A deficiency of intelligent self-expression exists amongst the e-generation. Problematic with our complacent consumer culture is that we have lost the skills of dialogue and of open rebellion and contempt for the establishment and for the status quo. Where have the Allen Ginsbergs gone? The John Lennons? The Janis Joplins, the Eldridge Cleavers and all the other contrarians of the formative 1960s?
I hope they haven't gone to the bathroom.
After four years at the University of Utah, I have had many chances to read the writings on the wall. An etching on the bathroom stall in the Marriot library reads "Nazi Bush." Also among my favorites: "Golden Plates. Scam. Morman (sic) Cult. Nice People tho (sic)."
On any given day in any given bathroom, you can read about nearly anything: U.S. foreign policy; gender issues; theology and politics - most of it mixed with humor and a little sordid imagination. But why the bathroom stall, especially at a university where people ideally are capable of more intelligent expression in a much more legitimate medium? Is this where the Allen Ginsbergs of today hang out? Surely not.
But, have you ever pondered this behavior? I have.
Among my questions: Do the perpetrators go into the stall with the express intent to write what they do? Have they stood in an aisle in the U Bookstore scratching their heads, deliberating between the Sharpie or the Marks-a-lot? Do they visit www.bathroomgraffiti.org to read up on the most recent techniques and the most updated vernacular? Or, do they go into the stall uninspired, read the writing on the walls, become inspired and only then add to the noise written for you and I to read?
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The Romans of antiquity used to say: Fiat justitia-ruat caelum! (Do justice and let the skies fall!) Vanity Fair journalist Christopher Hitchens revived this edict as advice in his recently published "Letters to a Young Contrarian." He admonishes that now is the time to move beyond the bathroom stalls and into more established institutions of society. The time has come for the e-generation to perpetuate the activism that defined their parents' generation and organized their voices to become the contrarians of the new century.
Let the skies fall upon us! Let the establishment breath fire in our direction! But allow us, as young contrarians, to struggle, as Christopher Hitchens encourages us, to create "a society not as it is but as it might be." Now is the time for these four letter poems to materialize into tangible rebellion. No longer cast your anger about in the bathroom stalls, cast your vote, your voice, your pen instead. Get involved! If you think that Bush is a fascist, let your vote so say it. Let your voice so say it. Let your pen, like a light saber, strike a blow in the direction you perceive the dark side to be.
Do not forget that society owes much of its progress to the contrarians of yesteryear. How many people thanked William Lloyd Garrison for publishing The Liberator year after year? In 1835 a mob, angry at his abolitionist stance, dragged Garrison around the streets of Boston with a rope tied around his neck. He was rescued and lived long enough to witness the passing of the 13th Amendment.
Consider also Paul CÇzanne, now regarded as the father of modern art, who was the object of ridicule at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. Even his best friend, Emile Zola, portrayed CÇzanne as a failure in the novel L' Oeuvre. And, speaking of Emile Zola, his life embodies the contrarian spirit. He unpopularly opposed the anti-Semitism and the blinding nationalism of his time by defending justice above country.
Now is our time to be ridiculed. If President Bush claims that history has called this great nation to action, so let it be said that history has called her young contrarians to action to oppose the eminent war in Iraq. It is time for the voices of justice to combine in open opposition to the nefarious crimes of our day.
As the war approaches, let us, as students, be of open dissent, avoiding the inanity of bathroom graffiti, but taking action in all facets of daily interaction.
by Daniel Thatcher
U-Wire
