Scott McMurray

The Scarlet & mack. April 20. HJ‘ISi—pagej

The real world of the imagination

Most columns by seniors are
easily recognizable. They deal with
the lleetleS. in one way or
another, oI leaving college and
entering the soscalled “real
world ” College is lovingly re-
evaluated over the shouldcr as the
senior “advances” toward the
Infamous 9 to 5.

Don’t get me wrong, I'm not a
revisionist columnist. if you don't
think drugs, sex, enlightenment,
sun, central campus, drugs, Mc-
Connell. Mirecourt, and Costello
tie. the Grinnell Experience)
bring you within a lotus petal of
nirvana, you must be high. At best,

the exciting senior thinks. hie
doesn’t go up or down after
Grinnell, it goes sideways.

NOT NECESSARILY. AS alters
natives are all the rage these days.
the iollowing is an alternative plan
for postrgraduation life. The
parenthetical inclusion (sex,
drugs) will occur during the
remainder of this column to
maintain the interest of the
desensitized reader,

The alternative to the real
world, as it is commonly per-
ceived by most readers, it to deny
the existence of Said world. By St)
doing. one enters the real world of

Tom Johnshn (‘5’ Allan Kissane
Once more, sans legs

We’ve got this great idm. Peggy
Cass goes to Norway, see, and upon
her arrival she’s spotted by an
elderly man and his grandson. The
old Norwegian turns to the lad and
says, “What is happening to our
country? When I was young, if we
saw something like that, we‘d go
plunder all the monastaries along
the coastline. Nowadays, it‘s
welcomed as a boost to tourism,”

“Grandpa!" replied the youth,
“How can you speak such
blasphemy? Other than Shelly
Winters, she's the only surviving
member of the Holy Trinity-Plus-
One of intolerable obese female
celebrities."

“BY LOTHAR, YOU were not
raised up to bow down to these
cellulite heroines of the screen! is
this what you learn at your small
liberal arts school in the heartland
of America?”

“Oh, no. Grandpa. they worship
the celebrities, yes, but not the
women. In iact, they tread upon
them at many times. Recently at a
game oi the intramural soitball.
when one young man failed to hit
the round thing with the stick, one
of his fellows called him a
‘ woman,’ ”

“WHAT A STRANGE and idiotic
choice of words for an American
boy to make in choosing an insult.”

”Yes, either he is very confused

or he’s a lot like some eighth
graders I used to detest.”
“BUT IS THOUGHTLESS sexism
the only thing bothering you? You
seem extremely bummed,
Grandson. I trust your Norwegian
Sea Monkeys are faring Well?"

“Well. I sort of got hungry and

 

spread the little fellas on a cracker
last week—but that‘s not what’s on
my mind. I’m not happy at my
school. In fact. I wouldn't even be
going there ii it wasn’t costing a
whole lot oi money, You see.
Grandfather, in the Great Drawing
I have pulled a number which
‘eats' and next year i must reside
in the Hall of Cowles or Norris or . ,
, worse."

“AND THAT IS your only
worry" By Njal’s porcine
daughter! (Odin! She must have
outweighed my longboat , .) When
I was young, I wrapped my tool in
tinfoil and walked eight miles
through blizzards lust to buy more
tinfoil, and I wintered in Green-
land, huddled in the hull of Bo
Svenson's ship, warmed only by
the presence oi 700 unwashed
Vikings and a small blubber lamp.
What is this Cowles compared to
that?”

“Grandfather! What is wrong? I
have not seen anyone look so
troubled since Kiarnl Rettsen
gagged on a lutefish, toppled oii a
cliffand became weged in a fjord."

“i AM HAUNTED by a vision: I
am opening the airlock between
the parking lot and the inside of a
Country Kitchen. A gray haired,,
iiity-twoyearold woman in a dirty
baby-blue sweater dress is using
the pay phone. Speaking excitedly,
yet matter-of-factly, she is not
aware oi my presence, In the one
second it takes me to pass through
that small room, she says ‘l'm on
tranquilizers and codeine.‘ Then I
am inside the place, atthe counter
and I have to order coffee . . . Ah,
the foolish dreams of an old man. 1

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NAZIS, JEWS,

HUGUENO'I'S

AND GOODNESS
A lecture by Hi ip Hallie, '45.

Author of} Lest Innocent Blood Be

Shed.

April 251b, 7:30 p.m.,
Soulli lounge.

the imaginationesee Coleridge's
liiog" lIizi Litcrnrin tsex, drugsl.
That l the reader transcends the
mundane, inoney-grubbing world
and is [rccd to create a real world
of his-her ownisce Wordsworth's
Prelude lsex sex, drugs drugs),

ONCE FREED, TllE reader's
newsfound sensitivity allows him-
her to embrace an alternative
“vision" of life, one that disavows
false dichotomies such as college
vs. the real world If disavowal
isn't iollowed by some sort oi af-
firmation, though, readers are leIt
isolated in their atomized world
(sex?, drugs?).

t

am not as powerful as in days past

when I always kept a charging

rhino close at hand.”

“Heavy,”

Well, what do you think? Pretty
great stuff, huh? But we have
placed ourselves in no little
danger, Some people will say we’re
tactless.but what do those swine
know? Anyway, it one or both oi us
is found dead with a ham sandwich
lodged in his windpipkyou know
where to look.

Mary Beth George

Affirmation comes via the
reader's realization that a holistic,
alternative approach to liic
necessitates embracing the worlds
of others tsexi drugs! ). We are all
“in It together," So we can
collectively have some say in iust
what ”it" Is Art is the vehicle by
which we can have a say,

AT PRESENT. ART exists at the
fringe oi our culture. Popular
entertainment dominates our lives
to the extent that the number of
people who appreciate serious art
is hardly more than the number at
serious artists. Popular enr
tertainment is the modern-day
“opiate of the masses," it provides
escape and produces eoniormity.
Only great art can impel the
reader to re-think reality,

And our present day reality is in
desperate need of re-thinking.
Science dominates our culturei
and, while producing much good,
has also yielded terriiying results.
Infant mortality has been
drastically reduced in many areas,
yet the term “nuclear family” has
ominous connotations for us all.
The fault lies not with science but
with our desensitization in the face
of modern complexity.

OUR CULTURE CAN only be
kept from ”turning and turning"
until it spins into oblivion by

putting this complexity into per
,‘spective. Not complexity, but a
1 small number of moral truths lie at
the heart of our culture. That these
truths are no longer “sell‘revident”
is where the reader's alternative
approach steps in.

In a sense, art is the new religion
of the real world of the
lmagination. Traditional religion is
.no longer a vital iorce in the real
lworld, the vacuum it leaves at our
'cultural nexus being strongly ielt
t“the center cannot hold”), The
alternative, “revision," places art
at the nexus, so that the ac-
companying sensitivity and moral
truths emanate from the center
outward, rather than vice versa,

LIKE ALL Goon post-sixties
alternatives, this one must start
with the individual. Liberal arts
education,at its best, sensitizes the
reader so that heshe can embrace
a holistic life, envisioning
education, work. and leisure not as
‘isolates, but as parts of a greater
whole. .

Once sensitized, an alternative
culture could nurture the positive
in both the humanities and science
(a false dichotomy in itselfl. and
disavow the negative

It's not going to be easy, reader.
since you’ve come this iar, you
deserve a final (i, ).

 

Conservative conundrums?

During the semester that l and

titty others spent with Grinnellrin»
London two years ago, we didn’t
miss campus life much. Only oer
casionally, twinges oi curiosity
moved us to write to friends for
news. We read their replies, and
the packets of Sth, that arrived
at the teaching site, with a detachr
ment we Couldn't have attained
living on campus. From our
distance, we saw how little life
changed here over a period of time.
Our friends wrote about the usual?
the cold temperatures, the routine
oistudying, and once in a while the
latest piece oi hot gossip,
' Friends also sent us a running
commentary on that year’s fresh-
man class. Little of what they said
was new on that account either:
we'd said the same things about
the previous year's freshmen, and
upperclassmen had said it about us
when we were freshmen. “Cons
servative," our friends wrote.
I“Moi'e and more conservative.
They dress like preppies, the
women look and act like coeds, and
most of them are pre-med or pre
law. The campus is going down the
drain.”

 

DURING MY YEAR and a half
’ back on campus .complainis about
the influx' of conservative students
and attitudes have been heard
often on the lips of many. Certain
events. such as the new alcohol
and bathroom policies and the
move to set up distribution
requirements, are pointed to as
proof that Grinnell College is
becoming a bastion oi con»
servatism. Those who consider
themselves progressive-minded
feel more than ever in the
minority. Conservatism, in many
students' minds, is the hottest issue
around.

The accusation that a cons
servative frame of mind
characterizes most of the student
body and some of the iaculty
contains some validity. Many
students now going to school here
think and act according to values
widely considered “conventional”
and “Establishment." The ad»
ministration and faculty are in
terested in new regulations that
would mean a return to certain
conventional restrictions on the
generally regulatiomfree student
lifestyle here.

THE ACCUSATION of con-

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servatism is perhaps as ironic as it
is valid, Those who accuse are
trying to preserve a tradition oi
their own, to resist uie disap-
pearance of the liberal, antir
Establishment order that existed
on this campus during the 60's and
early 70's. Strange as it may seem,
those who now consider them-
selves among the last survivors of
that progressive era must also
admit to their own brand of cans
servatism.

So, some are returning to a
traditional, Establishment
lifestyle, some are striving to
maintain the antirEstablishment
lifestyle that arose to oppose it. Is
it an unimportant semantic point
that both groups are conservative
in their own way?

NOT NECESSARILYv This
semantic point can be constructive
ii, in response. the “liberals“ who
abhor the return of conventional
values call into question the depth
oi their progressivism. More than
the usual liberal ideas make a
progressive person Also needed is
an understanding that change in
attitudcs is inevitable, whether

 

here or in the “real world."
Many oi us need to be willing to
accept and deal with the fact that a
change has occurred in the at-
titudes oi the people who run and
attend this place, instead oi writing
it off as a hopeless turn for the
worse. Most people, however
convent a] they have become,

_‘ somehow ave been affected by the
‘ ideas oi the W‘sand early 70's, and
, are not likely to be as blindly

apathetic as supposedly everyone
was during the 50's. .

GRINNELLISA unit omarger
society. In many ways i s like
larger communities elsewhere: as
the restof our society becomes less
radical. more conventional. so
does Grinnell. The college is not a
haven for liberal refugees. Nor is it
a place one enteis hoping to iind a
small liberal utopia that does not
change under the inﬂuence of
pressures irom other parts oi
society,

In reiusing to acknowledge and
deal with the trend toward coii~
'ventional attitudes in people‘s
atlituds here‘those with liberal
views risk the iaults they point out
in those they label conservative—
complacency and narrowminds
ednas.

 

