What we need is a new hippie-like counterculture movement!

[Emelina]

Seriously, the way we are going is not resource or socially sustainable. Maybe we need a re-birth of the hippie movement:

Our veggies and grain is genetically modified, our meat is raised in inhumane factory farms, our brains processed on smart phone apps, and our philosophy developed in large part from Facebook memes. Is this the vision of a developing society, one which people look to a future of infinite possibilities for their children and grand children? I believe the original counter-culture was sabotaged by the powers-that-be but that should not limit our hope that we could possibly latch onto the most positive aspects of the so-called hippie movement to improve our standard of living, mental and spiritual outlook.

[bvf]

1. You're going to have to tear an awful lot of people

away from their e-toys.

I'd call it a worthy goal, though...

[rainy]

2. We had one with occupy but they were

beaten off the streets and dragged away some jailed.

[Emelina]

4. In a sense, but I mean a movement that combines self-sufficiency with social responsibility.

One that aims to break the whole consumeristic religion of today.

[romanic]

45. Occupy

died with in-fighting and people wanting attention for their own pet causes; add in the short attention span of millennials and e-toys and that spells the end of any hippie like movement such as Occupy.

[Sanity Claws]

46. Really?

I remember OWS being dispersed violently by police. They were arrested and beaten by police.
Occupy is still active but in smaller areas. They were very active in rebuilding after superstorm Sandy in NY and NJ.
OWS succeeded in changing the dialogue. Everyone now talks about the 1% versus the 99%

[romanic]

49. I never denied that.

But there were issues within Occupy, it wasn't all rainbows and butterflies.

[DonCoquixote]

60. there were issues with Woodstock too

People pointed out that while Woodstock's later attempts at reforming had violence (Gee, thanks Limp Bizkit) the original one had rapes too. There will always be people that want to take over momentum and use it to feed off of, especially in a culture where many will see free food and go "I better take this over before everyone else comes and leaves me with jack shit again." The Old hippie days were rife with outright sexism, where the women who stepped up were often knocked back down by the males.

The point is, if you look for perfection, you will not get it, nor will you be able to easily gloss over that the forces of power are indeed stronger and better equipped. Yes Hippies got beat up during protests, and yes cointelpro was running wild, but they did not have to face the mixture of Fox News and the NSA.

[RKP5637]

3. It would be great! n/t

[Emelina]

5. Step one - buy local as much as possible, step 2 go organic, step 3 turn off the TV.

[cwydro]

14. It can be done. This is the latest bounty from my gardens and my free range chickens.

Takes some work, but at least I know where my food comes from.

And you'll never eat anything as good as a freshly laid egg.

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[hunter]

32. Step one is turn off the TV, I think.

Standing naked in the woods occasionally is good for the soul too.

[NobodyHere]

36. Except

If anyone spots you you'd be arrested and put on the sex offender registry. Especially if you're a male.

[Ghost in the Machine]

69. IF anyone spotted ME, *they* would be arrested for trespassing...

I live out in the middle of nowhere, on 15 acres... mostly wooded. It's all posted legally with "Private Property, NO TRESPASSING" signs at the designated distances...

Peace,

Ghost

[Emelina]

72. Skyclad ceremonies are better than TV addiction. ;)

This chart on PBS was what it looked like over ten years ago in reference to media oligarchies:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/giants/

Is is far more concentrated now.

[brooklynite]

6. Are you saying the hippie movement brought awareness to sustainability?

I'd say it was just another example of people who give up trying to deal with the real world around them.

[Emelina]

7. There are still co-ops and farmer's markets where I live...

No better way to promote aspects of sustainability.

[Comrade Grumpy]

24. That would be a very jaundiced view.

They found a different way to deal with the world around them. Not everybody wants to live in concrete canyons.

[brooklynite]

27. My point is they withdrew from the world around them, rather than try to improve it for everyone

[Sanity Claws]

47. Sometimes the best way to help

Is to model a different way of life, show other possibilities. The hippies succeeded in doing this.

[GreatGazoo]

48. Gandhi: "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

Creating an alternative DID improve it for everyone else. It unlocked imagination and showed the more timid and the less creative that change in their lives was possible immediately.

[just us]

52. What "WITHDRAW"

you are either too young or too old to remember 1000s of peace, civil rights and womens liberation marches and sit-ins.
And more than a few deaths.

[kenfrequed]

28. The movement was a mixed bag.

There was a bit of good that came out of it but the problem was that the cultural awareness never contributed to cultural change. That and too many of them either dropped out of trying to help people or bought into Wallstreet.

People learned all the wrong lessons.

[Zorra]

33. More like trying to save the dying planet that rich capitalist imperialists

are destroying out of their lack of ability to control their greed, and out of their sociopath like lack of concern for the well being of everything that lives.

