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One of the secrets of Berkeley: the young, on the street or in the campus, martyr themselves to the sins of the fathers or society. In fact, one could say with extreme truth that much of Berkeley is a fight against the fathers. The pyramid is flipped and the kids rule. It is no different than tribes of pre-Columbia who ritually assist the young to dis the old and all they hold sacred. It creates new vitality. But it also creates the shame that makes the kids, eventually, just like the fathers. And it does a third thing. It shows the kids, after awhile, exactly why the fathers did what they did.

The radicalism that had marked Berkeley in the 60's and early 70's had petered out to a few crazed gangs like the ones who had shot and killed the Superintendent of schools and kidnapped Patty Hearst. Or the People's Temple. By this time anything with "Peoples" in it rang rather hollow but anyway. The radicals had all gone back to school or lived sullen lives down in the flats. When they got together they would drink and laugh loudly. They were still alive they reasoned and proved to themselves they were better than anyone else. Or, at least, smarter than anyone else.

There was an unmistakable aura of craziness in Berkeley. It was not simply an empty putative thing. It was a real atmosphere, a charged atmosphere you would not get in a large city. And I had felt this aura three distinct times. In the mid-60's as a teen-ager and sensing great momentous things happening and feeling that Berkeley was the center of the universe. So clean, ideal, and perfect! And then when I moved there in the mid-70's a terrible disillusionment that made everything sickly and driven down. It was the feeling of being driven down which was so startling and it was pervasive.