An essay dedicated to the students and the lectures of the Higher Diploma in Social Policy, 2001-2002

 Mozart: Andante Grazioso from the Piano Sonata No. 11 in A Major K 331

Peter Herrmann

A Spring, full of terrific hopes.

Aghabullogue, May 2002

You should sleep nine hours without dreams. Then you have the day for dreams.

(Herbert Marcuse)

From the book cover of Erasmus Schöfer, drawing by Barbara Manns

A Spring, full of terrific hopes.[i]

… Who Am I? …

Who Am I?
Look Inside Of Yourself
Where Are You?
Look Outside
Play With Thoughts

To Come
To Go
To Stay
Looking At New Things[ii]

The following contains admittedly much stuff on the ME – the background of it are, however, YOU. Even if lecturing is demanding and at the same time – whoever feels concerned, is asked to excuse my bold openness – sometimes perhaps a little bit boring, I want to dismantle a little bit our own authority as lecturers, the sometimes supposed self-sacrificing attitude as it is sometimes claimed. It is – at least in my personal perception – far from being anything like this. It is – ideally – a process of mutually fruitful work, a process of cooperation; and it is a process of work, where many tasks are fitting in a wider framework of personal interests, as well the interests of lecturers. Stimulations, ideas mentioned in the classroom are not “lost there”; they are for many times valuable in other contexts.

– To consider this as important aspect of teaching social policy is perhaps as well an important part of social policy itself – the development of linking efforts, of fostering co-operation rather then maintaining hierarchical structures inside an institution that claims to compensate and neutralise hierarchies in society.

In this sense I want to dedicate this essay to the students and the lectures of the course alike.

This little essay – born simply out of the pleasure of philosophy and sociology, and thus being very much lead by philosophical and sociological thoughts – is the attempt to draw the work, mainly the work on the different projects together and to link them back to the various topics which had been developed throughout our mutual studies. And so it is as well born out of the effort to keep the promise I made at the beginning of – and throughout – the year; namely the promise to make the ling between sometimes scattered dealing with single topics.

With this in mind, it gives as well a personal account of the experiences and impressions during the year – which means that the pleasures, hopes, disappointments and struggles of the autobiography – at least some brief notes thereon – link into the academic work; life as dedication for social policy in its full meaning, if you want it a little bit pompous, nevertheless honest. Taking this together, preparing and actually doing the course work was personally for me very much the same as writing this essay – the pleasure of philosophy and sociology.

An essay dedicated to the students and the lecturers of the Higher Diploma in Social Policy, 2001-2002

It is already Tuesday – just one day left to the first of May. Sun and rain went hand in hand this day. Perhaps I have to take it as metaphor of my mood, the permanent change between courage, aiming at new initiatives and exhaustion. Is it a general feeling, just reflecting the mood after the winter days or is it a result of the 875 miles of the last week?

Being out in the yard and taking care of the life stock I am contemplating. The Monday of the week before comes into my mind. As usual I got up more or less early. The programme for the day had been given: every Monday during this year I had been completely occupied by teaching – well, from ten o’clock . So I had some time left to do other things before. But this Monday was a little bit different. Fortunately I could reschedule some classes of the day as I have had a special programme for the evening – and so I was lucky that I could end earlier this day.

At 5 pm I met Lorraine outside of the lecture theatre. This day she was not the student of the H.Dip.-class, but I met her in a different role. The young woman decided to join ESOSC, the European Research Institute and Consultancy for her placement. We got into the car and left Cork with destination Shannon airport. Knowing the byroads in the Northwest of Cork City we could avoid the heavy traffic of the rush hour and got smoothly around – heading to Mallow, then going on to Limerick . So far it was a pleasant drive; the traffic didn’t distract from … – well, from taking the other hat, the one of lecturer and student. As the end of the course was not far away we talked about Lorraine ’s project.

Crazy people wanted, Classifying, measuring, diagnosing, and treating "mental illness" – thinking about this topic meant for me to get simultaneously aware of the advantage of having a job like this. Teaching social policy for students who are highly motivated and at the same time so different, coming from various ways of life and having very different plans for the future is a guarantee that I hardly get bored. And in fact, in many of the topics I have some kind of personal interest.

Lorraine’s topic for example is something that brings me back to an earlier stage of my life. Having worked for some time in a psychiatric hospital, all her concern reminds me at that time, and the time of my College years as student, not least the time of what later became commonly known as the students and workers movement, the non-parlamentarian movement. Of course, my experiences are going back some twenty or thirty years. I made them in another country and my workplace was not just a single psychiatric ward but a huge psychiatric hospital – nearly 2000 patients had been incarcerated. Literally incarcerated – and I had to use the key, even if we, a couple of like-minded employees, fortunately enough including the director – wanted to resist, wanted to introduce at least some openness. But they had been incarcerated as well in the indirect way, in the way that is the focus of Lorraine’s project: medication as the only treatment for those, who need psychiatric care, understood not least psychological and social support. How could it leave me unmoved, especially when I am getting aware of the engagement of the young woman besides me?

But it was not just this like-mindedness in regard of a specific group; furthermore, Lorraine is actually fighting one of the fundamental battles of today’s society. Psychiatric patients are basically dealt with as non-humans and it is not only this group. The challenge is to fundamentally redefine the self-understanding of social professions. Usually they start from a certain “image”, the understanding of the “good” and the “evil”. Moreover, pretending to work for the individual and sometimes even working “with” the individual social professions have – paradoxically to the individualistic approach – the society as reference. A main strand of the Western history of ideas starts from the individual by subordinating it under the requirements of society. The individual is seen as play dough, as something which has to be shaped in accordance with the “ideal society”, ideal as it is defined by professionals, by political elites and basically by economic interests. And so it is in this area the frightening influence of pharmaceutical industries that “defines health”. But what is more, it is the redefinition of the basic idea of citizenship and quality of life: It is actually not far from the cogito ergo sum as it had been defined by René Descartes to the subordination of the individual under the interests of the market. However, what Cartesian philosophy did not accept was the fact that we think what we are, or as Karl Marx put it

‘In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.’ (Karl Marx: The German Ideology. Part I: Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook. A. Idealism and Materialism (1845-46) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a1 – 16.5.2002)

