TV TALK SHOWS
John Callaway 7:04
We used to lose ourselves in wars, big issues. I mean, I remember World War Two, I was a kid, I was really caught up in that. I mean, I went out and collected news papers and milkweed pod for parachutes. And really felt a sense of felt a sense of fear, I would read, my dad had me read about the v2 rockets and scared the heck out. I mean, I thought they were coming. And so this now we channel, we don't have a great big civil rights movement to get all excited about it. And pockets of people seem to get interested in things like the environment, we got water people over here, and you got air people over there, and you got food people over here. But no great big sense of, Hey, everybody, we're all against cancer, we're all against a bad environment. It's a pockets of things. And so into those into the spaces come these various other movements that in a way you look like you're poking fun at and yet, you're saying well, maybe they maybe they are okay, given all the other circumstances.
Tom Wolfe 8:01
Now, I think they're interesting. And they and you know, that they don't seem to mean necessarily something to despair over at all, because it could be that people will get great satisfaction maybe that they will expand their lives through this kind of kind of impulse. It really started in the 60s with the psychedelic or hippie movement. You know, the psychedelic movement made religion hip for young people, was an astonishing thing. Very few people went into, say Ken Kesey, these Merry Pranksters, or whatever it was, to be religious, they went in for kicks. But once they were there, the thing all suddenly started turning quite religious. And it happens in the following way really quickly, partly through LSD. But aside from that, it happens through getting into the notion that you're going to strip away the junk from your self, to find the real me this started way back way back in the in the in the hippie period. Ken Kesey and his group would have regular meetings once a week out and in these tents outside of Keyes cabin underneath the Redwoods in La Honda, California, and a person just like as in the senior societies, and just as in a marathon encounter groups today, somebody would be it and that person's personality would be would be analyzed. And once you get into the notion that you're going to strip away the junk of civilization from your life, you get into the same frame of mind as the early Christians
John Callaway 9:30
I was going to say say Christ in the disciples and you got to get rid of that. Right You got to get rid of the business you got to get you got to come follow me, man.
Tom Wolfe 9:36
Yeah, and get rid of your your, even your your worldly ambitions and all the rest. And the idea is that at the apex of every human soul, there is a spark from the light of God. And this even goes back before Christian Era to Hindu, the origins of Hinduism. And once you get into once you reach that point, then it really does become religious. because now you're merging with some sort of over with some sort of oversell. So that a Erika foundation for example, which in many ways, a very worldly is to teach people to just straighten out their lives and so on, has ended up being a religion SANAD which started off as a drug rehabilitation program. You started using the marathon encounter technique, as a technique for dealing with addiction. Now it's a religion. And there are many lay members of SANAD a lay member, somebody who is not first an addict. And this thing is building and building. In fact, now we have a what six weeks we'll have seven weeks a President of the United States coming from out of this new religious wave that's connected isn't entry and is connected. It's the, the hipness of the hippie movement attracted young people to fundamental fundamentalist religions because fundamentalist religions were ecstatic. They had some of the ecstasy, the emotion, the holy rolling the talking in tongues of an LSD experience. And after all the 60s when the churches, the Presbyterian Church, the Episcopal church, the Catholic churches, are all trying to reach the urban young people. That's all they talked about. And they thought the way you did that was to have a Hootenanny down in the church basement, have the preacher come down and play the guitar, wear a turtleneck sweater with the bits of jazzman of bark woven into it from Norway and all the rest and have a coffee shop down there. And have they have joined in civil rights marches. And in other words, turned the church into a great sort of hip secular movement. Well, this didn't impress young people at all because they made the churches look like these aging arteriosclerotic, arthritic groupies trying to keep up with secular movements. But what what they finally went for was fundamentalism little tub thumping, a little hallelujah and a little rolling on the floor. And this in turn, gave an entire because young people liked it gave an entire new lift to evangelical movements. So you had people like Harold Hughes, a US senator resigning from the Senate to become an evangelist. He then one of his convert becomes Charles Colson of the Nixon hardball squad, and I think it's a sincere religious experience. And then finally, of course, Jimmy Carter, our our next president a born again. Carter at first tried to hide the fact that he was a fundamentalist, but he wasn't gonna deny it. I mean, he was an honest man, he's okay. I'm a fund... and to his amazement, I think people liked it. They responded, Well, this is they responded to Jerry Brown is in Jesuit from California, they liked it. Then his advisers got to him and they started saying, but listen, a lot of people are turned off by this stuff. So it's just a soft peddle it Jimmy. A lot of people don't like this fundamentalist stuff. So thin, he made almost the mistake that almost wiped him out the Playboy interview, where he tried to show that even though he was a fundamentalist, he was also a regular fellow. Instead, I think he should have given the interview. But four out of them were talking about political strategy. Now, he should have pointed towards the interviewer, he should have said, Yes, I'll give you an interview. Because I want the world to know that your sheet is scandalous. It is pure sin, from page one to page 424 is probably the length of the carnage. And then he should have said, and the idea of a man having a sinful thought in his heart for another man's wife, even a thought is an abomination. And such people will be dealt with at Armageddon. Because on the day of Armageddon, where are you going to be when it comes time to kiss the snake? I think this people would have loved it. Even people who are sleeping around slipping around even shorter who comes in after the after the man of the house leaves the leaves the house and short is short. You can't see him you know, he comes in and gets things done. goes on. Even shorty would have loved this kind of messy we're in that period. Now the wave is started his religious way of starting.