Since post-modernist revolutions, and especially the political and social atmosphere of the 1960’s in America, the popular notion is that an idea only has value if it is nonconformist – if it goes against an establishment of some sort. So even today we get art and literature with people visciously attacking Victorian sensibilities… just like they were 50 years ago, while continuing to turn a blind eye to their own problems. Girard hit’s the nail on the head here:
…we live in an intellectual universe that is all the more conformist of its belief in possessing a monopoly on nonconformist views and methods. That much obviates any genuine self-criticism. …we keep stuffing the old and dried sacrificial skins with straw and standing them up in order to beat them down for the thousandth time.
-Rene Girard, Things Hidden Since the Founation of the World, p.40