If you are less conformist, something is impeding your desire to conform. This "something" could be autism or sociopathy. Or it could be an outcome of rational thinking: my society is heading in the wrong direction, and I want no part of it.
Non-conformists thus tend to be neurodivergent, and this neurodivergence is used to invalidate their critique of society.
Just came across this passage in Nietzsche, and immediately thought of your comment:
"The desire for destruction, change, and becoming can be an expression of an overflowing energy that is pregnant with future (my term for this is, as is known, 'Dionysian'); but it can also be the hatred of the ill-constituted, disinherited, and underprivileged, who destroy, must destroy, because what exists, indeed all existence, all being, outrages, and provokes them."
As one who grew up in that era, I find this article very interesting.
"The “Beat generation,” whose members became known as “beatniks,” was a highly influential cultural current that emerged in the US during the late 1940s and 1950s. Among other interests, it focused on transgressive and bohemian lifestyles, drug use, the rejection of bourgeois American mores, and enjoyment of jazz music. In many ways, the Beat generation paved the way for the hippie phenomenon that would replace it in the late 1960s."
Some rock groups were influenced by Beat Generation writers. Steely Dan ( William S. Burroughs) is one such example.
"He made matters worse through flagrant insubordination, and a psychological evaluation concluded that Kerouac was schizophrenic, noting his hallucinations, suicidal thoughts and grandiosity. As a result, he was discharged from the Navy. Following his conscription during World War II, Burroughs had a similar experience, in that he, too, “found basic training to be intolerable.”
I would not read too much into a dislike of the military. Many independent-thinking people find the stultifying atmosphere antithetical.
"In recent years, several studies have suggested that conservatives tend to be healthier than liberals. It therefore makes sense that the Beat movement―which was left-leaning on the whole, especially in its later years―appears to have been full of sickly people."
I am leery of this argument. Using the MAGA movement as an example of conservatism, there is a mental sickness involved.
i do too and i like the beats, but of course they were all sickos, homos, drug addicts, and weirdos ( that;s what i like about them!) . is he saying that in earlier gens they would have died off? with decreased child mortality there is more of everything, especially autism. would the autistic kids have died off earlier? or more likely they would have been hospitalized.
Thank you for publishing this. As I have noted privately, the inspiration for this essay was Nathaniel Weyl's (implied) comment that beatniks were less "vigorous, alert and bright" than other people. http://johnjayray.com/weyl.html
Weyl is the first person I know of to have had this impression.
In his 1959 novel "The Dead Beat" (his next book after the best-seller "Psycho"), Robert Bloch has one of his characters conclude:
"Being Beat is simply an attitude toward life which no amount of sophisticated rationalization can cover up. An attitude of me-first, of anything-for-kicks. Larry had it. Or it had him. He may have been an extreme case, but I think the Beats can be characterized best by one of their own phrases. Sick-sick-sick."
Note the reference to sickness.
And in his debut novel, "The Liar," Stephen Fry includes this discussion of Burroughs's beatnik novel "The Naked Lunch":
"'What did you reckon?'
'Crap.'
'You're just saying that because you didn't understand it,' said Adrian.
'I'm just saying that because I did understand it,' said Tom."
Is mutation load also responsible for the Woke phenomenon? Or is it some kind of mind virus that really took off in the wake of Covid? It reminds me of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9VqUzdEQsk
A related question: are there many known examples of formerly Woke people waking up?
Seems like a reasonable thesis. Perhaps today’s homelessness epidemic is an extreme version of increasing mutational load - leading to mental illness, drug addiction and other dysfunction.
I'm a little disappointed with the article. the headline was about increased mutational load. he lays out the evidence for the beats being degenerate ( which everyone knows) but there is no further discussion of mutations. would the beats have all died off in childbirth in the olden days? is there a chance that the increase in things like autism is also a function of decreased child mortality?
"Conservatives generally report higher self-rated physical and mental health, but actual objective health outcomes paint a more complex picture where liberals often experience lower mortality rates and better health trends over time. When shifting from self-reported surveys to hard data—like medical records, public health statistics, and death certificates—the trend reverses, showing that liberals frequently experience better objective health outcomes.
Peer-reviewed research, including studies tracked by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), demonstrates that county-level voting preferences for Republican presidential candidates remain a robust predictor of higher obesity rates, even after controlling for education, poverty, and ethnicity. Furthermore, international data shows this is not strictly an American phenomenon. A large-scale UK study published in International Journal of Obesity found that Conservative Party voters had 42% to 54% higher odds of living with obesity and higher average BMI scores than those voting for the center-left Labour or Liberal Democrat parties.