And what Descartes actually could not take into account was the simple fact that it is only in the developed market society where production reaches a stage which captures thinking – what I frequently mentioned as the consumo ergo sum. It is actually the commodity as fetish and thus as conquest of the thinking by the market. Citizen is only the consumer, the participant of and in the market society. And what developed as anti-psychiatry actually shows its character as anti-market, as anti-capitalist approach as it wants to give society back to the individual rather then allowing that for some people the consumo ergo sum is literally implemented: consume your medication, consume the treatment that professionals, bureaucrats and market-powers define as “appropriate”. And then go on to think exactly that way this makes you thinking. The particularly ironic consequence of what Zygmunt Bauman must have had in mind when he wrote that the market ‘offers freedom to people who in other areas of their life find only constraints, often experienced as oppression’ (Zygmunt Baumann: Freedom: Buckingham 1988: 61)

III
The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.         
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.[iii]

Driving through the early evening – the country side is seemingly flying along – and talking about this topic the other students and their work come into my mind.

One is seemingly the same to that of Lorraine ’s – Deirdre's project on The State, Minors and Mental Illness. But what a world between them? The same topic, but approached in a completely different way, the one looking for the what of the definition of mental illness, the other interested in the who of the difinition of the same matter.  The one arguing from a rather radical community oriented perspective – very much the anti-psychiatric approach, of the end 1960s/early 1970s – Deirdre argues more from the serene perspective of the young woman who knows about what we once called the long march through the institutions – was it Rudi Dutschke or Daniel Cohn-Bendit who coined this phrase?[iv] Discussing legal issues around the mistreatment of psychiatric patients – her experience of working in the area of law penetrates her work here as well. Even the quotation is an issue we have to talk about – well learned what the lecturers in her previous courses taught. Nolens volens I have to admit that she is in many regards correct. As much I want to join Lorraine on the way of forcing the way for a radical and immediate change, as much I have to accept the necessity of this long march through the institutions. Though, it is not an alternative. Both ways have to be followed. And if I learned my lessons of life properly both ways have to be walked along at the same time. Reformism? Not really, even if reforms are necessary as such: just as reforms.

‘You have me converted from law’ she once writes in an e-mail, following an intense discussion of the fact that law is only a reflection of the social relations, of the power-structure of society. Even in a materialised form it belongs to the superstructure of society. However, Deirdre brought me a little bit back to it – finally the EU the region we are living in is supposedly what in linguistic terms simply would be a constitutional state, what in terms of the constitutional law is understood more precisely as a state based on law and securing its implementation. It is this state and its ambitions in which we are all are moving, the state which shapes more and more our life – its destination: a social Europe , whatever it means. And it is getting so clear for me what this discussion on law means and can mean.

IV     
’Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation, of the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis.    
But that the secular basis detaches itself from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the cleavages and self-contradictions within this secular basis. The latter must, therefore, in itself be both understood in its contradiction and revolutionized in practice. Thus, for instance, after the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must then itself be destroyed in theory and in practice.’

So I found some help in my own search for the project I will soon start in virtually in Munich : an investigation of European social policy law. And even if I will be strongly urged to take legal arguments on board – finally the project partner is an Institute on International Law – I will keep this in mind – law is a certain social practice, not more and not less. And as practice it is something that needs change – change of the conditions on which it is based.

Of course this is rather abstract. However, finally social policy is “systemic”; social policy work on questions in which sometimes – seemingly? – the human being, the perspective of and even on the concerned people is lost out of sight. Cathy comes to my mind. ‘I, being a very practical person’, she says, ‘felt it difficult to comprehend, at first, how one could promote children without having a child in sight’ – these are the words she used in her placement report. And as such a “very practical person” she is a permanent challenge for me.

When we talked about her project she did not easily accept an answer. What does it mean for the concrete situation? Only an answer which can help in this regard is a valuable answer for her.

During the year she had the opportunity to go twice to Bruxelles – once for a conference, another time for her placement. And she worked systematically on the project – Children - Seen and not Heard? She goes somewhat dogged her way – “No, I’m alright, I’ll get there” – and so she does. Not being impressed by the huge glass fronts of the Parliament in Brussels – she knows that this glass is as hard and impenetrable as steel. Not being impressed by a Commissioner – finally he does what she probably expected: leaving basically without having answered the questions. However, she knows as well that there is no easy answer – life experience, and as well the experience of finding the own way teach (and leads to) the acknowledgement that it is necessary – and even nice – to walk with others. Life – in this sense – is a little bit as a Non-Governmental Organisation: sometimes it would be much easier, more straightforward to do without them, without the permanent waffling and meetings and exchange of documents. But at the end of the day we need people to trust and with whom we can work together.

What is all this about? Children, to be precise children’s rights are the focus of her work. Yes, another question of law!? But much more a question of living together. And such a living together does not need theoretical answers. Rather it depends on the answers that are immediately meaningful for day-to-day’s practice. – But as much as she looks for the people concerned, as much as the practical purpose is her central interest it does not distract her from looking for answers, for explanations, which make it possible to explore what is behind the glass.

‘IX        
The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is contemplation of single individuals and of civil society.’

During the year I had to think for several times of Niklas Luhmann. Once, a colleague introduced me as Luhmann’s scholar. I don’t know if this was true – I definitely learned quite a lot by working on his theory. Be it while I had been at the University of Bielefeld in Germany , where he was for so many years the advertising sign; be it later when I worked on a sociological study on welfare organisations and the civil society. I am wondering how Cathy would have reacted to him – the early Niklas Luhmann.[v]

Definitely different than Michael. This young man is just the opposite of the student mentioned before. Talking to him one might have at times the impression that life is a theoretical experiment. And then again he has something of Luhmann. Being seemingly lost in intellectual pastimes, he surprises a minute later by mentioning work he does – the Samaritans are not only the subject of his interest for the project, titled "Re-Locating Individualism" - The Samaritans as a Social Space. He is active in the organisation and tries to combine highly abstract theories with care for the individual.

I am wondering again about differences and similarities. Students who are not interested in what many people turn down as theory, something that is said to be solely abstract, or even contemplative reasoning about terms, construction of theoretical models and the search for relations between different ideologies throughout the centuries – the process of splitting hairs. And others who try to find a way through exactly this.

