In this age of media and social and government oppression we need a coherent Arts movement, to unite a new Beat Generation

When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars... So sang The 5th Dimension in the song "Aquarius" back in 1969.  

For a few years in the 70s, there was a genuine sense of a growing counterculture as young people rejected the restrictive views and values of their parents' generation and seemed to want to create a more tolerant, more humane, more peaceful society. But aside from a few protests in favour of Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War, it largely came to nothing really, because sitting in a field naked and stoned ultimately doesn't challenge the establishment, it just sort of wastes a load of time and drugs tend to fuck with your mind, rather than focus it to get organised and embark on a credible programme to achieve genuine lasting change.

The Age of Aquarius is supposed to liberate us all, so that we might cast off the shackles of conservative conformity in our quest to discover the full joys of being human, the freedom to express ourselves, to fulfil ourselves as individuals, to connect with our fellow man and our environment.  In this actual age of sexually transmitted diseases, some of which are known to be resistant now to antibiotics, presumably no-one would really be endorsing free love as the 70s hippies were.  No matter how enlightened and psychologically liberated I became, I cannot imagine shagging all the gents and half the women in my community, with no consideration for physical or emotional commitment, some things are just clearly a very bad idea!

Most people seem to subscribe to the view that the Age of Aquarius hasn't actually started yet and won't do for a few hundred years, but some claim it began in 2012.  If it did, there certainly doesn't seem to be any feeling of liberation so far.  The vast majority of us still seem to be living under a cloud of extreme social and political oppression, more so than ever in my lifetime really.  Those who don't conform to current social norms are portrayed in the mainstream media as deviant - for which read eccentric if you're rich or a threat to the lives of decent hard-working families if you don't happen to be loaded.  

We also live in the Age of Litigation, where the full might of the law is frequently used against anyone expressing a view which really challenges government and the corporations who fund political parties, and this has inevitably seeped through into popular culture, art and drama.  Seldom will you discover a TV drama or radio play with a negative message about the establishment.  Not so long ago you might have been able to watch a prime time UK drama which portrayed government ministers as corrupt, specifically identifying the characters as corrupt Tory politicians.  That seems much less likely now, as programme makers err on the side of caution, at the expense of compelling, gritty drama to get public debate going. And even more worrying, documentary series actively demonise anyone not conforming to the established model of family life and those horrid, judgemental, voyeuristic programmes frequently attract high viewing figures.

But there must be an enormous number of writers and artists, musicians and actors and poets and dancers, who certainly don't share this narrow Daily Mail definition of what life should be, and we perhaps need to establish a coherent movement to challenge the intolerance and bigotry the viewing public has become used to sitting in front of, without questioning any of the messages they're being fed, night in, night out.

Scotland has the National Collective , a movement for artists and creatives prepared to challenge the political establishment, in this case, united specifically in their support for Scottish independence, and we could perhaps be inspired and encouraged by that to form our own Arts movement for people who seek to challenge the status quo in a broader sense, a bit like the Beat Generation of writers in the 50s and 60s.

If you already know of such collectives please feel free to post links to these groups in the comments section below and perhaps we can start to join up a few of the dots, and build something meaningful and lasting together.