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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, October 20,1967
The Triumph of Vulgarity
Much of what is annoying or depressing about contemporary life can be described in one word—vulgarity.
It is an ironic circumstance in a time when educators, bureaucrats and commentators prate hopefully of progress in the "pursuit of excellence," of improving the "quality of life," of the wonders to be wrought by universal higher education. It sometimes seems the actual trend is mostly away from excellence.
We hasten to say we recognize that nothing in the U.S. can match the vulgarization of life achieved in Communist and other police states. Further, that existence was infinitely harder, materialistically speaking, for most people in the past than in the present; in the absence of many amenities it was a grubby, subsistence affair for the generality of men.
Yet in certain prior historical periods standards, at least, were high, and in any event we are here concerned with what's wrong now. not a century ago. The grains of coarseness show up in a variety of areas, as seemingly remote from each other as fashion and politics.
Witness, for a start, the state of painting and other arts. If art reflects the dominant mood of a society, it makes a sad commentary; pop, cp, psychedelic or whatever, its distinctive feature is mindlessness. We by no means reject all nonrepresentational art, but merely observe the obvious, that the quality of a great deal of the stuff being turned out today is singularly cheap. The same stricture applies to many—certainly not all—current musical, theatrical and literary works.
Next on our list of unlovables, obsession with the slovenly is grotesquely evident in the phenomenon of the drug-drunk hippies. They would not merit mention except that their careless attitudes are also found to some degree in a much larger segment of the population, namely teenagers. Whatever else anyone may think about the hippies, going around in rags and crowding together in filthy rooms—by choice, that is—constitute a triumph of vulgarity.
So, too, does the excessive and often gratuitous pornography now permeating practically every avenue of communication. Men may, and do, argue whether the concentration on sex and violence leads to anti-social behavior, and few Americans favor the heavy hand of censorship. But that pornography can be esthetically distasteful is beyond argument.
Curiously enough in such an atmosphere, high fashion, which like art is often regarded as an index of society's frame of mind at a given moment, has grown sexless. While gowns have seen many a quirk over the generations and capable of being abruptly changed tomorrow, the remarkably ugly, mechanistic things being designed for women today must rate some kind of award for crudity. True, no one is compelled to buy high fashion; its excesses just seem perhaps symbolic of the time.
Speaking of buying, there is that favorite whipping-boy, advertising. We come not to denounce it, since it is absolutely essential to the economy's functioning.
The fact remains that advertising has never been known for subtlety or great artistic achievement, particularly in the case of radio and TV commercials, and these appear to be getting worse. You might almost suspect that the copywriters and announcers have convinced themselves they have to appeal to a lower breed of audience than heretofore.
Pervasive vulgarity is also one of the blights afflicting our cities. Graceful structures of the past are relentlessly wrecked to accommodate undistinguished and indistinguishable glass boxes. Noise, dirt and congestion assail the nerves, and the slums grow despite all the efforts to remove or rebuild them.
Even in the sacrosanct civil-rights movement more than a trace of grossness appears, especially in the expressed attitudes of the leaders. However well-intentioned they may be, they sometimes talk as though they were not so much interested in inspiring excellence in their people as in simply grabbing some of the gains achieved by the majority. And of course the constant resort to violence in the streets is degrading and disquieting for the whole nation.
If we may offer a final instance, politics is always easily vulgarized, and so it is today. The U.S. still has the most nearly perfect form of government ever devised, but in important respects the noble objectives of the makers of the Revolution have been prostituted in a welfare state of handouts for all. For a government to try to transform people into parasites, and for many of them to be willing, is nothing if not an oafish condition.
In international politics as well, one can only turn in disgust from the hypocrisy and meanness so frequently on display in the halls and corridors of the United Nations.
It would be foolishly lopsided to contend that no offsets, or only a few, to these vulgarisms can be cited.
The undeniable fact is that our forefathers created, and their successors have expanded, a state of material well-being unsurpassed in history or in the world. If current artistic production is largely unimpressive, there is nonetheless widespread interest in culture, past and present. Reports from the campus picture many if not most college students as quiet and industrious. Not least, people are attempting, even if often ineffectively, to deal with some of the ills that beset us.
