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this religious quest for fulfillment by sharing in a primitive way of
life and thought. Peasant clothing, peasant nakedness, peasant
dirt-these have been the hallmarks of the counterculture (never
mind that much of the clothing was factory made in Taiwan, and
that real peasants are rarely dirty and hardly ever naked). But these
are to be seen as sacramental, so to speak, as "visible signs of an
invisible grace . " The grace is participation in a more natural, more
human, healthier relationship to the world, to others, and to oneself.
A strangely reconstructed "noble savage" could now be seen
marching around in the very cultural centers of the industrialized
West.
It
goes without saying that real peasants encountering this
figure-in Mexican villages, on the great marketplace of
Marrakesh, or on the beaches of Goa-reacted with very non–
empathetic astonishment. Nor have the theoretical elaborations of
this countercultural primitivism-"small is beautiful," "inter–
mediate technology," "zero growth," and the like-found many
responsive audiences in the Third World.
Countercultural orientalism has invested similarly religious
expectations in the more sophisticated cultures of the Third World,
especially, of course, those of Asia.
It
would be quite inaccurate to
subsume all of the renewed Western interest in the great religious
traditions of Asia under the category counterculture . Yet there is a
strong element that can be so subsumed. Empirically, there has been
an overlapping clientele of countercultural movements and of a
broad array of oriental religious cults. Opponents of nuclear energy
are much more likely to engage in Hindu forms of meditation than
nuclear engineers, and environmental activists are unlikely to be
affIliated with Evangelical churches. The common adversary is what
unites all these various sensibilities-the "uptight," "repressive,"
allegedly unhealthy way of life of advanced technological society.
If
redemption from these evils is not to be found in a new primitivism,
then perhaps it may be sought in the ancient lore of Asia. Both
putative salvations are localized "out there,"
outremer,
in this or that
region of the Third World. Both the "noble savage" and the Yogi
are images of countermodernity.
The two countercultural themes coalesce in the following
scene. An experienced traveler recently visited a self-styled Sufi
community in New England. (The fact that this Sufism would
hardly be recognized as such either by Islamists or by adherents of
Sufi communities in the Muslim world is not relevant to the story.)
