Living in Manhattan in New York City during the authoritarian era (the 30s, 40s and 50s) life was very different from the way it is today. On weekdays there was a great deal of economic and social activity in the city. But on Sundays, everything became quiet. Sunday was a day of rest. Except for some food markets and restaurants, all stores were closed and business took a day off. The only activities that occurred were social, such as going to church and visiting families, signs of the intactness of a traditional social order
Then things changed. Unrecognized at the time, it was the beginning of a monumental change in the social order. It was the beginning of the transformation of society from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian, a time when all forms of social organization and traditions on every level gradually began to break down.
It was then that the idea of politics as the leftist’s solution to humanity’s problems became connected with the emotional forces that were being expressed by young people. Fueling the transformation was the breakthrough to the surface of powerful forces contained in young people’s yearning for sexual happiness. The term “sexual revolution” that was used by communist ideologues aided the movement. People from the older generation reacted by being stymied and in a state of bewilderment. They had never before experienced anything like this kind of social upheaval in America.
Still unrecognized to most people, this was the time of the breakthrough of the great, destructive secondary layer of armored people, which we recognize as the emotional plague, and the beginning of the end of the social order of the past.
