Blessed Are the Uncool

Been there before

Do you ever make the uncanny discovery that people back in the olden days were just like us? That's been happening to me. I've been reading about the Romantic movement in the arts (roughly from the French revolution to the beginnings of Marxism). As it turns out, many of the leaders were young adults of the same age. In other words, this was a youth rebellion.

The Romantics were the hippies of their day: they rejected the moral authority of their elders, wore the same clothes as each other, and generally talked about emotions as an alternative to the distasteful world of the mind they had inherited from the enlightenment.

Above is a most famous painting from the era; compare the opening sequence from 1969's Easy Rider, and tell me this is not the same spirit:

posted by locutus est @ Monday, January 29, 2007