R. D. Laing

A couple of years ago during a jaunt in Pusan South Korea, I met in a cafe some East Europeans. After the usual identifications of nationalities – at that point always glad to say New Zealand – we got to talking about the the Western world. Instantly they came up with the names of The Beatles and Michael Jackson. I said with evident weariness. "Yes, the Beatles composed some nice songs and Michael Jackson can dance." These sailors fell silent. A revolutionary thought may have crossed their minds. These idols of western freedom may be no more than what they seem. What were hard maritime men doing revering these effeminate show-biz men?

Lately amidst all the anger and weirdness of the trial of a British historian in Austria for unclean history thoughts, I have been reading an American history book titled,
"1968 The Year That Rocked The World".

Setting aside the American proclivity to think America is the world, it is a very good read. I skip-read the earnest passages on American rock music. As with the Polish sailors, the author at times sees show-biz as moral philosophy.

I was fourteen in a small town in New Zealand in 1968. I have no difficulty remembering that revolutionary era. My life revolved around earnest parents and teachers and books and books. In the media universe there surged a complete break down of unquestioned conventions. We high school students picked up on the revolutionary times with the naive enthusiasm of juveniles. We had actually picked up on its core. Adults in responsible positions were no longer God-like although they remained feared. We made fun of the politicians we had seen on television and our school assemblies could quickly become riots of childish self-expression.

The American book has its own version of "Never Again". Never again could the western politicians disdainfully ignore the media images and its public perceptions. People power could bring down Governments and end wars and alliances if they looked bad on television. Yes, The Beatles were important. So in our present era is Michael Jackson, even if he never makes political statements. Since 1968 we all have been living in a media-saturated universe.

R.D. Laing was a Scottish psychiatrist who in the 1960s became world-famous for his media-savvy rebellion against his own profession. Every revolution needs its mad priest. R.D. Laing was the 1960s John Ball. His charm was that in a most dismal profession he sometimes effected real results. By unorthodox, even dangerous practices, he could cure psychosomatics. He made at least one dumb person speak. His apologists claim the startling statistic. No patient, not already mad, became mad after his treatment.

All western cities today are filled with men and women in semi-zombie states roaming the sidewalks. The modern western city is, in large part, the legacy of R.D. Laing. That social conditioning is now so entrenched we don't usually notice it. The semi-mad have the dispensation as the elect to take us away before we can take them away.

R D Laing wrote many books so turgid and incomprehensible that their few flashes of insight are read as mantras. In essence he was saying madness is mostly a private code of response and survival to a bad environment. The cure lay in reconciling the environment to the mentally sick. Therefore those people society classed as sane were the prime culprits of mental illness.

R.D. Laing referred on British television to an analogy. The mother's love to her child was of the mother holding her baby out of a sixteenth floor window saying, "See how much I love you". Such a shocking statement immediately plunges the reader into a 1960s time warp. The era when wizened, mostly beardy-weirdy men were popular on television discussing social issues with racy, off-putting words. Three decades later Michael Jackson improvised the baby-out-the-window act for world television. Whether he demonstrated Laing's argument, or was being as spontaneously as stupid as he looked, touches on the whole riddle of the 60s.

Twenty years after the 1960s revolution, Europe was rocked again by the fall of the European Communist States. The ideological inspiration for the second revolution came directly out of the 60s one. The East European intellectuals who led them – and in many cases led the new governments – did so with plenty of irony about their communist governments. About western European 60s radicalism and show-biz they were entirely unironical, even solemn.

My first unease was when the first post-communist Czech President Havel invited the Rolling Stones into Prague as official guests of the new government. In communist Prague the playwright Havel had attended secret rock concerts, and without a trace of irony or humour had reported that he couldn't hear the lyrics.

So the 60s revolution won. The name R.D. Laing, once so huge, is mostly confused now with a certain female pop singer. One of the charms of the 60s is it has no intellectual history, outside archives. We remember it exactly like a long debauched party where the hangover has dissipated but not gone.

But since the fall of communism another twenty years is close to passing on. I am beginning to pick a pattern. After zero-time 1945 there is a revolution at the cusp of each new adult generation. That is every twenty years. Then the least likely people, the most despised by the establishment lead it – despite themselves – and become the government. Where the status-quo is most ill at ease is where the seed germinates. In the 60s it was youngsters with mop-tops and soulful tunes that ended the Cold War and the stuffy establishment. In the 80s it was eastern European intellectualls struggling to understand obscure, noisy, and banal lyrics who brought down communism.

In the 2000s might it be self-taught historian buffs who bring down the New World Order of the entire Western World?