Public health data shows that mortality from "deaths of despair"—which includes fatal liver cirrhosis caused by chronic alcoholism—is significantly higher in conservative counties.
Individuals who identify as socially liberal generally score higher on average IQ and cognitive ability tests than those who identify as socially conservative. Landmark data published in the journal Intelligence tracked over 300 families. The study found that even when comparing biological siblings raised under the exact same roof, the sibling with the higher measured IQ (and higher genetic polygenic scores for cognitive performance) was statistically more likely to favor social liberalism."
"The claim that 'conservatives tend to be healthier than liberals' completely collapses when moving past subjective data. While right-leaning individuals report higher subjective happiness on surveys, hard epidemiological data reveals the exact opposite. Peer-reviewed studies show that liberal counties and states experience significantly higher life expectancies and lower mortality rates. Objective health outcomes heavily favor liberal populations due to higher institutional trust and preventative medical care"
I noticed (almost) every "Indie" musician (contemporary phenomenon) I like to listen to (and I like "Indie" a lot) is "genderfluid" or gay/lesbian (a few go even as far as "trans") and, to boot, has poor mental health of various kinds.
Anyway:
Before the Belle Époque, Western Civilisation had to deal with the "poètes maudits" and their "épater la bourgeoisie" attitude...
And, even during the Belle Époque (a so-called "golden age"), the "mal du siècle" affected it through and through – especially during the Fin de Siècle period...
So, in short: I don't think during the 19th-Century "mutants" were surviving labour.
Society's mores got looser during the Roaring Twenties/Années Folles, then they turned relatively "conservative" again – and that remained so until the 1960s.
Apparently, there is something called "Hemline Index": skirt length got short(er), then the "Great Crash" occurred and skirt length got long(er) again à la Victorian Era times.
yes another thing is that as child mortality decreases, there is more of every type of person. one doesn't die during child hood because of future drug addiction, one dies during childhood due to serious disease for which there was no cure. and that can strike anyone. what survives are people with stronger immune systems. i always say that we are strong because we are the ancestors of the people who survived the plague.
If you are less conformist, something is impeding your desire to conform. This "something" could be autism or sociopathy. Or it could be an outcome of rational thinking: my society is heading in the wrong direction, and I want no part of it.
Non-conformists thus tend to be neurodivergent, and this neurodivergence is used to invalidate their critique of society.
Just came across this passage in Nietzsche, and immediately thought of your comment:
"The desire for destruction, change, and becoming can be an expression of an overflowing energy that is pregnant with future (my term for this is, as is known, 'Dionysian'); but it can also be the hatred of the ill-constituted, disinherited, and underprivileged, who destroy, must destroy, because what exists, indeed all existence, all being, outrages, and provokes them."
https://caesuramag.org/posts/nietzsches-what-is-romanticism-1882
Excellent points.
"Or it could be an outcome of rational thinking: my society is heading in the wrong direction, and I want no part of it."
To me, that is the most justifiable and, hopefully, common explanation.
As one who grew up in that era, I find this article very interesting.
"The “Beat generation,” whose members became known as “beatniks,” was a highly influential cultural current that emerged in the US during the late 1940s and 1950s. Among other interests, it focused on transgressive and bohemian lifestyles, drug use, the rejection of bourgeois American mores, and enjoyment of jazz music. In many ways, the Beat generation paved the way for the hippie phenomenon that would replace it in the late 1960s."
Some rock groups were influenced by Beat Generation writers. Steely Dan ( William S. Burroughs) is one such example.
"He made matters worse through flagrant insubordination, and a psychological evaluation concluded that Kerouac was schizophrenic, noting his hallucinations, suicidal thoughts and grandiosity. As a result, he was discharged from the Navy. Following his conscription during World War II, Burroughs had a similar experience, in that he, too, “found basic training to be intolerable.”
I would not read too much into a dislike of the military. Many independent-thinking people find the stultifying atmosphere antithetical.
"In recent years, several studies have suggested that conservatives tend to be healthier than liberals. It therefore makes sense that the Beat movement―which was left-leaning on the whole, especially in its later years―appears to have been full of sickly people."
I am leery of this argument. Using the MAGA movement as an example of conservatism, there is a mental sickness involved.
I do enjoy Steely Dan.
i do too and i like the beats, but of course they were all sickos, homos, drug addicts, and weirdos ( that;s what i like about them!) . is he saying that in earlier gens they would have died off? with decreased child mortality there is more of everything, especially autism. would the autistic kids have died off earlier? or more likely they would have been hospitalized.
Me too.
