The Philosophy of the Beat Generation

the title of an essay by John Clellon Holmes...I couldn't find a copy online, but here's my summary (for my beat writers class)

comments/suggestions/etc. welcomed

The Philosophy of the Beat Generation

“This is a generation whose almost exclusive concern is the discovery of something in which to believe” writes John Clellon Holmes in ‘The Philosophy of the Beat Generation.” It is a generation “groping toward faith out of an intellectual despair and moral chaos in which they refuse to lose themselves.”

Holmes makes the case that this is the result of being “specifically the product” of a world they inherited, “the worst of all possible worlds.” He asserts that the Beat Generation was a reaction to “the growing collectivity of modern life, and the constant threat of collective death,” with a “disturbing extremity of individualism.”

They found a hero in James Dean, someone who Holmes says “was not what they wanted to be; he was what they were. He lived hard and without complaint; and he died as he lived, going fast.” But Holmes goes on to write that “if young people idolize...they have no illusions about them as martyrs, for they know (and almost stoically accept) that one of the risks of going so fast, and so far, is death.”

Similar to his essay ‘This Is The Beat Generation,’ Holmes again separates the Beats from the Lost Generation by noting that “the cynicism and apathy which accompanies the end of ideals” was not present among the Beats. They were only satisfied or interested by extremes, he says, “occupied with the feverish production of answers” and again raising the single question: “How are we to live?” According to Holmes, “even the crudest and most nihilistic member of the Beat Generation...is almost exclusively concerned with the problem of belief, albeit unconsciously.”

It was a generation “searching for their own answers,” and Holmes compares the hipster to the early Christians, “merely keeping alive an unpopular philosophy,” practicing “a kind of passive resistance to the Square society in which he lived.” The hipster was merely trying to “free himself, not exert power over others.”

“No one can tell us that there is no God,” wrote Jack Kerouac. “We’ve passed through all forms...Everything is fine, God exists, we know time...Furthermore we know America, we’re at home...We give and take and go in the incredibly complicated sweetness.”

Kerouac’s “insistence that actually they were on a quest, and that the specific object of their quest was spiritual” was, according to Holmes, “something which seemed to irritate critics most of all.”

“The Beat Generation is basically a religious generation,” wrote Kerouac. “Mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.”

that fueled some of the energy and weirdness, no doubt. I love the beats.

I think the way they looked at things and searched for answers could again be instructive to a cynical nation. Plus listening to poets is always a good idea for any generation.

most likely an after effect of the above mentioned substances.

Obviously you haven't read enough of them or about them, since you admire a world/scene that really didn't exist. Kerouac wasn't a rebel at heart, he was a conservative who often retreated to his mother's home. Neal Cassidy was eventually given the position of court jester to Kesey's bunch -- a job that eventually killed him. And sainted Allen Ginsberg used the Boulder-based school as his personal cat house.

They had a couple good years in the post WWII expansion and then slowly became corrupt. As for Jack K. he was so broken down by the end, he could barely finish a TV interview.

He couldn't handle it. He was already on his way down when his book was published, 6 years too late. The events in On the Road actually took place in the 40s. It's interesting that no one has ever made a movie of On the Road. I read that one was in the works a few years ago, but haven't heard any more about it. Brando wanted to play the lead in the 50s and would probably have been great. I think it would have needed to be filmed in black and white.

Also, there was no real place for women with the Beats. They were mere playthings to be left behind when something more exciting beckoned. Carolyn Cassady wrote a couple of books. She tried to make Neal a family man, but he couldn't hack it and left to self-destruct. She's talked about how sex with Neal was like being raped. He was brutal, whereas Jack was sweet and gentle.

Some were from wealthy families, some were college-educated, some were predators.

But a significant number of us were like me. Having been stigmatized, penalized, and discriminated against by a conformist society, for being too damned smart (check my sig line) and, often, as a result of personal experience of abuse of authority by parents, teachers, or employers, tending to question authority, we were unemployable and had to survive without any support system whatsoever. In addition to whatever part time or temporary jobs we could get while homeless, there were coffee shops where we could sing folksongs or read poetry and pass the hat, survival sex (no AIDS back then, so you could actually survive), drugs (besides getting high, some could make a few bucks dealing, and the drug culture usually provided a place to crash and sometimes food), and crumbs from the tables of those mentioned in the first paragraph. But the country was in great economic shape in those days and fewer people were homeless. There was a "uniform," but those of us who had no money could usually manage to get worn-out jeans and black tees or turtle-necks as hand-me-downs from the wealthy, who, in return, usually took our ideas and songs and poems and disseminated them as their own.

I tried to stay as stoned as I could as I went from being labelled mentally ill, to being called a beatnik (in Mexico we were called existentialists), then a hippie, then back to mentally ill again. I eventually gave up the drugs because it was the only way to escape the predators. Eventually social programs kicked in, I got old enough to qualify for senior benefits, and I'm now in comfortable circumstances, watching fascism grow and wishing I were dead but too much of a coward to off myself.

Along the way I got to spend a few years studying the teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, and I also learned that we are not a viable species, we overpopulate and die off in regular cycles, that after each overpopulation peak and subsequent large die-off (from the consequences of overpopulation such as famine, disease and wars), life becomes precious again for a few generations, people swear "never again," and then the cycle repeats, we overpopulate, life becomes cheap, lebensraum becomes scarce, food and shelter become unavailable for many, fascism takes advantage of cheap and slave labor, violence, brutality and torture escalate and the next big die-off occurs. Once it is over, life becomes precious again for a generation or two.

But patriarchal religions and societies keep the cycle going and prevent us from becoming a viable species by imposing gender roles that divide us at birth so that we cannot understand each other or communicate and we see each other as two species apart from all other species, instead of one species among many, with common survival needs. The moment you glimpse the truth, and long before you begin to understand it, society recognizes you as a troublemaker and you are cut off, stigmatized, and thrown to the predators.

Once I was beat, now I am beaten.

thanks for your input

You ran the gamut.
Who knows, we may have crossed paths in NYC. I used to hang with Greg Corso when he was in town and had some wild times.

I dig what you say about the cycles. They just keep spinning out of control all the time. We spend so much time worrying about our current cycle we miss the big picture, that everything and everyone is so interconnected, and we are all really just part of one big thing.

If we could just get more people to ignore the cycles, we would be better off.

Keep beating. Don't get beaten down.

another of Beezlebub's grandsons here, SC.

society can not stand the truth as it is built upon lies. most people can not stand the truth as their lives are built upon lies.

written by Sam Kashner, who attended the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics instead of going to college. I just got it from the library.

From Publishers Weekly
With characteristic modesty, writer Kashner opens his memoir with a caveat to readers: this isn't an encyclopedic history of the beat generation. Rather, it's his own story of how it felt to leave home and learn to be a poet by hanging out with the great beat poets, albeit in their more gentled phase (past their road-tripping days, but still full of "crazy wisdom"). It was 1976 when Kashner, a fresh college dropout, decided to follow his dream and apply to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, a yet-to-be-accredited division of the Buddhist Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colo. As their first (and for a while only) student, Kashner's assignments included finishing and typing Allen Ginsberg's poems; preventing Gregory Corso from scoring heroin; cleaning the home of their guru, Rinpoche; and mediating between William Burroughs Sr. and Jr., not to mention attending the odd lecture…

more…
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060005661/qid=1095741676/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-4963028-3082430