It is Michael who starts his work on the project by reasoning about postmodernism. The notion of space as an entity which allows the self-determination of and by the individual. However, a space that is not per se given. The individual has to strive for this space and the Samaritans could make an offer – partners in negotiating and renegotiating life.

– Sure, we can have this impression in today’s world – the isolated individual, depending on him- or herself. The definition of the individual and the constitution of identity as “tinkering”[vi] (see for instance Ulrich Beck: The Debate on the “Individualization Theory” in Today’s Sociology in Germany ; in: Soziologie; Special Edition on Occasion of the XIIIth. Wold Congress of Sociology; Ed.: on behalf of the German Association of Sociology (Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie): Schäfers, Bernhard ; Opladen 1994: 196 ff.) Such a postmodern suggestion by Ulrich Beck as it would likely be supported by Scott Lash or Anthony Giddens is but only a vulnerable attempt to counter Herbert Marcuse’s still circumspect, even if not completely acceptable analysis of the One-Dimensional Man (written in 1964).

But then, what exactly is the notion of this supposed shift to a postmodern world. Do we not have to explore the modern world more in depth before we leave it as unfulfilled concept behind? Discussing for many times on the seemingly very abstract level of Kantian and Hegelian philosophy it gets soon clear that we are actually working on a pronouncedly practical level. Finally, everybody has to accept that

‘VIII
All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.’

Surely some interesting thoughts for me, not least as I feel obliged to acknowledge the provocation of postmodernism. For me it is especially challenging as a kind of hand-luggage for some future work I just took up in Dresden – a project on personal further training, so to say. And in this I have to go through the same treadmill as Michael does. Every time I say “Don’t hide yourself behind these magic words, which are at the end not much more than empty clichés”, I say it as well to me. – Nobody should say lecturers do not have to learn. Finally, perhaps having brought theory a little bit nearer to Cathy, Michael came probably a little bit nearer to practice – and I will go on in the search for the synthesis, the effort of overcoming the dialectical contradiction.

Having said this it has to be qualified. Even if he came very much along as a theorist, he always stood with another leg firm on the ground – not least by the already mentioned work at the Simon Community, the organisation working for and with homeless people. And it is this organisation which coined very much Liam’s work during the year. Brave man – to give up a career in telecommunication, something that others would probably see as a dream-job. Well, giving it up means to continue at the same time at least with a certain way of approaching challenges – a very systematic approach, looking for purposes, if possible those of immediate relevance.

Another challenge for me, as he continues on a substantial level to some extent what I wanted to do when I arrived some years ago here in Ireland – the title of the then envisaged project was Street-level economic activities. Well, Liam’s interest was another: Street Drinking in Cork City. However, in both of the cases the idea was to look at those who live on the streets. And in both of the cases the approach was somewhat phenomenological – the real life as it can be seen and as it is perceived, perceived not least by those who live it.

‘VI   
Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual.  
In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.’

Street-drinking should not be mixed up with homelessness – Liam is clear in this. However, his interest and work in this area is strongly linked to homelessness, going back to his activities in the Simon Community. And – thus being reminded of housing – I am again wondering if politicians are really aware of this fundamental paradox: aiming on building a “European House”, as they call it, but not having even a naked shelter for the many of those for whom they claim to build it. And while they are preaching water and do not want to see anybody in the streets, drowning their sorrows, they are themselves sitting in the palace, cheering with wine. And these palaces are built from glass, that is as hard and impenetrable as steel – you will remember both, Heinrich Heine and Cathy Byrne .

These strong walls may keep things outside – for a while. However, finally the standard for an integrated society is how it deals with those depending on water – how the society copes with the weakest links and even more, how the society defines who are weak. Couldn’t one even say that a society defines its own weakness by defining who is weak, who is even too weak to be accepted as part of the society. In other words society defines itself not by what it is but by what it is not, by whom it excludes.

Claire asked in her essay a question that comes to my mind at this point. ‘So what is more important – a healthy psychological base for the child or a setting in which he can flourish academically?’ The task, the young woman has set herself is not an easy one. She investigates the situation of children with the Down’s Syndrome, regarding the satisfaction of their special needs – having moderate learning disability. And as usual, research turns out to be a minefield. Starting to look at the situation in the schools is just the beginning of opening the mind on all those involved, getting aware of the various issues that have to be tackled and that actually are played off against each other. Medical arguments, the legal situation, the interests and as well the capacities of the teaching profession come into play. And what at the end gets clear is that finally only one question is relevant – how is all this related to the real life, to empowering living outside of school. And even if Claire looks at the seemingly much specialised question, the situation of children with moderate learning difficulties due to the Down Syndrome, she actually covers the way today’s society values – and devalues – the human being.

II      
The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth -- i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

We see, what we usually acknowledge as “the social” is by no means eternally given – and this is true even for matters of very basic, biological and in a way unchangeable character.

When students choose their topic for such a project or any thesis and I am tutoring the work on the topic I always try to invest some of my studies to know at least a little bit about what I am talking about while I am “supervising the experts”. And in connection with the work on Claire’s topic I thought again and again about the ambiguity of what we vaguely call modernisation, progress and civilisation. What interested me in particular was the changing way of how societies exclude people. Sometimes we pretend that in earlier societies there was a “natural harmony”. Did I not talk for many times of the oĩkoυ, the seemingly harmonious Greek system of the oikos? In its analysis we see the oìkoυoμίας, the oikonomia, the origin of today’s economy. How often did I read and think about this “management of the household”, as for example Xenophon developed it so profoundly in his book of which the title is probably best translated as Talks about the Management of the Household. Seemingly the “ideal form”, the foundation of what Plato presented in The Republic the ideal state.