Thank you for publishing this. As I have noted privately, the inspiration for this essay was Nathaniel Weyl's (implied) comment that beatniks were less "vigorous, alert and bright" than other people. http://johnjayray.com/weyl.html
Weyl is the first person I know of to have had this impression.
In his 1959 novel "The Dead Beat" (his next book after the best-seller "Psycho"), Robert Bloch has one of his characters conclude:
"Being Beat is simply an attitude toward life which no amount of sophisticated rationalization can cover up. An attitude of me-first, of anything-for-kicks. Larry had it. Or it had him. He may have been an extreme case, but I think the Beats can be characterized best by one of their own phrases. Sick-sick-sick."
Note the reference to sickness.
And in his debut novel, "The Liar," Stephen Fry includes this discussion of Burroughs's beatnik novel "The Naked Lunch":
"'What did you reckon?'
'Crap.'
'You're just saying that because you didn't understand it,' said Adrian.
'I'm just saying that because I did understand it,' said Tom."
Is mutation load also responsible for the Woke phenomenon? Or is it some kind of mind virus that really took off in the wake of Covid? It reminds me of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9VqUzdEQsk
A related question: are there many known examples of formerly Woke people waking up?
"Or is it some kind of mind virus that really took off in the wake of Covid?"
The 'woke' phenomenon started before Covid.
"It reminds me of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers:"
LOL, very apt description.
Seems like a reasonable thesis. Perhaps today’s homelessness epidemic is an extreme version of increasing mutational load - leading to mental illness, drug addiction and other dysfunction.
I'm a little disappointed with the article. the headline was about increased mutational load. he lays out the evidence for the beats being degenerate ( which everyone knows) but there is no further discussion of mutations. would the beats have all died off in childbirth in the olden days? is there a chance that the increase in things like autism is also a function of decreased child mortality?
"Conservatives generally report higher self-rated physical and mental health, but actual objective health outcomes paint a more complex picture where liberals often experience lower mortality rates and better health trends over time. When shifting from self-reported surveys to hard data—like medical records, public health statistics, and death certificates—the trend reverses, showing that liberals frequently experience better objective health outcomes.
Peer-reviewed research, including studies tracked by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), demonstrates that county-level voting preferences for Republican presidential candidates remain a robust predictor of higher obesity rates, even after controlling for education, poverty, and ethnicity. Furthermore, international data shows this is not strictly an American phenomenon. A large-scale UK study published in International Journal of Obesity found that Conservative Party voters had 42% to 54% higher odds of living with obesity and higher average BMI scores than those voting for the center-left Labour or Liberal Democrat parties.
Public health data shows that mortality from "deaths of despair"—which includes fatal liver cirrhosis caused by chronic alcoholism—is significantly higher in conservative counties.
Individuals who identify as socially liberal generally score higher on average IQ and cognitive ability tests than those who identify as socially conservative. Landmark data published in the journal Intelligence tracked over 300 families. The study found that even when comparing biological siblings raised under the exact same roof, the sibling with the higher measured IQ (and higher genetic polygenic scores for cognitive performance) was statistically more likely to favor social liberalism."
"The claim that 'conservatives tend to be healthier than liberals' completely collapses when moving past subjective data. While right-leaning individuals report higher subjective happiness on surveys, hard epidemiological data reveals the exact opposite. Peer-reviewed studies show that liberal counties and states experience significantly higher life expectancies and lower mortality rates. Objective health outcomes heavily favor liberal populations due to higher institutional trust and preventative medical care"
Fun Fact:
I noticed (almost) every "Indie" musician (contemporary phenomenon) I like to listen to (and I like "Indie" a lot) is "genderfluid" or gay/lesbian (a few go even as far as "trans") and, to boot, has poor mental health of various kinds.
Anyway:
Before the Belle Époque, Western Civilisation had to deal with the "poètes maudits" and their "épater la bourgeoisie" attitude...
And, even during the Belle Époque (a so-called "golden age"), the "mal du siècle" affected it through and through – especially during the Fin de Siècle period...
So, in short: I don't think during the 19th-Century "mutants" were surviving labour.
Society's mores got looser during the Roaring Twenties/Années Folles, then they turned relatively "conservative" again – and that remained so until the 1960s.
Apparently, there is something called "Hemline Index": skirt length got short(er), then the "Great Crash" occurred and skirt length got long(er) again à la Victorian Era times.
yes another thing is that as child mortality decreases, there is more of every type of person. one doesn't die during child hood because of future drug addiction, one dies during childhood due to serious disease for which there was no cure. and that can strike anyone. what survives are people with stronger immune systems. i always say that we are strong because we are the ancestors of the people who survived the plague.