Faith in Institutions

May 18, 2013 — ancestry, generation gap, institutions

The 40th anniversary of the Watergate investigation is a national watershed moment.  Credibility has been destroyed in all American political and religious institutions during those 40 years.  The population forced to pay for the corrupt system has lost the belief that government works in their best interests.  Religious institutions have been exposed and now have lower status and less respect.  When I voted to end the war in Viet Nam the situation was known as “The Generation Gap”, as if this was the first, last ,and only generation so violently opposed to the politics and lifestyle of the previous.  I suspect that each generation has a gap of various depth and breadth to be digested by the course of history.  After my parents were dead I became interested in my ancestry.  This study has shown me the drastic, religious and political beliefs of their ancestors.  My father’s side is full of teachers, and my mother’s is full of preachers.

Tracing a spiritual and political timeline of my ancestors has shown me that rebellion was frequent and sometimes drastic.  My ancestors rebelled against religious and political institutions by moving to America in the 1600’s.  The entire protestant reformation was an act of rejecting an overly powerful Catholic church to become more pure.  After crossing the Atlantic for religious freedom my ancestors founded and preserved institutions in the colonies.  Other members of my family firmly rejected the Puritan way of life, setting out to live free in new territories rather than submit to the religious fascism of the Pilgrim fathers.  The Wampanoag branch of my family tried hard to wipe out the British presence for good during King Philip’s War.  I had family members in the military on both sides of the Civil War, when that happened.  There may have been a few settled, stationary generations, but when I look at the ethical will of my ancestors they were generally busy rebelling and rejecting institutions as much as they were preserving them.  A dynamic historical tension can be found in the cultural traditions of my ancestors.  This explains why my parents were so crazy.  It was imperative to reject the beliefs they embodied.  It probably also explains why my own generation’s traditions and habits need a vigorous review.  Generation gaps are forever.   Barry Goldwater is fully dead, and only a faint glimmer of the military industrial complex as our worst internal nightmare has been superseded by the much freakier medical pharmaceutical complex.   We have a new fall of civilization to manage now.