We are still driving – on the way from Cork to Shannon . We are approaching Limerick now, but seemingly my thoughts travelled much further. They crossed the borders between countries and travelled as well across the borders of time. – But it is only seemingly that they moved “beyond” today’s time and space. I think about the long waves of history – the seemingly recurrent topic of what probably A.S. Maine reissued in modern times as first social scientist. Not being happy with the positivist approaches of the young sociology as it developed at his time for example by Auguste Comte, he wanted to explore what he saw as the essence of social development and what he put into the formula of a development from status to contract. My thoughts worked another time on this never ending debate, reoccurring again and again throughout the entire history of social thoughts since at least Aristotle who specifically related “philía” (friendship) and “koinonía” (community) (see Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics – 350 BC). But all this barely went much further than redefining the focus – I remember names as Durkheim, Toennies, Alfred Weber, and of course later Marcuse, Adorno and Habermas.

Along the roadside I see Caravans – a glance of the life and living of the Travelling Community.

A strange feeling overcomes me – the deep feeling of the contradictions of our society and own life. There we are driving on the highway-like road – so to say communicating. Two people talking with each other despite the differences for example of age and what is usually called position. But taking the strong linguistic link between commuting and communicating serious, as well “communicating between places”. Both is nothing else than

(a) exchange and

(b) change[vii]?

Seen in this etymological perspective all roads, cars, telecommunication networks etc. are technical means of communication, means used to bring people nearer to each other – and thus changing each other. A mutual change and a change of the individual on his or own. And yet, the very same means destroy communication; they are means to create distance. In particular when I leave Limerick to the North-West I have this impression – the new estate, appearing as sealed off; the roads, serving as halting-sites for members of the travelling community – sitting at the junction of communication and being completely sealed off. Communication is nearly unthinkable – there is no exchange neither is there change. These means of communication are dividing and shaping time and space in a way that makes any attempt of appropriation nearly impossible. The enclosed economy as it will be mentioned later is creating enclosed time and space. As I once read it; ‘Thoroughly undertaken, speeding up has the awkward consequence to abolish itself. One reaches ever quicker at places where one stays for an ever shorter time span.’ (Wolfgang Sachs: Pace and ecology. A sketch [Geschwindigkeit und Oekologie. Eine Skizze]; in: ProKla, 2/1997)

What actually is the question of sociology? Georg Simmel, who ‘was thinking creatively in the very process of lecturing’ (Coser, Lewis A. Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context. Second edition. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977; from http://socio.ch/sim/bio.htm: 17.5.2002), formulated this question in the words ’How is society possible?’

‘We are thus in a position to see the a priori which we must now discuss. This A priori provides the individual with the basis for, and offers the “possibility” of, his being a member of a society. An individual is directed toward a certain place within his social milieu by his very quality. This place which ideally belongs to him actually exists. Here we have the precondition of the individual’s social life. It may be called general value of individuality. It is independent both of its development into a clear, consciously formed conception and of its realization in the empirical life-process. In the same way, the apriority of causality as a determining precondition of cognition depends neither on its conscious formulation in specific concepts nor on the behaviour of reality, as we grasp it psychologically, in accord or discord with it. For our cognition is based on the premise of a pre-established harmony that exists between our psychological energies, however individualized they may be, and external, objective existence. This existence always remains immediate, no matter how many attempts there have been to show, metaphysically or psychologically, that it is the intellect’s own product. In a similar fashion, social life presupposes an unquestionable harmony between the individual and society as a whole. This harmony, of course, does not preclude violent ethical and eudaemonistic dissonances. If social reality were determined by this presupposition of harmony alone, without the interference of other factors, it would result in the perfect society. It would be perfect, however, not in the sense of ethical or eudaemonostic perfection, but of conceptual perfection; it would be not the perfect society but the perfect society. The a priori of the individual’s social existence is the fundamental correlation between his life and the society that surrounds him, the integrative function and necessity of his specific character, as it is determined by his personal life, to the life of the whole. Insofar as he does not realize this a priori or does not find it realized in society, the individual is not sociated and society is not the perfect system of interactions called for by its definition.’ (Georg Simmel: How is Society Possible; in: Georg Simmel on individuality and social forms. Selected writings; Edited and with an Introduction by Donald N. Levine; Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press , 1971:6-22; here: 20 f.)

Simmel did not find the solution – neither did Luhmann, who much later asked a similar question. But one thing is clear, even if most of the sociologists did in fact avoid talking frankly about it. Society is a pattern of living together which is fundamentally coined by conflict. And this means that there is no reason at all to look back, to contemplate about the “good old times”, to talk of the odd present and fearfully mention the future. History does not repeat itself but what reoccurs is the renegotiation of the distribution of power, starting from completely different points, involving a variety of actors and far from being led by any kind voluntarism.

‘It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.’ (Karl Marx: A Contribution to the Critique of the Political Economy – Internet version; see documented in the section of Literature of General Philosophical and Sociological Interest)

– It has been Karl Marx who used this beautifully clear language to express in a nutshell the driving force of development. And as often as this passage is quoted as often it had been misunderstood – deliberately by conservatives and due to stupidity and inattention by so many of those who basically felt as Marxists themselves.

Many attacks had not been much more than filthy vetures. However, the situation is nevertheless differentiated and it is necessary to leave any black-and-white painting.

“There is no straightforward answer, is there?” – these words, Cathy frequently used, ring in my ears. – “No, there is no straightforward answer, indeed.” In political terms, talking about social policy and the necessity to cope and to change, there is of course the desire to find such an answer. In many cases, we actually have an answer – the answer given by the facts of the objective situation. But then again, there is always a kind of contemplation connected with our subject – the precise analysis of exactly this: the objective situation. However, it is contemplation in its best possible understanding, as an effort to understand the world to make action and change possible, to show their necessity.

My thoughts turn to another sociologist I remembered throughout the last months for many times – and he showed so vividly both sides,

• the contemplative element and the practical meaning and

• the non-harmonious character of the social development.[viii]

I met Norbert Elias a couple of times, while we both had been in Bielefeld – and I envy those who could say that they had been really good friend with him. What made him particularly nice was his humble appearance – a small, plain old man; and yet already the first impression was his openness. Open for new ideas, open for other people and open not least for the work of others. It was perhaps this modesty that made him so adorable and that lead at the same time to the lack of acknowledgement by many of his colleagues. He felt himself even in his late years always as student.

