c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(at)compuserve.com.)

(UNDATED) It may be my election-season imagination, but people don’t seem to attach political bumper stickers to their cars with the same regularity they once did. Perhaps this reflects the prevailing idea that politicians are uniformly disreputable, thus the better part of wisdom is to avoid association with them.

But that’s not to say that we don’t use our bumpers to promote a vast array of causes and philosophies. Having decided that we can’t be bothered with the nuts and bolts of self-government, we dedicate ourselves to broader themes _ or merely personal obsessions _ which tell us a great deal more about our states of mind than party allegiance ever did.

Some bumper stickers are arcane, such as this stirring battle cry spotted not long ago:”Say No To Irradiated Foods!”Earth worshipers remind us to”Love Your Mother,”and in case we don’t get it, there’s a picture of the planet looming in the background. Some apparently twisted parents advertise that”My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student.”Meanwhile, a two-footed fish informs us that the driver is an Orthodox Darwinian, while Christians attach legless fish and seekers of Eastern enlightenment advise us to”Hug Your Buddha.” Some stickers carry unsettling messages _ not necessarily because they are scatalogical or profane, but because they are inspired by a spirit of hopelessness and sometimes despair. These are the bumper-borne messages that demand more attention, for they offer insights into the spiritual crisis that grips so many of our younger citizens.

One of the more well-known of these terse philosophical discourses has mercifully been rendered into classical form:”Effluvia Happens.”The original version, at least to these traditional eyes, was troubling not only because one half of it was a barnyard obscenity, but because it could be seen to embrace resignation before life’s inevitable vicissitudes. An even starker presentation of this attitude is found in the emblem,”Life’s A (rhymes with rich), Then You Die.”Here one finds none of the spirited resistance that marks interesting lives _ not to mention heroic ones. No raging against the dying of the light, but instead a sheepish acquiescence.

Which brings us to the current fad favorite, the bumper sticker that simply says”Whatever,”conveying in a single word a sense of complete relativism. According to this one-word creed, there are no distinctions to be made, no duties to perform, no rules to follow, no causes to champion _ save for those of the moment, as defined by the individual in concert with himself. Here is the ultimate expression of the self unencumbered by notions of morality.

There are some ironies involved in many of these stickers, especially those in the woe-is-me category. My observations indicate that most of these stickers are attached to automobiles driven by well-fed and generally middle- class young people, who should be vital and engaged with life, enjoying opportunities that earlier generations could not even imagine.

One might have expected such public signs of despair by the generations that endured the Depression and survived world wars, but quite the opposite was the case. Members of those aging generations, who faced physical and material challenges many young Americans cannot imagine, recognized that happiness is an achievement, not something, like effluvia, that just happens. Of all generations, our contemporary young would seem to have the least reason to complain.

Yet we should not really be surprised by this sense of hopelessness. Our young people live in a world whose popular culture tells them that life has no transcendent meaning, no objective truth. By that standard,”Whatever”is a reasonable response to all questions.

Which is more important _ saving Spanish toads or the poor of Calcutta? Whatever. Who is the more important historic figure _ Moses or Kurt Cobain? Whatever. In the end, nothing matters _ all is equally futile. Is it any surprise that this generation is wracked by suicide, anxiety, and rising drug abuse?

The Whatever Generation, while perhaps believing itself alienated from both the future and the past, is the inevitable result of the same intellectual trends that wiped out prayer in school, wiped away the sanctity of life and otherwise mocks every vestige of traditional belief. This generation has been force-fed nihilism, and we should not be surprised that many of its members are running on empty.

MJP END COLSON