IT’S A LONG ENTRY TODAY, and it starts with a question:

WHAT WILL BECOME of “alternative” culture? Until last Tuesday, the prospect of a recession seemed to mean we could all go back to being grumpy worrywarts, without all that new-economy exuberance getting in the way. But now along comes war-lust, and the potential revival of censorship and repression of dissent, not to mention changes in the whole social zietgeist.

Remember, WWII changed American culture even before the U.S. military got into it. In came the aggressive comedy of Abbott & Costello and Bugs Bunny. Out went the lighter antics of W.C. Fields, Laurel & Hardy, and the Marx Brothers.

Even before the hijackings, there’d been talk for a year or two among the culture pundits of a “new sincerity,” spread among (or at least corporately targeted at) a new generation grown weary of cynicism and distanced irony. Among the trend’s purported examples: Dawson’s Creek, Lilith Fair, the WTO protests, Martha Stewart, Oprah, bottled water (as an alternative to fizzy drinks), the new soft-R&B divas, and those achingly cloying boy bands. When Tablet launched, one year ago next week, it sold itself as the sincere, prosocial, community-supportive alternative to what its creators claimed was The Stranger’s arrogance and irrelevance.

Will the new social and economic shudders further this trend? Quite possibly. Even among the potential opponents of a potential new war, the schtick’s gonna have to be about working together and working hard.

And will the culture of individual excess (the rich person’s equivalent to hip irony) become seen as not merely wasteful but unpatriotic?

I’ll tell you what I don’t want to see, and that’s a “Return to the Spirit of the Sixties.” A lot of tactics simply didn’t work then and won’t work now. Counterculture separatism, square-bashing, drug-assisted pomposity, and general rudeness won’t do anything except make a few self-promoters famous.

Indeed: Separatism, the belief that one (and perhaps one’s close circle of compatriats) constitute some superior species, is one of the poisonous ideas terrorist leaders always exploit.

WHICH BRINGS US to our next sermon topic: Who do YOU hate?

No, I’m not talking about who those people out in bad old Mainstream America hate.

I’m not talking about who your parents hate.

I’m not talking about who the guy next to you hates.

I’m talking about you. Yes, you.

It’s easy for members of one or another “alternative” social niche to admit how wrong it is to hate ethnic minorities, gays, women, and the poor.

But what about your own attitudes toward those who are different from you?

Do you ever sneer with disdain at people who eat meat, or at people who don’t smoke pot?

Do you dehumanize heterosexuals, men, suburbanites, hippies, bimbos, southerners, mall shoppers, tourists, headbangers, lawyers, bureaucrats, business executives, polyester wearers, pina colada drinkers, people who listen to non-NPR radio stations, or people who shop at non-co-op grocery stores?

Then you’re just being human. You’re not a superior species to the rest of homo sapiens; nobody is. But a lot of people like to imagine they are. Some use religion, nationalism, ethnicity, or caste as their excuse. Others use fashion sense, arcane knowledge, or claims of higher “enlightenment.”

The real enlightened ones aren’t the ones who boast of their separateness from humanity, but the ones who realize their connection to humanity, to the web of life.

The illusion of separateness is especially prevalent in times of war-lust. Every warring nation propagandizes that it’s the real greatest nation on earth, and that those opposing nations are vermin needing to be eradicated or heathen needing to be “civilized.”

That’s why a Unabomber can callously take lives and then claim it’s all to make a better world. That’s why combatants in Belfast can aim guns on schoolgirls. That’s why a handful of true believers, who may or may not be connected to similar cells elsewhere in the world, can devote their lives toward a mega-scale suicide bombing.

We need no more of that.

What we need, now more than ever, is to reconnect, to touch.

Build movements. Get closer to your neighborhood, your community. Go see bands, concerts, plays—anything that’s live. Take a class. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Make love as often as possible (safely and consensually). If you’ve got kids, hug them early and often. Have a good meal, a good drink, and/or a good laugh. Get involved in something greater than mere money and power.

Call it the new sincerity if you wish. Or just call it the best way to keep our species going, by breaking down some of the barriers between people and between cultures.