Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Throughout these essays, Didion asserts that there’s been a disconnect between generations that is leading to a moral decline best typified by the rise of the counterculture movement, which Didion sees as a naïve group of young people with generally well-meaning political stances undone by their lack of seriousness or rigor of thought. The counterculture viewed nonparticipation in society as a radical act, and Didion presents it instead as the act of a generation that is lost in their search for purpose and a meaningful life.

Didion offers up several explanations for this shift, all of which culminate in the idea that somehow the responsibility to educate people about “the rules of the game” has been abdicated, either because of a dereliction/absence on the part of the previous generation or on that generation’s own unspoken disillusion with American life (123). The title essay of the collection paints the counterculture as a grim, lost generation, while Didion’s portrait of Joan Baez presents something that’s more akin to optimistic naivete. In either case, Didion is careful to not condemn particular individuals, seeing instead that something has gone wrong in the systems of belief.

Her essay “On Morality” clarifies what she sees as the problem: a rise of moral absolutism that allows for a self-righteous belief that a person’s individual moral stance is the correct one.