However, he taught so much, he passed so much of his knowledge on to others. His lively account of his research, mixed with his open-minded calmness and readiness to listen always left its marks on us. And so was his writing – without having to agree or to fully accept his approach – there is much we can learn in regard of civilisation and something that we can call the self-destruction of civilisation. Both, Simmel and Norbert Elias explored on the more personal, even psychological level the balance between the individual and what Simmel – idealistically – describes as a priori given. And perhaps that is one of the most important differences between them – that Elias analysed more deeply the historical dimension of the social process. Of course – and that makes him theoretically so vulnerable – he never leaves really his idealistic battleground. However, the cultural dimension, what he called the sociogenetic and psychogenetic factors, play an important role – important in particular in creating the distance of the individual from itself. His sometimes seemingly obscene investigations of manners or the life at Court do not conclude in relativism, but in the historical perspective of the contradiction between ‘the perfect society’ and ‘the perfect society’, Simmel talked about.

‘The fact that, and in part the reason why, from the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance on, there was a particularly strong shift in individual self-control – above all in self-control acting independently of external agents as a self-activating automatism, revealingly said today to be “internalized” – is presented in more detail from other perspectives in the present study. The transformation of interpersonal external compulsion into individual internal compulsion, which now increasingly takes place, leads to a situation in which many affective impulses cannot be lived out as spontaneously as before. The autonomous individual self-controls produced in this way in social life, such as “rational thought” or the “moral conscience”, now interpose themselves more sternly than ever before between spontaneous and emotional impulses, on the one hand, and the skeletal muscles, on the other, preventing the former with greater severity from directly determining the latter (i.e., action) without the permission of these control mechanisms.’ (Nobert Elias: The civilising process; translated by Edmund Jephcott; revised version; Eds.: Eric Dunning, Johan Goudsblom; Stephen Mennell; Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000: 478)

And it is in particular the contradiction in terms of civilisation which springs up to my mind here – I mentioned it earlier; it is just here while I am looking at the “civilised” outskirts of Limerick. The newly built estates, cut off by the still increasing network of the highway-like new roads – are in a very specific way mind-setting. Roads, the said means of communication are cutting through space, hindering to some extent what they pretend to enhance. It is not only the members of the Travelling Community who are separated from the rest of society by the development of the enclosed economy (see Gerben Bakker: The enclosed economy; in: EUI review; Ed: The European University Review; San Domenico di Fiesole: EUI, 2001: 20-26; see documented in the section Literature of General Philosophical and Sociological Interest).

Basically, what we are seeing is the cutting off of the individual from his or her own basis.

I mentioned that, while we approached Limerick from the South, I thought of Claire’s piece of work. I mentioned as well that for me – by looking through the seemingly very specialised glasses of analysing the situation of children with moderate learning difficulties due to the Down syndrome – she actually covers the way today’s society values – and devalues – the human being.

Her interest is to secure “a healthy psychological base for the child” against “a setting in which he can flourish academically.”

And as much as life, or to be more precise: the generally accepted form of living is socially “defined” – given by the power structure of the society we live in, as much is even death defined.

Here, at the other end of Limerick – here, where the modern roads divide people from their environment – it is getting even visually clear what Georg Simmel’s developed as contradiction, where we see ourselves confronted not with ‘the perfect society but the perfect society.’  

And if the society is not perfect in itself it is shaped to be so – societies define themselves mostly not in positive terms but for so many times in negative terms – even the most frightening definitions during history, claiming to be positive, drawing on the characteristics of its members was nothing else than negative: Fascism, claiming that only Aryans – in particular white, blond and blue-eyed people – would be regarded as humans did not mean anything else than: No entry – No toleration of, let alone access for people who are not fulfilling the norm.

It is said that Fascism had been the most vicious regime history ever had to face, in particular German Fascism. This shall not be questioned – and it would be politically fatal to draw misleading lines between different regimes – to compare immediately this perfidious system, this regime which completely despised human beings with the violence in societies we call democratic societies. However, two things have to be made clear at the same time.

• Violation of human rights, the disregard of human beings cannot be measured in numbers – a regime that does injustice against 10 people cannot claim to have a clean record and blame a regime that does the same injustice against 1000 people for being criminal and inhumane.

• It is not just the physical violence that counts; rather, the disregard of any rights, the suppression by any means is reprehensible. And in fact it does not matter if it is for reasons of political correctness of for the reason of “otherness”, of being different that humans are treated as having no or reduced rights.

In any case, to acknowledge that fascism was most vicious cannot mean to overlook that current societies are based on a very similar mechanism of exclusion and inclusion. While walking through cities and towns, or while driving through the Irish landscape as we do it one can see such inner borders – marks of defining the “good society”, demarcating it from the “bad society”. To set norms is always a process of defining just this – the good and the evil, the we and the they. And while driving my thoughts are getting somewhat blurred. My thoughts about the borders inside our society, the borders in front of my eyes gets is mixing up with the thoughts about the borders between societies – and for many times the violent defence of alleged rights. Memories of different intensity come up

• 1957 the western world had been shocked by the Sputnik – the companion^[ix] was seen as enemy, as threat for the claimed superiority of the West;

• 1962 the Cuba crisis brought the worlds breath near to a standstill – a new war on the footsteps of the world, a conflict which has supposedly solved, in fact a conflict that is still ongoing and in which the missiles had been exchanged for economic weapons – the alleged threat by Soviets^[x] replaced by the threat of still blackmailing United economic forces, the American embargo politics;

• Vietnam – the war which lasted from the end of the second World War to the time when a new war had been provoked by the United States – a war, initially provoked by France , oriented on power over a territory; continued in the most atrocious way by the anticommunist politics of the United States . From Kennedy over Johnson to Nixon no President counted the victims of the Vietcong – or even worse they counted them in the same way as they counted them in the same way as they counted Sioux, Cheyenne or Cherokee and others before, saying that only every dead skin would be a good redskin. As said, the same time, the Vietnam war stopped another conflict had been kindled;

• 1973 Salvador Allende Gossens had been murdered during the storming of the palest of the president – since 1970 he was President, since 1970 he implemented a socialist programme for the Chile ; and since 1970 he was a thorn in the side of the developed capitalist societies. It had been these societies who hired Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to do the dirty work for them – Pinochet and his troops murdered Allende and with him thousands and thousands of citizens of the politically and economically awakening country.

