C/CC/AC:
Culture, Counterculture, Anticulture

by Doc Cuddy, Editor, Magellan's Log

We get more than a few search hits from seekers focusing on a keyword, "counterculture." We don't know if these are aging hippies looking for new tie-dye patterns, or neo-hippies who want to re-create the Fugs, or maybe even neo-Luddite acolytes of Ted Kacynski trying to find new ways to fight the rising tide of technology.

It's hard to say what they're looking for and, indeed, at what point their search spills over from "counterculture" into "anticulture," or worse.

Since we carry the slogan, "The Internet Magazine of Culture, Counterculture, and Anticulture," under our banner, we thought maybe a few words of clarification might be helpful.

CULTURE?
The culture part is easy. Look through the issues of Magellan's Log and you quickly become aware of our immersion in the ocean of global culture, past, present, and future. Whatever creative and valuable stuff people have done, are doing, or may do, no matter the location, we're interested. The arts (from Turner to quilting to thimbles to fractals), music (gavottes to Joplin to, well, the Fugs to John Cage to the soundtracks of TV commercials), literature (Sophocles to Lao-Tze to Bill McKibben to Philip Roth), and so on--we're there, looking, listening, reacting.

And adding our own new stuff as well. We've already published more than a dozen new full-length books in these pages.

COUNTERCULTURE
The counterculture part is almost as easy. Full-disclosure here. Our take on "counterculture" is, we admit, mostly nostalgic. The 1960s were a fecund time. Good work was done in many areas of culture, away from the mainstream. Part of our goal is to remind younger readers of some of that good stuff that they may not know about.

But we're not being only nostalgic. Any mainstream culture is always in danger when it forgets the central lesson that the 1960s counterculture acted on: Question authority. Whether it's a terrible war gone terribly wrong, whether it's politics as corruptly usual, whether it's a generation of affluence blind to its own wasteful hypocrisy (SUV's! Jesus!): question authority. In the sense that we try to maintain that skeptical, probing attitude, Magellan's Log is countercultural.

But the line we draw is that beyond which lies violence.

ANTICULTURE?
Yes, and no. NOT anticulture like the Idaho mountain crazies. NOT anticulture like the desperately misguided teenagers whose ignored pain morphs directly into guns. NOT anticulture like the blindered religionists trying to pretend the last 50 (or, for that matter, 2000) years haven't happened.

Rather, anticulture in the ancient, gentle, patient sense of the oldest Asian thinkers. Not just patience, but attentive patience. Meditative non-violence. What in Sanskrit is called "ahimsa."

God knows we're aware of the hypocrisy and corruption in the culture. Just look at the satire we publish. At the same time, a deeper part of the set of beliefs behind Magellan's Log is a small variant on a well-known line from the I Ching.

The line: "Perseverance furthers."

Indeed.

But we try to keep in mind the even larger truth:

"Gentle perseverance furthers best."

END

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