An early walk over the hills stimulates memories from the dawning of the Age of Aquarius ... there was a song about that, which is how it's recalled ... astrology not being in the skill set ... folks for whom it is reckon that Aquarius is full on now, the early dawning having dimmed through the dark age of the 80s, 90s, maybe noughties too ...
The arrival of a friend, recently retired from a career in clinical psychology, prompts recall of R.D. Laing, champion of anti-psychiatry .... the inspiration for Ken Loach's film, Family Life, which examines the devastating consequences of a perfectly "normal" upbringing ... the trap of accepting the world we experience, with its injustice, greed, violence and wage-slavery as normal and anyone resisting it diagnosed as abnormal ... the conflict at a personal level leading to cognitive dissonance, existential angst, mental suffering to be treated with medication to relieve the pain, dull the senses and comply with the culture in which we live ...
Following the thread from Laing to another heretic from psychology of that time, Wilhelm Reich, whose work was so disturbing for the authorities in his adopted home, the land of the free, that the FBI burnt his books ...whether it was his analysis of the Nazis in "The Mass Psychology of Fascism", or his promotion of sexual freedom in "The Function of the Orgasm" ... Reich died in a US prison ... though if you thought it couldn't happen here, your blogger was involved in rescuing some boxes of a banned book from the publisher in London ... this was the very dangerous "Little Red Schoolbook", translated from the Danish and promoting revolution in schools .... or rather, open discussion of sex, drugs and society ... the Schools Action Union was busy promoting its ideas and found a platform at the rather staid College of Education where some of the deconditioning of the writer occurred ... heady days! Needless to say a long and respectable career in teaching did not ensue ....
The glimmer of freedom in the 60s and 70s offered liberation and, once free, it is difficult to accept slavery again .... hence the fly by wire life of following the heart, with periods of stability ...
All of which nostalgic reflection passes the time in retirement and may eventually fit into a cohesive narrative ... or perhaps that's just the organising mind wanting to create meaning from a random set of barely related events ...
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