[randome]

8. No. You can't change the world by simply reusing parts of your past. Nostalgia is not a weapon.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesn’t always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one you’re already in.[/center][/font][hr]

[sufrommich]

9. I cringe every time I see something about "hippies"

Note to my fellow boomers:stop telling younger generations they need to be more like we were at their age,it doesn't have the effect you think it does.

[kenfrequed]

29. Moreover it actually encourages the wrong things

They should be looking more at the lyric left of old, or the wobblies, or the civil rights movement for inspiration.

The Occupy Wallstreet movement managed to change our language and brought forward the reality of economic inequality very effectively. It changed consciousness and the language that everyone uses.

[bigmonkey]

20. "No" is a little broad-brush.

Corporations shamelessly mine history for methods and propaganda techniques that benefit themselves. To disavow the past in the name of avoiding "nostalgia" is to succumb to forces that want to separate us from effective movements of the past. I'm not going to play, and I wish more people would second-guess their attachment to novelty.

This is not a plea to thoughtlessly embrace the past, but one to stop thoughtlessly rejecting it. Corporations benefit from history, we can too. It takes thought and engagement.

[randome]

35. "Thought and engagement".

Not sure I see the corporate "mining the past" but from what I recall of the 60s and 70s, the most organized thing to come of it was the anti-war protests. Otherwise, it was mostly about personal gratification.

Mind you, some awesome philosophies came out of that time but obviously it didn't have a staying effect so why try what failed a second time?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesn’t always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one you’re already in.[/center][/font][hr]

[Bluenorthwest]

61. No offense but your view is strictly mainstream straight male....Stonewall was 1969 and like the

women's movement, born out of the larger 60's movements and separated from the larger movement because the straight white men in charge of the larger movement would not share power.

So the entire LGBT rights movement came out of the 60's.

[fredamae]

56. "Nostaglia" may Not be

a "Weapon"....or is it?

The Most intelligent people, imo---Do rely on the past to give Guidance to the Future based upon "Lessons Learned".

Knowledge Is Power

And yes...The Hippies were right.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/29/1348191/-The-dirty-f-king-hippies-were-right-about-the-Wall-Street-suit-and-tie-generation#

[Hestia]

10. What is interesting about the 1960s is the development of the Group Mind through the use of

LSD (Ecstasy does the same thing, which is why people like it so much). When you have 10,000 people tripping at the same time, it is very easy to develop a Group Mind (through the suppression of the conscious mind). As a result, culture was jump-started at an exponential rate that would never had happened as fast as it did. Is it a good thing - I don't know, as we are still fighting the same entrenched people, especially in the government today who hated those times and will do everything possible to keep people from coming together as they did then. Why do you think they shut down protests of any kind, hard, swiftly?

Could it happen again today? People are wholly different today as from back then. Violence wasn't entrenched like it is now. Education was truly liberal across the board, there were no diploma mills disguised as education. Greed is Good didn't exist then. Do you really want the 1% developing a Group Mind? That is what would happen, whatever it is, the drug or whatever would be taken away from the people and developed and marketed.

Then you have 3 generations of Just Say No kids who bought the bullshit about psychedelics and still believe that Ecstasy burns holes in your brain and "thousands" died of flying off balconies from dropping LSD. [sigh]

For every good, there is an ill. As the saying goes, Magic Comes at a Price.

[Emelina]

12. Wasn't the CIA involved in mainstreaming LSD?

Not all hippies used drugs. I know some 60-somethings who, well aside from occasional use of marijuana, never touched hard drugs. They of course were part of the find-Jesus spirituality aspect though.

[Comrade Grumpy]

25. Check out the new book "Acid Hype" for who mainstreamed LSD. It wasn't the CIA.

Although the spooks did some experimenting with it.

[Warren DeMontague]

50. I don't think group mind-level consciousness works like that.

And no, I'm not talking, here, about the mentality of mobs or Nazis.

I mean actual attainment of the group mind, "cosmic consciousness" and all that cliched yet also on another level profoundly transcendent jazz. I'm gonna go out on a limb, here, and posit that to reach that state people need to get past self and ego, and in the process comes an "aha!" realization that I'm not just me and you're not just you, but we are each other, in a very real and fundamental sense.

At that point and place the idea of the "other" becomes prima facie absurd- if I am you then all sex becomes masturbation, all murder becomes suicide, etc. etc.

Ripping people off becomes, at best, folly and a waste of time.

If "the 1%" suddenly were to see through the eyes of the rest of the human race, they might not stop being "the 1%" but they might recommit to dealing as humanely as possible with the rest of ... themself.

just like jack and jill
poppa told the jailer
one go up
and one go down
do yourself a favor

I think the trick with these sorts of moments of clarity or enlightenment is translating them back into normal, day-to-day existence. Certainly people can have meaningful experiences and then go back to being selfish pricks. But maybe a tiny bit less selfish, a tiny bit more compassionate. And so on.