The list could be continued; and remembering in one way or another all these incidences I remember as well the various links between the battles at the external borders and the drawing of the internal borders. Milton Friedman had been adviser of Pinochet; and he provided the economic model on which the actor President Ronald Wilson Reagan, the iron Premier lady Margaret Thatcher and the self-styled eternal Chancellor Helmut Kohl – politicians who could not be overcome by self-marketing Smiley’s.

External and internal social demarcations – the engine of the vehicle is hammering in seemingly eternal bars – acceleration or slowing down does not change the basic pattern of the sound. Here on the road the way forward depends on it. But does this mean that every progress depends on it – on armed or structural violence? Is social progress comparable with an engine of a vehicle? Is the sacrifice of people – their life’s or their rights – the fuel for the progress of society? So to say: People as diesel for society? My thoughts return to the work throughout the year, the work of the students.

Jane, asks for Rethinking Citizenship in Contemporary European Union. What is striking is the fact that the given regimes – and here the national systems and the European Union have very much in common – just behave as they need it. Right, we have to consider the discrimination and hostility, taking place day after day, brought forward by ordinary people. But it can be noticed that this is basically only a reflection of everyday behaviour of institutions, of the structural mechanism of society. Jane looks at disabled people and they have in regard of discrimination and – withheld citizenship’s rights very much in the same situation as other minority groups. And the paradox of the contradictions of the current societies is that here disabled people are even hindered to fulfil what on the other hand they are accepted to do. In other words, disabled people are blamed again and again not to take part in the labour market; however, at the same time they systematically excluded, discriminated and instead of supporting them, the “official” society still prefers to distribute alms – and reproaches – rather than securing the rights of people concerned.

But as difficult it is to "join society", as difficult it is to leave it. Even death, the process of leaving society, seems to be largely controlled by this perfect society. It was the European Tracie who looked at this question throughout the year – Whose Life? Whose Right? Of course, the question of suicide, euthanasia, and assisted suicide is delicate – this is not only true for people who feel the burden of the German history, of the fascist misuse of power for the appropriation of the decision over life and dead on their shoulders.

The question that is going much further is that of control. And this is why I remembered Norbert Elias. Was he not actually working on this issue – the shifts of power, the shifts of control in the course of civilisation? And now we have the paradoxical situation that increasing control does not allow us anymore to control ourselves. Seemingly we have absolute power, but we only have it as expert-knowledge, as decision taken by others – the professionals, who are so specific in their knowledge that they lost their ethics on the way to their knowledge.

She refers to Talcott Parsons and his AGIL-scheme, as she presents it;

1.     Adaptation (to physical environment)

2.     Goal attainment (a means of organising it’s resources to achieve its goals and obtain gratification)

3.     Integration (Forms of internal co-ordination and ways of dealing with differences.)

4.     Latency or pattern maintenance (means of achieving comparative stability).

A play with words comes to my mind; AGIL, agile – catching the contradiction in terms, as the AGIL has paralysing effects on the agile way people are together with others in society. And as mentioned, Tracie shows that this society as functional system, that the civilising process turns its face so far from its origins, from the human being that it is getting inhumane. People gain control over their life with the only paradox effect of loosing control over it – the essential part of life, namely death, is virtually cut-off.

Another time, Niklas Luhmann comes to my mind – with his words ‘etsi no daretur Deus’. One does not have to accept his approach and theory to accept the truth of these words. They are from his major work on Social Systems where he writes:

When one thus broadens the framework of possible solutions to the problem Parsons's theory poses, one at once opens the theory more powerfully to chance. We can connect this with the “order from noise principle” of general systems theory. No preordained value consensus is needed; the problem of double contingency (i.e., empty, closed, indeterminable self-reference) draws in chance straightaway, creates sensitivity to chance, and when no value consensus exists, one can thereby invent it. The system emerges etsi no daretur Deus [even if God doesn't exist].’ (Niklas Luhmann: Social Systems. Translated by J. Bednarz, with Dirk Baecker; Stanford , California : Stanford University Press, 1995: 105)

The control over nature is so extensively developed that it has lost its own character, its categorical imperative – which is not a plea for returning to God, but one for accepting the human being.

And it is getting amazingly clear for me that the rationality, the explanation of reality has limits - limits that are clearly mirrored in Tracie’s piece. If we accept society as modern, as enlightened entity of people living together, we have to accept the individual’s capability to take decisions – to cut off, as the Latin origin of the word (de-caedere) suggests. And this means to accept the incompleteness – even the incompleteness of insight, of rational explanation. As true as this is in regard of the question of death and life as true it is for the explanation-power of sociology and social policy – in the first case it shows the necessity of accepting ethics; in the second we can suggest the acceptance of partiality. In other words, social policy cannot be without manifesting the interest. Wasn’t this once the important point V.I. Lenin made, in highlighting for political assessments the importance of the question “whom it would benefit?”

The danger of idealism and voluntarism is obvious. However, it is obvious as well that even nature is a social fact, not given once for ever - a matter of what might be called "appropriation in mutuality".

‘How is nature possible in the formal sense, as the totality of the rules, under which all phenomena must come, in order to be thought as connected in experience? The answer must be this: it is only possible by means of the constitution of our Understanding, according to which all the above representations of the sensibility are necessarily referred to a consciousness, and by which the peculiar way in which we think (viz., by rules), and hence experience also, are possible, but must be clearly distinguished from an insight into the objects in themselves.’ (Immanuel Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics [1783] - http://www.msu.org/e&r/content_e&r/texts/kant/prolegomena_part2.html; 16.5.2002)

It is this contradiction that had been spelled out so nicely in the talks with Norbert Elias and which is no less eloquently described in his books. His work is very much concerned with the question of control over life – the increasing internalisation of control, if at all previously executed in the immediate communicative act. What makes his work – in particular the work on the Court Society – so comprehensive is the fact that at least the sensitive reader will soon get aware of the irony in Nobert Elias’ opus – the shift of control by the stick to that by carrots. Who would not think of Erving Goffman and his allusion to life as a theatre, when reading for example the two lengthily reproduced little scenes, we find in the Court society.

