"Welcome to the new age, to the new age," lyrics from the song Radioactive by Imagine Dragons played on the radio this morning as I drove to teach my Saturday morning class. "I raise my flags, don my clothes, It's a revolution, I suppose, We'll paint it red to fit right in, Whoa."
And then my mind-blowing moment for the day arrived - we are planting seeds from our subconscious mind.
A few days ago a fellow teacher mentioned the book, Divergent, to me. My husband referred to it as another Hunger Games type of story. I downloaded the book on my tablet and started reading it Friday evening. As a Hunger Games fan, I was sure to like the book.
What occurred to me along my short eight minute drive to my studio was what if we are reflecting what is in our minds and planting seeds in our children's. Art is a response to current socioeconomic and political issues in our society.
During the Baby Boomer generation, dealing with racial issues, a cold war and the Vietnam War, their generation rebelled through song and music (along with protests and other forms of rebelling). Bridge Over Troubled Water, Imagine, Blowing in the Wind, The Unknown Soldier were some of the anti-war songs reflected during the Vietnam War. Movies like Star Wars and Superman reflected the need for hope while battling evil. And then the war was over leading to the eighties.
Goodbye to bra burnings, long hippie hair, tie dye shirts and bell-bottom jeans. In came days of growing up and starting a family while creating a career. Suits were now the go-to dress code and women entered the work force in staggering numbers. TV shows were now about power, and money - Dallas, Dynasty, LA Law .
Flash forward to the 1990's and soap operas became the evening entertainment with 90210, and Melrose Place, along with dramas like Sex in the City, Seinfeld, and Dawson's Creek that reflected us Generation X's growing up into adults. We were young and living our own personal and safe soap operas and wanted to see them reflected back to ourselves.
In the 2000's we suddenly needed more of a microscope to examine our own idiosyncrasies. Suddenly reality T.V. documented everything.
And now? We are now making those shows, those movies and songs that reflect where our generation is and where we want it to go. We are calling for a revolution.
In current pop culture songs like Radioactive, in television shows like Revolution and Walking Dead, in books and movies like Hunger Games, 28 Days, World War Z, and Divergent, we are calling out the injustices in the world and talking about the aftermath of an apocalypse. We are facing global warming, an economic imbalance between the rich and the poor, a two-party system that is so much alike you could not tell one from another and yet there is no mutual cooperation, and a social upheaval in trying to balance a mutual respect for every human being, regardless of race, socioeconomic background, religion, gender or sexual orientation. Have we, Gen X, been privileged? Yes. We did not have a war like the Vietnam War or a World War. We did not have racial segregation. We did not fight for peace, protest or burn bras. But we watched. We saw how easily we could forget a state of peace and equality. And we threw our tantrums with our need to focus on ourselves as our parents took over the world. Our 1990's and 2000's shows were our toddler "Me! Me! Me!" phase. And now, instead of saying "Me!" we are planting seeds in our children.
We are telling them the story of living in a box created by humans. A box that is represented in films as literal - caged into towns due to the aftermath of wars in an effort to create peace. We are watching television shows about everything being torn apart and starting all over again. We are singing about revolutions. We have apocalypse stored in our subconscious mind.
Revolutions do not have to be a blood bath. An apocalypse doesn't have to happen to change the world. Instead, we can have social change, a personal change. Many different New Age authors, intuitives and indigenous cultures talk about a great awakening and change occurring now. Sri Yogananda said “I prophesize you will see a new world! a world of peace, harmony, and prosperity. The earth will know no wars for hundreds of years, so tired will they be of violence of all kinds.” This occurs during our current age, Dwapara Yuga (age) where progress in science and technology is at the forefront and we begin to use "mind power" (intuition). We have also heard of this referred to as the Aquarian Age.
Sometimes we are unaware of our own subconscious messages. Do we feel like an empty generation, one that did not have any hard-fought times like the Greatest Generation or the Baby Boomers that we feel we cannot make this change ourselves? Or maybe we are starting with making the change within ourselves and reminding our children to expect more.
During the Industrial Revolution (both the first and second), people were thrown into a new age of machinery. Inventions like the steam engine, the car, the telephone, and canals changed our world. With it came overworked and underpaid people, child labor, malnutrition, poverty, unsafe work environments. The people cried out and from it we modified child labor laws and formed unions to protect workers.
Today, in the middle of the Digital Age, in the past twenty five years we have gone from door-to-do encyclopedia sales and calling our friends on a land line to mobile phones that can access the Internet, tablets to watch any show we want to and read any book we like on the go, a work environment so heavily reliant on digital technology that we can no longer do math in our head, and telescopic lenses so strong we can see back to a moment before the Big Bang,
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| Photo from James Dean (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ospale/3205097784/) |
And like in the Industrial Revolution, for all of our progress, we see the sting of unfair labor practices and compensation while the cost of living rises. We see a shift in business practices as we become a global economy. We see pockets of the ocean where no fish can live safely and others filled with garbage so wide it almost looks like another country emerging from the water. We see a world where, while we adjust to rise to this digital age, there is part of us still living in the Industrial Revolution pumping our water, air, earth, and food with chemicals.
Maybe, with the help of our children, we will start again. We will touch the earth with our bare hands growing our own food. We will once again make something we can point to using our creativity. We will come into our breath and move our bodies in asana practice until we remember we are more than our ego. We will become selfless, honest and brave. And we will do it all in loving kindness, and together.
