"There is a tragedy in this situation, for all of its absurd comedy. In the hippies, after all, we have a group within the West that has made a correct analysis of its moral and spiritual corruption, and is trying to live an alternative. But how to live an alternative while benefiting all the time from the privilege the system confers? Certainly, the answer cannot possibly be to withdraw from the complexities of the situation by setting up an illusory Maginot line between 'us' and 'them'.
Every white American and European is 'them', like it or not. And there must be one item and one only on the agenda: to dedicate excess funds and excess leisure and use the voice privilege gives us to bring down global white supremacy. This can take as many forms as there are humans to envision it, but if this is not the one motivation in the hearts and minds of every privileged white, hippie or not, any happiness they think to find in life on Earth will always be elusive. There is not a meditation technique powerful enough or a quartz crystal big enough to give enlightenment to a spiritually and morally degraded people.
There is one thing that characterizes white privilege perhaps above all else, and that is the attempt to mitigate the pain of one's complicity in it. Whether through mainstream diversions like material consumption, the media, sports, entertainments, and alcohol, or alternative forms of 'feelgoodism' like hippie fests, 'free love', sweat lodges, and clouds of ganja smoke, the attempt is the same. What makes the hippie movement so irritating is that they believe they are truly living an 'alternative lifestyle', that they 'walk lightly on the earth.'
The white West is the one-ton gorilla sitting square on history. Some whites clearly feel it is enough to voice their opposition through an alternative lifestyle and all of its trappings. What they fail to see is that a much more serious and focused response is required, one that involves personal sacrifices, another idea met with discomfort by the privileged. If hippies think that by playing poor and powerless they can deflect responsibility from themselves, I have only one question: what's that you smokin'? And if smoking it is what keeps them from confronting the challenge to create a truly peaceful and just world, I suggest they stop. "
So I don't usually quote myself, but I went back and read the hippie essay from 1993, and I don't see anything different between what I said then and now. You sling a lot of accusations but make few true responses to anybody, which is too bad.
The only one here who refers to Obama in terms of hero worship here is you.
Just for the record, in my previous post when I referred to 'now' I was actually thinking of this era of instantaneous global communication which began I think in 1962 when I was five years old.
I hope you're about half my age, 26 or so, like my youngest son. Why can't you disagree with me in a respectful way and settle down and really debate this instead of all the outburst?
Hahaha believe me there's nothing 'soft' about LSD. Like with so much, you conflate a lot of information and draw dubious conclusions. The history of psychedelics is ancient and whatever the CIA thought they might use it for, they gave up on the idea fast, though Tim Leary might have been CIA.
As I made clear in the essay you keep using to be disrespectful to me, I think some good things happened in the 60's and some ideas starting gaining traction that stand a chance of bearing fruit now.
But like I said WAY back there in my very first post, the mistake of many lies in their apocalyptic desires/expectations which cripple them in the here and now of the work each person can do, pretty much the same mistake the hippies made. How do we defeat imperialism and white supremacy?