‘Usually at eight o'clock , at any rate at a time decided by himself, the king is woken each morning by his first valet, who sleeps at the foot of the royal bed. The doors are opened by pages. One of them has already notified the Lord Chamberlain and the first Gentleman of the Bedchamber, a second the court kitchen concerning the breakfast; a third stands in the doorway and admits only those lords who have the right to enter.   
This right was very exactly graded. There were six different groups of people who were allowed to enter in turn. This was spoken of as the various entrées. First came the Entrée familière. Taking part were above all the illegitimate sons and grandchildren of the king (Enfants de France), princes and princesses of the blood, the first physician, the first surgeon, the first valet and page.
Then came the Grande entrée, consisting of the grands officiers de la chamber de la garderobe and the noble lords to whom the king had granted this honour, Then followed the Première entré for the king's readers, the intendants for entertainment and festivities and others. After that came the Entrée de la chambre which included all the other officiers de la chamber together with the grand-aumonier, the ministers and secretaries of state , the conseillers d’État, the officers of the bodyguard, the Marshall of France and others. Admittance to the fifth entrée depended to a certain extent on the goodwill of the first Gentleman of the Bedchamber and, of course, on the king's favour. To this entrée belonged gentlemen and ladies of nobility who stood in such favour that the Gentleman of the Bedchamber admitted them; they thus had the advantage of approaching the king before all others. Finally there was a sixth form of entry, and this was the most sought-after of all. On this occasion, one did not enter through the main door or the bedroom but through a back door; this entrée was open to the sons of the king including illegitimate ones, together with their families and sons-in-law; and also, for example, to the powerful surintendent des bâtiment. To belong to this group was an expression of high favour; for the people included could enter the royal cabinets at any time when the king was not holding counsel or had begun a special task with his ministers and they could remain in the room until the king went to mass and even when he was ill.
…
What is most striking in this is the minute exactitude of organization. But this was not, as we can see, rational organization in the modern sense however precisely predetermined each part of it was, but a type of organisation by which each act received a prestige-character symbolizing the distribution of power at the time.

…
Later, however, this connection was loosened and the nature of acts of etiquette as prestige-fetishes emerged quite nakedly. Now the motive force that gave life to etiquette, reproducing it over and over again in this society, becomes particularly clear. Once the hierarchy of special rights within the etiquette was established, it was maintained solely by the competition between the people enmeshed in it, each being understandably anxious to preserve any privilege, however trivial, and the power it conferred. So the mechanism perpetuated its own ghostly existence like an economy uncoupled from its purpose of providing the means of life.

…
The queen's levée took a similar course to that of the king. The maid of honour had the right to pass the queen her chemise. The lady in waiting helped her put on her petticoat and dress. But if a princess of the royal family happened to be present, she had the right to put the chemise on the queen. On one occasion the queen had just been completely undressed by her ladies. Her chambermaid was holding the chemise and had just presented it to the maid of honour whet the Duchess of Orléans came in. The maid of honour gave it back to the chambermaid who was about to pass it to the duchess when the higher-ranking Countess of Provence entered. The chemise now made its way back to the chambermaid, and the queen finally received it from the hands of the countess. She had had to stand the whole time in a state of nature, watching the ladies complimenting each other with her chemise. Certainly, Louis XIV would never have tolerated such subordination of the main purpose of etiquette. Nevertheless, the social and psychological structure that finally produced this freewheeling was already visible in his reign.’ (Nobert Elias: The Court Society; Translated by E. Jephcott; Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers, 1983: 83-86)

And as much as it reminds us of Goffman’s writing and thinking, as much it is linked to what we know from Karl Marx about the fetish character of the capitalist production of commodities and from Max Weber about the iron cage of bureaucracy.  

Limerick is now behind us – we are back on the straight road, I accelerated and we reach again the speed of contemporary life. As valuable as Immanuel Kant’s and Norbert Elias’ thoughts had been, as much they had been more unconsciously aware of than fully accepting the contradictory character of the society. In consequence they never thought really of rights as a matter of social disputes. They did not think in fundamental terms of a set of connected, interwoven rights of the “individual in and by society”. How could they. Both had been arguing from the idealist perspective, and both saw the individual as the point of reference – society had been seen as a kind of instrument, as external. – Later, Niklas Luhmann created the respective terminology. He made explicit the distinction that predominates Western thinking. The individual, the society and the external world – basically all could be reduced on these distinct levels, the systems, which had been seen as independent, though mutually “influencing” entities, causing at most a rather insignificant, though “necessary” noise. The unity had never been seen – and this was not so much a shortcoming of social science itself, rather than a consequence of the underdeveloped society itself. And only historical and dialectical materialism could set an end to this individualist and idealist approach. Actually, the solution was a very simple one, namely the effort to reunite individual and soci(et)al action. – In no way was this the idea of a harmonious society, on the contrary. The idea was a harmonious society only in that sense that this society would be able to settle in one or another way its conflicts, to foster the process for which Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel used the term Aufhebung, sublation and supersession.

‘If man is shaped by environment, his environment must be made human. If man is social by nature, he will develop his true nature only in society, and the power of his nature must be measured not by the power of the separate individual but by the power of society.’ (Karl Marx/Frederick Engels: The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Company (1845) chapter VI – 3; http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch06_3_d.htm; 16.5.2002)

And is it not exactly this what social policy is basically about –striving for humane circumstances, for social quality that acknowledges the entity of the being?

I drive the vehicle on the car park in front of the cottage-like restaurant – Shannon is not far anymore and we have some time left for a tea and coffee respectively.

I do not know how Lorraine feels – in about one hour she will meet those people for whom she organised, during the first part of her placement, the tour to explore Ireland – South and North.

What age are they? What are their interests? What their expectations? How far will communication be possible? She only knows a little about them – they have at least a little bit English, they come to visit agencies and projects working in disadvantaged areas and with disadvantaged people and they like the Irish country for its scenery, friendliness and cosiness. Not really much what she knows about them; neither do I know much about them. But at the same time much of a burden – can we fulfil these expectations. Finally we are now in a way responsible – “representatives of Ireland ”. Lorraine even more than I, as I am just a blown-in – years do not really matter.

‘VI [continued]
Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is consequently compelled: 
1. To abstract from the historical process and to fix the religious sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose an abstract -- isolated -- human individual.       
2. Essence, therefore, can be comprehended only as "genus", as an internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals.    
         
VII   
Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that the "religious sentiment" is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual whom he analyses belongs to a particular form of society.’

Is this not as well very true, when we look at the relationship with other people.

Sitting there in the cosy Irish pub and talking with the young woman Georg Simmel’s short piece on The Stranger comes into my mind – actually this text was written as part of the major work, the author published 1908 under the title Sociology. Investigations on the Forms of Sociation. In this short piece he writes right at the beginning

‘If wandering, considered as a state of detachment from every given point in space, is the conceptual opposite of attachment to any point, then the sociological form of “the stranger” presents the synthesis, as it were, of both of these properties.’ (Georg Simmel: The Stranger [1908]; in: Georg Simmel on individuality and social forms. Selected writings; Edited and with an Introduction by Donald N. Levine; Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press , 1971: 143-149; here: 143)

A strange location, a strange occasion to think about Simmel, to think about sociology? Is it not more the most obvious and adequate place to think about people such as him and about sociology – the public place, where we socialise? Finally it is here, in the living together where sociology has to find the own justification. Sociology cannot be anything else than a tool for social practice – wherever this practice takes place. Looking back into history, the analysis of seemingly abstract systemic contexts and interconnections, the work on precise definitions and the debates on a world between Plato and – well, at that time it was not Prodi but for example Jean Rey, who was re-elected in 1969 as President of the European Commission. But to be honest, besides our major concern about the violence by American troops against the people of Cuba and Vietnam, we were more concerned with national names anyway and for me it meant to get involved in the ideological struggles between for example Max Reimann,[xi] Willy Brandt[xii] and Helmut Schmidt and Johannes Rau.[xiii]

All these names – seemingly important people, the “great men of history”. But if anything that made anyone of them really meaningful – and that will lead to meaninglessness of others – was and is and will be their influence on real life, on enhancing social quality, their success in providing a space for people to live in.

Political power, thus, should not be confused with ability. As important as it is to reject voluntarism, as important is that in one very specific way Wilhelm Liebknecht had been entirely correct when he said that knowledge is power and power is knowledge.

‘In classical Greek philosophy, Reason is the cognitive faculty to distinguish what is true and what is false insofar as truth (and falsehood) is primarily a condition of Being, of Reality — and only on this ground a property of propositions. True discourse, logic, reveals and expresses that which really is as distinguished from that which appears to be (real), And by virtue of this equation between Truth and (real) Being, Truth is a value, for Being is better than Non-Being. The latter is not simply Nothing; it is a potentiality of and a threat to Being — destruction. The struggle for truth is a struggle against destruction, for the “salvation” (sozein) of Being (an effort which appears itself to be destructive if it assails an established reality as “untrue”: Socrates against the Athenian city-state). Inasmuch as the struggle for truth “saves” reality from destruction, truth commits and engages human existence. It is the essentially human project. If man has learned to see and know what really is, he will act in accordance with truth, Epistemology is in itself ethics, and ethics is epistemology.’ (Herbert Marcuse: The one-dimensional man [1964]; chapter 5. Negative Thinking: The Defeated Logic of Protest; http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/onedimen/marcuse.htm, 16.5.2002)

Thus, knowledge is this instrument of power when it is gained for supporting social quality –  

• the strengthening of children’s rights – be it in general or be it in those cases where they have special needs;

• the acknowledgement of the independence of psychiatry;

• the recognition of the rights of those who are living with disabilities;

• the right to find a social space to negotiate identity;

• the right to find as well a space to live identity;

• and finally the right to die in dignity.

Thus social quality, multifaceted and vague as it appears may well serve as a common link of all the projects, of the work by Cathy, Claire, Lorraine, Deirdre, Jane, Michael, Liam and Tracie.

X      
The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity.    
XI     
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

So many thoughts – it is Tuesday already – just one day left to the first of May. Sun and rain went hand in hand this day. I am standing in the shed, and it is only now that I hear the twittering. Looking up I see my friends in the corner; they are back – the swallows returned again to their nest.

I know too well that one swallow does not make a summer - and even the couple does not do so. But it may well be that it brings a little bit of

A Spring, full of terrific hopes.

Joan Baez: Children of the 80's

Children Of The 80’s

(Words and Music by Joan Baez)

We're the children of the 80's, haven't we grown
We're tender as a lotus and we're tougher than stone
And the age of our innocence is somewhere in the garden

We like the music of the 60's
We think that era must have been nifty
Flower children, Woodstock and the War
Dirty scandals, cover-ups and more
Oh, but it's getting harder to deceive us
We don't care if Dylan's gone to Jesus
Jimi Hendrix is playing o
We know Janis Joplin was the rose
And we also know that that's the way it goes
With all the stuff that she put in her arm
Don't be alarmed

We are the children of the 80's, haven't we grown
We're tender as a lotus and we're tougher than stone
And the age of our innocence is somewhere in the garden

Some of us are the sisters and the brothers
Who prefer the nighttime for our cover
A leather jacket and a single golden earring
Hang out at discos, rock shows, lose our hearing
Put tattoos all up and down our thighs
Do anything our parents would despise
Take uppers, downers, blues and reds and yellows
Our brains are turning to Jello
We think that life is overrated
Loneliness was underestimated
We are looking forward to the days
When we live inside of a purple haze
Where the salvation of the soul is rock and roll

We are the children of the 80's, haven't we grown
We're tender as a lotus and we're tougher than stone
And the age of our innocence is somewhere in the garden

Some of us may offer a surprise
Recently have you looked in our eyes
Maybe we're your conscience in disguise
We're well informed and we are wise
Please stop telling us lies
We know Afghanistan's invaded
We know Bolivia's dictated
We know America's inflated
And although we do not move in masses
We have lit our candles from your ashes
We are the warriors of the sun
The golden boys and the golden girls
For a better world

We are the children of the 80's, haven't we grown
We're tender as a lotus and we're tougher than stone
And the age of our innocence is somewhere, somewhere in the garden

© 1981 Gabriel Earl Music (ASCAP)

http://baez.woz.org/Lyrics/children.html - 24.5.2002