"How to Fight the Man" Some Thoughts/ DB Beem

 

Not sure if you saw David Brooks commentary in the Times.

He writes about the Jefferson Bethke video "Why I hate Religion but love Jesus", which you guys discussed a few weeks ago. His commentary is in followup to some more recent developments where Bethke has apparently retreated from some of his positions in the video.

I thought it was interesting. I particularly liked the line "'[R]ebellion without a rigorous alternative vision is just a feeble spasm."

If I were producing this as a movie I might call it, "Stage 2 Strikes Back!"

David Brooks article is good insofar as it laments how Stage 3 rebellious youth have not risen to the occasion by exacting change and "replacing one set of authorities and institutions with a better set of authorities and institutions." In other words, Stage 3 ain't easy.

If I could opine, and without knowing more of the backstory and conversation between Bethke and DeYoung, that part of the problem we find here is that when Stage 3 still wants to be part of Stage 2, there can be no real Stage 4. Stage 3 gets angry, throws a tantrum, and comes back to Stage 2 feeling better for having expressed its ideas, but resigned to the reality that Stage 2 is more stable and offers structure.