Still, the manifestations of vulgarity are so ubiquitous that it is necessary to ask what has caused such a falling-off.
Without getting into more or less profound theories of identity and alienation, we would guess a fairly large part of the explanation is the growth of the cult of mass-man, which is kind of perversion of democracy. Far from the so-called pursuit of excellence, much of human activity today seems geared to appeasing the lowest common denominator.
Democracy at its best is not synonymous with egalitarianism. The equality it promises is equality before the law and equality of opportunity, not equality of material attainment or career.
Nowadays, however, just that seems to be the idea: If A, by dint of hard work and talent, achieves a mode of what used to be called graceious living, then B must have it too, even though he may be an idler and a boor. If B doesn't get it, then it is somehow supposed to be the fault of A.
This degeneration of the democratic ideal is no casual development, nor is it necessarily the result of the population explosion, although expanding numbers have unquestionably caused some of the vulgarity. Rather, the notion of literal equality has been persistently preached by politicians and would-be opinion-molders throughout this generation. The productive citizens are regularly berated, seemingly precisely for their attainments, while the unproductive are made into paragons of virtue.
—Reprinted by permission from The Wall Street Journal, June 26.
Since the preachment reverses the incentives and aspirations that made this country preeminent in the world, it inevitably raises doubts about the quality of life in the future. But whatever happens then, it is in no way surprising that democracy deformed has bred a disturbing debasement of standards.
Letters to the editor
SDS and the library
To the Editor:
Evidently, the library hours will be extended.
This is the result of the following sequence of events: 1) The administration reduced the library hours for the specious reason that they had inadequate funds. 2) This provoked mass student discontent—a petition bearing over 2,800 signatures demanded re-opening of the library. 3) The administration took no definite action, but made only vague promises. 4) Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) decided to have a "read-in" at the library which received wide student support, and 5) The administration proclaimed a return to the former library hours.
Library hours are of major importance to the academic community. The regulation of library hours has recently been slightly affected by the students. How has this come about?
Since we cannot view the behind-the-scenes activities of the decision-makers like Dr. Heller and Dr. Wescoe, we can only make inferences from the events if we wish to understand why the library has been re-opened. Our inference is that it was the possibility of having an unwieldy "read-in" on their hands which caused the administration to re-open the library and not their serious concern for the petition.
Although Mr. Heller "lauds" the student interest in the petition, this is a noticeable change from the original administration reaction: "A spokesman for the administration said Chancellor Wescoe might 'advise' the Board of Regents of the petition"; "The ASC . . . established a committee to study the problem, although members of the committee were not appointed."
Why were library hours cut back? We were told—"lack of funds." Now the University has
the funds "from the additional student fees collected as a result of an increase in the number of students" enrolled. Put those students were enrolled—with their fees paid—at the time of the petition. Not new money but new student action is the new factor in this chain of events.
The hope of the democratic process is that rulers will administer decisions arrived at rationally by the public—in our case the students. In the recent library issue, exercise of democratic petition seems to have failed; threat of independent student action seems to have succeeded to effect policy.
However, in conclusion, we do not wish to advocate decision-making by power confrontations. In fact, we hope that if we can properly understand the recent decision we can then attain democratic decision-making. Our hope would be that the University will henceforth function in a more democratic framework—working with and in accordance with the student voice.
However, when the student voice is not effective, students must realize that they have the power to be effective and that when their voice is ineffective, their numbers will be.
If the library is not open until 11 p.m. Monday, Oct. 23, as promised, the read-in will take place then. Be there.
Bob Howard
Wichita junior,
John Garlinghouse
Salina graduate,
Gus diZerega
Wichita junior,
Steve Heeren
Lawrence graduate,
Sally Heeren
Lawrence senior
Peter Jon Monge
Wichita junior,
Members of SDS
...quotes..
Ronald Reagan, governor of California, on the Vietnam war: "I have a feeling we are winning and not being told. We probably will be told when it politically advantageous for the administration to tell us."
Maj. Robert R. Eisenlauer, an Army chaplain, on military qualifications of Vietnam war protesters: "Draft-card burners may make good squad leaders, just because they want to be leaders of something."
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY kansan
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