Third Quarter Storm
I never learned the meaning of the term, "3rd Quarter Storm". It was many, many years after the period described had passed when I first heard the term mentioned in reference to my participation in certain events of the time and somehow, it stuck in my mind as a kind of cool catch-phrase which is now obscure. Maybe some historian will write about it and explain the meaning of the term and how it came to be coined, Or maybe it does not really matter anymore.
I do remember a time of intense activism where people were polarized and the divide could be described much like the generation gap, for you had the old ones on one side and the young ones on the other. The old ones who were wiser and knew of things which we, young and naive then, could never even dream about. They had the 2nd World War to make them realize how precarious and fragile life is and how precious, and how brutal and inhumane human beings can be in times of strife and war. We on the other hand, were young and had little knowledge except the one that nudged at our brains and prodded our consciences regarding the insidious threat which the Marcos dictatorship represented and the nagging feeling we had that Marcos represented something which was all wrong. And for this hint of an idea, we were willing to risk life and limb and dive into the storm with the fatalistic bravado which only the young and inexperienced can have.
It was very easy to draw a line between opposing ideas and call each side Right and Left; much easier to have two instead of three or four or even ten and label everything as Rightist or Leftist eventually leading to the adoption of Capitalism and Communism as the main protagonists in the Human Drama. One had to favor one and oppose the other. It was at this time when I first read George Orwell's 1984 which was a powerful indictment of the Big Brother mentality which Government tended to have. If you were young and outside the System, your life had no meaning if you did not oppose it, never mind that you did not have to work for your living and depended on your parents whose ideas you so vehemently oppose as cock-eyed and reactionary (a term which you did not really understand but it made you sound important when you uttered it).
Things were confusing and the whole world was in turmoil and the thing to do was to take a side and stick with it. This was a dangerous way to live and fence-sitting was somehow vilified as timid and boring and lacking in sex-appeal.
A New Morning comes and Ching Recommends visiting LM A's and VJ A's Directories.
I do remember a time of intense activism where people were polarized and the divide could be described much like the generation gap, for you had the old ones on one side and the young ones on the other. The old ones who were wiser and knew of things which we, young and naive then, could never even dream about. They had the 2nd World War to make them realize how precarious and fragile life is and how precious, and how brutal and inhumane human beings can be in times of strife and war. We on the other hand, were young and had little knowledge except the one that nudged at our brains and prodded our consciences regarding the insidious threat which the Marcos dictatorship represented and the nagging feeling we had that Marcos represented something which was all wrong. And for this hint of an idea, we were willing to risk life and limb and dive into the storm with the fatalistic bravado which only the young and inexperienced can have.
It was very easy to draw a line between opposing ideas and call each side Right and Left; much easier to have two instead of three or four or even ten and label everything as Rightist or Leftist eventually leading to the adoption of Capitalism and Communism as the main protagonists in the Human Drama. One had to favor one and oppose the other. It was at this time when I first read George Orwell's 1984 which was a powerful indictment of the Big Brother mentality which Government tended to have. If you were young and outside the System, your life had no meaning if you did not oppose it, never mind that you did not have to work for your living and depended on your parents whose ideas you so vehemently oppose as cock-eyed and reactionary (a term which you did not really understand but it made you sound important when you uttered it).
Things were confusing and the whole world was in turmoil and the thing to do was to take a side and stick with it. This was a dangerous way to live and fence-sitting was somehow vilified as timid and boring and lacking in sex-appeal.
A New Morning comes and Ching Recommends visiting LM A's and VJ A's Directories.
posted by webnight at 4:47 PM
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