil at all in the Arctic cerns Alaskan wildlife. Of all the animal species in nude form and asked her to autograph refuge." But even at those odds—and taking risks the area, Secretary Hodel cited the caribou as the them. With the school's blessing, she is what the oil business is all about—the coastal most likely to be affected. But Senator Frank H. intended to take the signed copies back plain represents the best hope for a major on- Murkowski of Alaska has pointed out that the to the campus and hold a public auc- shore oil strike in the United States. In fact, within caribou herd has, in fact, quadrupled at Prudhoe tion. The proceeds would go to the the context of risks the oil industry usually faces Bay during the oil development years, and since poor. in wildcat areas, those odds are actually rather construction of the Alaskan pipeline. Indeed, the attractive. The coastal plain site is less than 100 caribou herd thrives in the area of the pipeline, in But in the sexual revolution, too, the miles from the Prudhoe Bay field. If oil is found in spite of dire warnings to the contrary. painful dawn has already arrived, and the plain, according to Interior Department data, Still, the acreage under discussion does in- the relearning is imminent. All may be it could represent between 600 million and 9.2 clude the calving grounds. Can the caribou summed up in a single term, requiring billion barrels. The point is, we'll never know adapt? Senator Murkowski has discussed the no amplification: AIDS. unless we drill. issue with a university scientist who has been The letter also argues that if oil is discovered working with caribou herds for many years. His in the Arctic refuge, "we will not be able to extract conclusion, according to the Senator: If oil devel- he Great Relearning—if anything all of that oil, given current technology." That's got opment were to occur near their usual calving T so prosaic as remedial education to be the silliest anti-development argument ever grounds, the caribou would simply move a mile or can be called great—should be thought raised; ajl the oil in any field is never fully recov- so away. of not as the end of the twentieth cen- ered. Drilling would never occur anywhere if it The controversy over the Arctic National became conditional on whether 100 percent of Wildlife Refuge fills us with feelings of deja vu. tury but the prelude to the twenty-first. the oil could be produced. Moreover, the Interior The same anti-development arguments were There is no law of history that says a Department's coastal plain estimates are for re- raised in the '60s and 70s, first over drilling at new century must start ten or twenty coverable oil. And constant improvements are Prudhoe Bay, and later over the construction of years beforehand, but two times in a being made in secondary and tertiary recovery the pipeline. We had hoped these questions were row it has worked out that way. The methods; fields are yielding more and more of the settled once and for all; to raise them now is really nineteenth century began with the oil as technology advances. to raise non-issues. American and French revolutions of Dubious quibbles aside, the basic argument The energy and economic future of the the late eighteenth. The twentieth cen- for development remains cogent, simple, and nation are too important to be sidetracked by tury began with the formulation of pressing. Any oil found in the coastal plain, or non-issues. Oil exploration in Alaska should pro- Marxism, Freudianism, and Modern- anywhere else in the U.S., would be more than ceed because the national interest requires it. ism in the late nineteenth. And now the welcome. Oil imports are rising and domestic The arguments against development, when con- production is falling. Prudhoe Bay itself, the larg- sidered against the nation's needs, seem to fall twenty-first begins with the Great est field in the U.S. at 10 billion barrels, has been under the weight of both past experience and Relearning. producing for 10 years. It is currently producing at expert scrutiny. The twenty-first century, I predict, will confound the twentieth-century notion of the Future as something ex- citing, novel, unexpected, or radiant; as Progress, to use an old word. It is already clear that the large cities, thanks to the Relearning, will not even M@bil look new. Quite the opposite; the cities of 2007 will look more like the cities of 1927 than the cities of 1987. The twenty-first century will have a retro- ©1987 Mobil Corporation grade look and a retrograde mental at-

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1987 15

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED George Gilder THE MESSAGE OF THE MICROCOSM

A computerized world economy does not care about budget deficits or trade imbalances or national borders.

"T isten to the technology," urges in the old lore and languages, embla- table gadgets, a vague fear of a threat Nonetheless, studying economics JL_/ Carver Mead of the California zoned with the old headlines. Listen to to existing jobs and industries, a vague and other social sciences, I began to Institute of Technology, "find out what the technology? It is simpler to listen sense of both danger and promise. But realize that the old disciplines were it is telling you." to the evening news, to watch the old few people comprehend that the micro- breaking down, the familiar categories It is a difficult counsel. The technol- world still reassuringly on stage, full of cosm of modern electronics is transval- slipping away. An onslaught of techno- ogy of today is entwined in science and sound and fury, puffed up with mythic uing all the things of the world, trans- logical progress was reducing much of speaks in tongues. Within the pente- power and menace. forming all the landmarks, vitiating economic and social theory to gib- costal chorus, minor prophets prate of "YANK TROOPS MOVE UP SIX most of the academic disciplines. Pro- berish. For example, such concepts as nuclear winter and acid rain, viral MILES," the New York Herald Tribune tected by ignorance and nostalgia, the land, labor, and capital, nation and plagues and carcinogenic plastics; blared in my youth, and I could under- media and the politicians continue society—solemnly discussed in every Scientific American, transcending mere stand the message: the gridiron vision measuring miles in Namibia rather academic institution as if nothing had science, discovers the United States as of Korea as territory at stake. Now the than microns in matter as the crux to changed—have radically different a fount of worldwide hunger and pov- troops move on murkier grids, but no the future of the globe. meanings than before and drastically erty; more than half the physicists at one doubts the underlying metaphor of different values. Yet the vendors of old Harvard, Columbia, Cornell; Berkeley, territorial contest. Angola, Nicaragua, expertise continue on as if nothing had Dartmouth, and Stanford, among Afghanistan, Iran, South Africa are the conomics, sociology, geopolitics, happened. other centers of enlightenment, have new arenas for capture the flag and E art, religion all provide powerful Laws get passed, editorials written, pledged to boycott all efforts to thwart they can be made to fit in the old tools that have sufficed for centuries to speeches delivered, soldiers dispatched, enemy missile attacks on their country; dramaturgy. explain the essential surfaces of life. To for all the world as if we. still traveled and Lester Thurow, the leading econo- "YANK SCIENTISTS SHRINK MEMORY many observers, there seems nothing in clipper ships and communicated mist at the Massachusetts Institute of CELL TO six MICRONS'—putting thou- truly new under the sun.—no need for chiefly by mail. Technology, delphically affirms "The sands of switches on a spot of silicon a deep understanding of man's new Jeane Kirkpatrick, for example, gave Great Depression of 1990" as foretold no wider than the wing of a flea— tools—no requirement to descend into a speech, quoted respectfully in the in the cycle theory of an Indian mystic. seems a less gripping and relevant the microcosm of modern electronics Wall Street Journal, in which she said The experts seem to know a lot drama. There is a vague awareness of in order to comprehend the world. The it was impossible to understand what about the big bang and the spin on the the possibility of new and more por- world is all too much with us. is going on in the world without a com- Strange Quark, but not much about prehension of geography, "an idea of the cough in the carburetor or cause of where things are." It is a common no- the baby's headache, or about the dif- tion. It leads to such statements, por- ferences between men and women, or tentously delivered, as: "Cuba is 90 whether the world is getting warmer or miles south of Florida; the Middle East colder, or both. A few months ago is a strategic hub; the Cape of Good astrophysicists discovered, "in nearby Hope is a geopolitical choke point." galaxies," black holes many times Visit the Pentagon, or the New York larger than the sun. These huge maws, Times, and everywhere there are maps, unaccountably missed until now, might solemnly defining national borders and seem to symbolize the current state of sovereign territories. No one shows any scientific knowledge. Meanwhile the signs of knowing that we no longer live computer is down and the programmer in geographic time and space, that the is out to lunch with a Sandinista. That maps of nations are fully as obsolete amid such disheartening confusions as the charts of a flat earth, that many researchers claim to have fath- geography tells us virtually nothing of omed the origins of the universe and interest about where things are in the the death of God, bespeaks an real world. awesome faith indeed. The worldwide network of satellites It is understandable that many of us and fiber optic cables, linked to digital relegate it all to a black box, or a pastel computers, television terminals, tele- panel, and continue to describe events phones and databases, sustain world- wide markets for information, curren- George Gilder is the author of Wealth cy and capital on line 24 hours a day. and Poverty and The Spirit of Enter- Boeing 747s constantly traversing the prise. oceans foster a global community of

16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1987

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED