Research Proposal on "Third Great Awakening, First Published in 1976"

Research Proposal 5 pages (1274 words) Sources: 8

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Third Great Awakening," first published in 1976 is both hilarious and thought provoking. The author expresses concern over the trend of individualism exhibited by American youth and suggested rather cheekily that the Third awakening in the country was instigated by the various drug-related or drug-like cults of the 1960s and 1970s. He is one of the few to discredit the so-called awakenings as nothing but destructive movements.

The main crux of his argument is against the pattern of individualism that could be witnessed in American in 1960s and 1970s that gave birth to various cults and also proved rather dangerous to the core values of this country. I agree with Wolfe completely because from what we know of the 60s and 70s, we can safely conclude that it was a rough era for the value system of Americans. People opted to become hippies, drug use was rampant and all this was being done in the name of freedom and individualism. Sad as it may sound, the Me Decade was indeed a dangerous decade in the history of America.

Today, Me Decade and Me generation are terms that are used very widely and this attests to the popularity of Wolfe's ideas expressed in this essay. In this highly astute article Wolfe not only expressed his worries but also tried to study this dangerous trend in the light of Alexis de Tocqueville commentary on American culture that came out in the early part of the nineteenth century.

Interesting while individualism may have been relatively new terms or trends for Wolfe and is contemporaries, the same trend was noticed by Tocqueville (1835/1969) in 1830s when he did not even have the right word to identify the behavior and mindset that he had noticed in America. According to him individualism was "a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself." In his highly acclaimed book, American democracy, Tocqueville identified what he felt was an isolated lifestyle in America. He found that more and more people in the U.S. were not wealthy but still had enough to "look after their own needs." They "owe no man anything and hardly expect anything from anybody." They "form the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands. Unfortunately, such a way of life not only makes "each man forget his ancestors, it hides his descendants from him, and divides him from his contemporaries; it continually turns him back on himself alone, and threatens, at last, to enclose him entirely in the solitude of his own heart" (p. 506).

Wolfe used Tocqueville's ideas to further strengthen his own views on dangerous trends developed under the guise of individualism or that sprang up because of this desire to look out for "me" and me alone. This is why he did not believe in the awakenings and made a mockery of the so-called awakenings that he feels were simply destructive in nature. But while he still wants to give some credit to these awakening because they were religious in nature, he completely disregards the third awakening and offers a hilarious true comment on the so called awakening in the Me Decade:

We are now -- in the Me Decade -- seeing the upward roll (and not yet the crest, by any means) of the third great religious wave in American history, one that historians will very likely term the Third Great Awakening. Like the others it has begun in a flood of ecstasy, achieved through LSD and other psychedelics, orgy, dancing (the New Sufi and the Hare Krishna), meditation, and psychic… READ MORE

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