Whatever Happened to the Age of Aquarius?

Among my earliest memories echoes a song that captivated a generation already grown when I first heard it. Though from the musical "Hair", I mostly knew it as a hit single by "The Fifth Dimension". I didn't understand it much. I just knew that it made a lot of high school and college kids hopeful and happy at a time when many youth and adults harbored so much anxiety over the future that my generation grew up feeling like we had a gun pointed at our heads.

It heralded "the dawning of the Age of Aquarius," and even I understood that it was not about something expected to happen soon, but something that was supposed to already have begun. The concept as I came to understand it is that since astrology delineates a dozen areas of the sky associated with the signs of the zodiac, and since that sky is space and the Earth moves through space, then the Earth also moves through the houses of the heavens which these signs define.

It takes millennia for the transit of each sign, and each sign therefore defines the theme for an entire epoch – or as the song says, "Age" – in humanity's advancement. Aquarius was supposed to have taken over Earth's guidance in the early 1960s. Astrologers and metaphysical thinkers in general saw the arrival of "The Age of Aquarius" as the advent of centuries of hope, peace, and enlightenment.

The song promised a generation, "Harmony and understanding/Sympathy and trust abounding/No more falsehoods or derisions/Golden living dreams of visions/Mystic crystal revelations/And the mind's true liberation …" So much for astrology.

The decades since this Age began have carried worse genocides than European jews faced during World War II – and most of us have barely noticed. We've seen terrorism rise from an occasional international nuisance to the single force most threatening social and economic stability, even within the world's most powerful nations.

Within our own borders the Age began with great efforts to defeat oppression, racism, inequality, poverty, disease, and ignorance. We've seen these efforts decline, descend, and decompose into a prison oriented economy targeting the poor, and disenfranchising minorities at a rate four times that of caucasians – if those minorities happen to be the descendants of former slaves. Decapitating the threat of measles and rubella, and eliminating smallpox, have paled in the face of AIDS' advance, and the threat of Ebola and other potential modern plagues, which advancing technologies more enable than hinder.

We find ourselves sliding into an ever-widening gulf between the ever-compressing numbers of the super rich, and the ever-expanding masses of the desperately poor. Instead of harmony and understanding, we live and work amidst dissonance and intolerance. Sympathy and trust abound less than apathy, suspicion, and fear. Falsehood and derision dominate our democratic processes in everything from our elections to our martial aggression – within our borders as much as abroad.

We dream up Pulp Fiction visions of Wishmaster, Leatherface, Freddy Krueger, and Saw, living forever with Rambo, F-16s, AWACs, and cruise missiles in our greatest national export – violence – traded for golden dollar signs, coming back at us with the force of planes striking our strongest structures. Our own factories made the birds that Malcolm X warned us would come home to roost. The mystic crystals mined from Sudafed and lithium batteries in our urban allies, rural trailer parks, and Beverly Hills mansions, only reveal, through cool vaporous wisps, what desperate futility confronts rich, poor, educated, and ignorant alike, when their minds find no true liberation at all.

That's all one way to look at it – but even though I've seen it myself, that's not my way. The mistake the Beats, the Yippies, and the Hippies made was thinking that it would all happen at once – believing that a tidal wave of change could sweep our misguided civilization's shaky shores without undermining our social structures with its turbulent tantrum – believing that iron giants forged in the flames of 6,000 years of primal ferocity would lie down and surrender without a fight.

Those who hailed the arrival of the Age of Aquarius with immediate expectations simply sought a miracle. They sought it the right way. They acted as if they expected one, which invites one. The problem is we can invite a miracle – and when we do, we always get one – but we can't choose what miracle answers the invitation. Perhaps they should have been listening to that other song, the one Mick Jagger sings about, "You can't always get what you want … you get what you need."

I've seen all the things I describe above. I've also seen the advent of surgery saving unborn children, children who should never have lived to breathe. I've seen them live long enough to enrich the lives of others and raise children of their own. I've seen men leave footprints on the moon, and leave handprints on the palms of ancient enemies. I've heard music that can melt the frozen core of a harsh human heart in moments and let a rose grow there instead. I've tasted the loss and restoration of freedom, and smelled the fragrant promise of dreams coming true. I've spoken to people born without a voice, and heard them respond.

I've experienced all of these things – and you have too, whether you recognize it or not. It is a common part of an age that did not exist 40 years ago. It belongs to the first age when humans know for certain the Earth is round – we've all seen the photographs by now. It belongs to the first age of humanity to gather all of its accumulated knowledge literally within the reach of its fingertips – it's not finished, but it happens more every day even as we watch.

What you may not have experienced, if like me you entered this planet's vast forum in those years before the Age of Aquarius began, is the generation to which this Age really belongs. I recently spent a week in classes with young people mostly half my Age. They are the true citizens of this Age. Compared to them, we're just old tenants overstaying our expired lease. We had our chance. Now it's their turn, and they are ready.

Each of them has seen more of the world already, just for the experience, than most in even my parent's generation ever hoped to see without going to war. They see the falsehoods and derisions with which we've scarred our society's surface, like tracks from doing donuts in supermarket parking lots, and they reject them.

Not settling for superficial findings, they dig deeper for their values, and even tolerate the semi-senile ramblings of an aging derelict like myself. They revel in the value of diversity, seeking something more for their own futures than most of us could ever imagine, and few of us will recognize when it arrives.

The major social issues that dominated our thoughts, concerns, and lives are settled as far as they are concerned. Any residual conflicts over them that we may yet embrace, fade to insignificance in their minds as yesterday's battles. In patience they wait hopefully for their turn, when they know they'll have problems of their own to solve. They also know that somehow they'll find the resources to solve them. They expect it, as they expect happiness, sensibility, prosperity and enlightenment.

Whatever happened to the Age of Aquarius? Visit a 21st Century college campus, take a good look, and you will see. We were there to show it in, but that just makes us ushers. We never had tickets of our own to begin with. We swept out the aisles, and with a little luck we can catch the first act from somewhere in a back row before our shift is over. It's standing room only, but this generation shuts nobody out.


(This message originally appeared in the column "The View from Pete at 10,000 Feet, in "The High Country Trader" in November, 2007; Copyright 2007, Peter John Stone)