The Sorbonne (‘Hippie’) Revolution of May 1968 in Paris was a successful cultural revolution, with a surprising radicalism, penetration and capacity for contagion, which acted on the tendencies of modern man, reaching the extremes we are witnessing today.
Newsdesk (23/09/2023 15:45, Gaudium Press) A milestone in the moral crisis of modern man was the so-called Sorbonne Revolution, which, with its uniquely radical slogans, advocated a profound change in society, acting above all on the tendencies of human beings. Unbridled promiscuity, disorder and explosions of violence heralded the birth of a new historical era, in which instincts would be liberated after centuries of “slavery”. After the deification of reason in the French Revolution in 1789, it was now a question of putting “unleash your imagination”, as another student slogan announced.
“Slogans” imbued with the French revolutionary spirit
Their propaganda tool was the graffiti on the walls of the occupied universities, which printed slogans imbued with the French revolutionary spirit. They expressed the ultimate goal of the movement, which had begun by demanding improvements in the universities.
Its most famous slogan was “It is forbidden to forbid”. It conveyed the idea that all prohibitions were forbidden, to which was added with irony: “Freedom begins with a prohibition”. This contradictory phrase preached prohibition in order to make the most complete libertinism possible. It was “forbidden to forbid” every form of whim desiring to be satisfied, every form of sin, every release of disordered instincts. Its aim, underlying the phrase itself, was to prohibit the practice of virtue, in an attitude of complete intolerance towards the good.
Slogans such as: “If God existed, he would have to be killed”, “Neither God nor master”, “The sacred, behold the enemy”… became well known.
A successful cultural revolution
A new human type was emerging, a new mentality, in short, a new world. A successful cultural revolution, with surprising radicalism, penetration and capacity for contagion, would act on the tendencies of modern man, reaching the extremes we are witnessing today. A transformation of society, expelling God from the midst of men. Anarchy triumphed. A world would emerge in which everyone could do whatever they wanted, except good… A new historical era would be born that we could call the “civilization of the instincts”, if it were possible to give it the name of civilization.
According to some optimistic spirits, the ideas of May 1968 would not achieve the objectives expressed in the slogans written on the walls of Paris universities, due to their radical nature. They were wrong. The contagion exerted by this revolution really did change the world. As Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira warned in his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution, “the explosion of these extremisms raises a banner, creates a fixed target that fascinates the moderates by its very radicalism, and towards which they are slowly moving”.
The protagonists were still relatively well-dressed young people with short hair. Drugs weren’t widespread in those days, a minority wore blue jeans and sneakers on the streets, and shorts hadn’t even become widespread. However, they provoked profound transformations that penetrated all the capillaries of social life, like a sea that becomes small when it reaches the shore, but has the enormous force of the ocean behind it.
New human types emerged in society as “model symbols” of the men of that decade: slovenly, with long unkempt hair, deteriorating clothes and dubious hygiene. They also foreshadowed major changes that were soon to come.
They were changes in the way people felt, acted and lived, causing a profound social and cultural metamorphosis. The hippie model emerged, according to which every moral rule was challenged. Music, dress and gestures according to the new model were presented as a pseudo-liturgical secularism, with severe sanctions for those who disagreed.
Herbert Marcuse, considered to be the ideologue of this metamorphosis, let his thought run in its “new revolutionary dimension”, proposing a total change. He naturally states that it is necessary to disintegrate the system of human life: “One can undoubtedly speak of a cultural revolution, because the protest turns against the entire cultural establishment, including the morals of existing society.”
The clash between the sacred and the non-sacred
This transformation of the everyday way of thinking and living has been developing with greater intensity in recent years, changing the habits of the West. It is the “liberation of the instincts”, modern relativism that denies the existence of good and evil, truth and error, beauty and ugliness.
This phenomenon has penetrated vast sectors of society, destroying the institution of the family. Fashions are rapidly shifting from extravagance to nudism. Courtesy, good manners and respect in human relationships are disappearing. The new generations are faced with an anarchic, chaotic and aggressive world, where the vulgar takes the place of the ceremonious. Education seems to have the sole purpose of spreading the spirit of “freedom” proclaimed by the slogans of the Sorbonne.
The emergence of electronic media makes the situation even worse. The flood of novelties, impressions and sensations often leads to the disappearance of reasoning. To those responsible for social communications, affirmed St. Pope John Paul II: “Modern technologies impressively increase the speed, quantity and scope of communication, but they do not in the same way favour that fragile exchange between one mind and another, between one heart and another, which should characterize any form of communication in the service of solidarity and love.”
Faced with so many demands, people have to choose between moving towards the sacred or letting themselves be run over by the reigning secularism. In other times – Benedict XVI said – this situation would have been unthinkable, “because respect for man as made in the image and likeness of God was still present; now, without this respect, man considers himself absolute and everything will be allowed to him: he thus becomes truly destructive.
It is within this clash between the sacred and the non-sacred, between light and darkness, that the world finds itself in our sad days. Which will prevail?
Text taken from the magazine Heralds of the Gospel, September 2016. By Fr. Fernando Néstor Gioia Otero, EP.
Compiled by Roberta MacEwan
Related Images:
