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What Beatlemania Could Have Told Us
| When the musical group
the Beatles arrived in the US in the early 1960s, the hysterical
reaction of thousands of girls caused puzzlement for a number of
people. What was observed was the emotional intensity that was assumed
to be only associated with toddlerhood.
Rather than a brief quirky cultural phenomena like the hula hoop,
Beatlemania was an indicator of a huge flaw of modern life. Most
people, even today, measure the “success” of society in terms of
comfort, ease, and prosperity. Sadly, the “good life” is not so good
for children who grow to be indulgent, stimulation seeking, and lacking
in self-discipline.Often parents had no idea how the life they thought
they were blessing their children with would actually be crippling them
with an inability to control themselves.
One might see in human history a cycle of four stages of human
experience, the first is that hard times can make strong men. The
second is that strong men can make good times. The third is that good
times make weak men. And fourthly weak men make hard times.
The first mistake that parents of the baby boom generation made was
allowing themselves to be instructed as to how to live life by
so-called “experts”. Dr. Benjamin Spock wrote an influential book
called “Baby and Child Care”. In this book he told millions of new
mothers that children should not be disciplined. They often did not
appreciate that their own character had been shaped largely by having
gone through the difficulties of the Great Depression and world war two
as well as having been more often raised to have self-discipline.
The second mistake was to allow the government to remove their children
from their homes as experts had decided that this was how children
should learn. Bright children always had learned without government
schools. Dim children still would not learn even with government
schools.
A third effect, derived from the second, was that children, without
their parents to pattern themselves after, would draw from media images
in which to project themselves and stimulate a fantasy imagination.
Boys might picture themselves as a sort of James Bond, while girls
might imagine which of the Beatles they would marry.
A fourth effect also derived from the second, was a relational poverty
that contributed to a peer dependency. Girls in particular would feel
more of a need for peer acceptance and conformity. A peer group could
become a substitute family. The values of a “family” can become
paramount.
What one might observe in the Beatlemania of the 1960s was girls in
particular with their under-developed emotional regulation exposed to
the emotionally evocative music touching themes of romance and love.
The lack of broader and familial relations amplified peer relations
such that shared unlimited emotional reactions would feed off each
other to amplify emotions. When the opportunity to achieve proximity to
the object of desire was available, emotions would be driven to the
highest level possible.
A less obvious influence on the lives of those in the baby boom
generation was the poverty of most religious institutions. By and large
most denominations held to a view that agreement with their doctrinal
bullet points is what determined if someone was a Christian. As a
result, Christianity was both hollowed out from the inside as well as
made to appear at best peripheral by the secular educational systems.
Even those children who inadvertently became Christian had little idea
what that meant or what resources that could provide them. Their
parents, also ignorant, simply endorsed what their various churches
taught them and assumed that meant that everything that was necessary
had been done. As a result, young people, Christian or not, became
given over to the flesh and entangled with the world.
It would not be unexpected that in ten years this generation would
accept “Drugs, Sex, and Rock and Roll” as an anthem. When Feminism,
abortion, and homosexual rights were added, teen suicide rates would
quadruple, divorce rates would double, and the urban murder rate would
quintuple. The society that seemed so successful on the surface was
failing its weakest members first, but also leaving the rest crippled,
isolated, ignorant, and vulnerable.
It is interesting that even now, sixty years after the Beatles, that
most do not see anything wrong with the trajectory of society or the
quality of their own lives. This is a testimony to the effectiveness of
Satan. The bible tells us that Satan sets the course of the world and
that we do not have to be ignorant of his plans. He has been so
effective that most people do not even believe that he or God exist.
The bible describes a future event where Satan will make a move to try
to take over the world. One can see where in order to attempt this he
would have to organize people into collectives he controls and to
disconnect people from their families such that they would be more
easily manipulated. Additionally he would need to make use of a
relatively stable society such as Western Civilization to develop the
technology he would need to build the tools to make his move. Now that
most people are almost a slave to their cell phones, it would seem he
is close to being able to make his move.
Beatlemania can seem a far cry from anything “religious”, but as a
symptom of what was happening to humanity it was one of many
indicators. While most churches were completely clueless, a few
over-reacted to call the Beatles “evil” and burn their records which
made their declarations seem sadly comical.
While worldly institutions, including churches, if not complicit, then
accommodating, were of no use in preventing the damage done to
individuals and families, then individuals and families might on their
own seek to navigate around the worst that was being done. Here the
warning that James gave to those Jews who were waiting for their nation
to receive Jesus as Messiah and establish their earthly kingdom can be
useful for us today;
Jas 4:4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the
friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be
a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
By seeking wisdom, exercising discernment, and walking in truth a
Christian might come to see what forces were aligned against him and
take steps to minimize them for his family. Today each Christian should
seek to grow and mature in faith towards Christ-likeness. Family
tactics such as homeschool, housechurch, and seeking like-minded
fellowship can be essential. |
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