I am reminded of a song from Joni Mitchell's album, Big Yellow Taxi, which had the key line They paved paradise, to put up a parking lot.
It speaks to the change of values whereby everything in life is measured by money, which began of course in the industrial revolution.
TWL is the result. What happened TO the 1960s was the complete penetration of the value system down to the lowest levels. In his earlier years, 1910/11, Eliot, he of the elite, saw that real values remained with the lowly in the fauberg of Paris and the music hall of London. Their values may have been low but they were REAL. see his piece on Marie Lloyd in Selected Essays. He was still harping on it in his later plays. They seem dead because they show the death of the upper classes. There is hope with the younger folk in The Elder Statesman. It is the world of The Hollow Men. Too bad Browne wasn't capable of understanding.
Peter M.
Carrol Cox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>This did not happen by accident. By 1970 two things were happening. (1) The
>growth of what some pundits began to call "too much democracy." Secondly,
>the wage share in the national income had grown considerably and the rate of
>profit had fallen. The two phenomena were not unrelated. (As late as 1978,
>when reality had already changed, the earlier attitude was expressed in the
>popular song, "Take this job and shove it." In the 1970s, then, a
>counter-offensive began in the area of mass culture: Read about it in Edward
>P. Morgan, _What Really Happened to the 1960s: How Mass Media Culture Failed
>American Democracy_. (Two notes: [1] Note the preposition _to_ the 1960s;
>[2] Ted informed me in a post that the word "failed" in the sub-title was
>not his but his publishers.) These drives met with no effective resistance,
>and the wage share (including benefits such as Social Security) began to
>stagnate or dro. This campaign went into high gear with Carter's
>deregulation of the air lines and appointment of Volcker as Fed Chairman,
>resulting in the sado-monetarism of the late '70s & early '80s. One symptom
>of the change that had occurred: From 1830 through the 1970s, every decade
>the real wage of u.s. workers incrased over the previous decade. (This was
>true even in the Depression era of the 1930s: prices fell more than wages.
>But from the '70s on real wages were stagnant or falling. From the 80th
>through the 98th percentile, real income remained stagnant. Only in the
>upper 2 percentage did income increase, and even there the bul of the
>increase was within the upper 1/2 of 1 percent. At levels below the 80th
>percentile real income declined precipitously, partly compensated for by
>women entering the working force, partly through debt.
>
>There is much more to the story but I'll leave it at that. It is worth
>noting that 60 years ago no one needed to carry government-issued ID with
>photograph.
>
>Carrol
>
>P.S. One anecdote (I do not know whether it is a joke or an actual
>incident.) A French and an American woman were on a tour bus in Spain, and
>began to chat. Why, the American woman wanted to know, is medical care so
>much better in France than in the U.S. "In America," the French woman said,
>"the people are afraid of the government. In France the government is afraid
>of the people." That may no longer be true in France; we shall see.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: T. S. Eliot Discussion forum. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
>Of
>> Tom Gray
>> Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2012 10:26 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Parking lots in inappropriate places
>>
>> In the area that I live in Canada, the logging industry has collapsed with
>the rise
>> of the Canadian dollar. The Canadian dollar is now a petrocurrency and
>other
>> industires which dry on exports are highly affected by the price of oil.
>This has toi
>> be one of the most beautiful places in the world with the lakes and ridges
>and
>> mountains. Unfortunately the description of "moribund, dying slowly from
>the
>> edges inwards" is apt or this area. There is an area north of Toronto
>called
>> Muskoka. This has turned inot a millionaire's paradise with the lakes
>dotted with
>> massive multi-million dollar "summer cottages". Locals and previous
>cottage
>> owners are being forced out because they cannot afford the new prices. it
>has
>> become an artificial tourist area. 50 or 60 years ago, it was a rough
>timer are
>> similar to the place where I live now.m Now Joni Mitchell's song would
>apply to it.
>> There is now an effort in my area to create a similar economy. It could
>live on like
>> Lenin's corpse but its essence will have died.
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: David Boyd <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Tuesday, September 4, 2012 5:21:11 AM
>> Subject: Parking lots in inappropriate places
>>
>>
>> They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,
>> With a pink hotel, a boutique,
>> And a swinging hot spot.
>> Don't it always seem to go
>> That you don't know what you've got till it's gone?
>> They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
>> They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum.
>> And they charged all the people
>> A dollar and a half just to see 'em.
>> Don't it always seem to go
>> That you don't know what you've got till it's gone?
>> They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
>>
>> (Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell)
>>
>>
>>
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/20/eliot-east-coker-housing-estates
>>
>> 'not preserved in aspic' :-
>>
>> .....It (the English Lake District) embraces places which
>> the visitor to the Lakes may notwant to see and aspects of life
>> and societywhich hecomes here to forget. But itisnogood trying
>> to forget them. Greater Lakeland does not just mean Derwentwater, BleaTarn
>and
>> the Wasdale Screes: it alsomeans Windscale
>> Atomic Station, the Marchon chemical factory at Whitehaven,
>> Workington Steelworks, Barrow Docks and Carlisle Railway
>> Depot; wharves, warehouses, bus-stops and parking-places;
>> schools, adult-education centres, the county libraries; churches,
>> chapels, Sunday schools, cinemas and dance-halls; sports fields,
>> allotments and cemeteries; the new housing estates and the old,
>> shabby Victorian terraces; hardware stores, chemists', fish-andchip shops,
>pubs
>> and coffee-bars; the dairy herds, turnip fields and pig-sties of a
>thousand lowland
>> farms; one cathedral, one
>> teachers' training college, one Polaris-submarine ship-building
>> yard-in feet, all that goes to the life and death of the people of
>> the old kingdom and the new county ofCumbria. Forget all this,
>> and what all the rest of the country calls 'Lakeland' will turn
>> moribund, dyingslowly from theedges inwards, to become in the
>> end little more than a beautiful, embalmed corpse in a rotting
>> coffin.
>>
>> (Norman Nicholson, Lake District Poet, 'Greater Lakeland (1969))
>>
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