Also I think your assertions about the generations that followed the hippies are incorrect, to say the least. For one thing, in my experience Millennials have most decidedly NOT bought into all the DARE propaganda which has been peddled at them, any more than my generation did, when we were hectored by Nancy Reagan to "just say no" to drugs and sex.

Yeah, that really worked.

[Monk06]

11. Michael Cross from Unlock the Door Radio? Seriously, he and others like him is why the counter

culture failed as a revolution. Abby Hoffman died trying to do standup comedy. Rubin became an millionaire from investments in Apple and EST training seminars.

Hippies-Yippies-Yuppies

Pathetic how the middle class climbs to the top on the backs of the disaffected.

Shortly before his death Jerry Garcia was seen snorting coke in his BMW all by himself, I guess so he didn't have to share.

[former9thward]

30. Abbie Hoffman died swallowing 150 phenobarbital tablets and liquor.

But otherwise agree with your post.

[Monk06]

42. He was manic depressive so I cut him some slack for that. Rubin is the one I really have no use for

He came to my U in 1971 and tried to take over the Admin building. He got 10 takers. He was so pissed off he left for the airport and caught a private plane out of town.

Hippies treated everyone, especially women like shit. Well the were cool to bikers because they were shit scared of them. See Koolaid Acid Test. Apparently Tom Wolfe thought bikers raping women was a hoot.

[former9thward]

44. Yeah the Yippies were a weird bunch.

Some cool stuff, some not so cool.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

13. Those on the leftmost end of the spectrum are generally correct, just ahead of their time.

Those slightly less to the left know it, but are too scared or too weak of will to risk change, and those further right are so scared of change they always want to hold on to the present (or even the past), no matter how ugly it was or is.

[Starry Messenger]

15. The original movement died out because

individual shopping choices don't build political power.

[Emelina]

16. What I said - co-opted and sabotaged.

Yet that does not mean they were wrong, or that many of their solutions would not be valuable for us to integrate in our society today.

[1939]

17. Yeah, but they gave us Richard Nixon NT

[fredamae]

59. How so? n/t

[1939]

64. Because

How much of the vote for Nixon in 1968 and 1972 was a vote against the counter culture and how much was because Nixon was so charismatic and likeable?

[fredamae]

65. Well, 1968

was an interesting year as Many, Many of us Still couldn't even Vote.
"Nixon’s sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks was confirmed by transcripts of FBI wiretaps. On November 2, 1968, LBJ received an FBI report saying Chernnault told the South Vietnamese ambassador that “she had received a message from her boss: saying the Vietnamese should “hold on, we are gonna win.”"

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/13/nixons-vietnam-treason/

Did Nixon "win" the election or did he Win it - honestly because the people who voted for him KNEW what was going on at the time and were in Support of his shenanigans (aka: Treason)?

There's only so much you can blame on the electorates of past era's when it's Clear there was, like Now...CORRUPTION in the body of "our" government and elections are not always as they seem.

http://www.history.com/topics/watergate
Which Really was the "counter culture"? The liars, cheaters and thieves amongst the politicians and Their ilk Or the wise kids who saw "The Wizard of Oz"?

I submit..that the election (choice) was Stolen From The People through propaganda and FEAR...just like now.

How can one with an awareness of reality Support an real "Counter Culture" when one can See all the lies and corruption really going on all around them....while they are simultaneously being Blamed for the "state of the state"?

[Codeine]

18. Yay old stuff! Boo new things!!

"Be more like your grandparents, kids!" isn't a message that is going to resonate with any generation.

[randr]

57. As an aging hippie

I do not, nor do my elder hippie friends, want you to be like us. We want you to be yourselves and pay attention.
My tag line reflects the attitude of most counter-culture elders.
And remember, ageism is no different that racism or sexism.
On edit: Almost forgot to say "Be Kind".

[snooper2]

19. Only thing worse than a slide show on YouTube, is a single slide

[FrodosPet]

22. tl;dw

As lovely as the young lady is, nearly an hour of one picture with a guy droning on is NOT going to get a lot of dedicated viewers.

[olddots]

21. what we have running the world now are people who hated hippies

well look where it got us .

[Capt. Obvious]

23. Hey man, the parking lot scene is too commercialized now

What ever happened to sharing moments man?

[jeff47]

26. No. You had your time. It is now someone else's time.

The "movement" of the youth will not be scripted by their parents. No matter how nostalgic you are.

[Codeine]

37. Well said.

They want young people to emulate their grandparents, because nostalgia is one helluva a drug.

[KamaAina]

31. Re-birth?

It never died out in Northern California, particularly Humboldt County.

[cemaphonic]

34. I think the late 60s-early 70s counterculture in genreal was too individualized and

too focused on lifestyle and culture.

Looking back, it seems to me that the previous leftist generations from the 20s through the early 60s accomplished a whole lot more in terms of labor and racial progress. The hippies do seem to be the origin of any sort of widespread environmental awareness though.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

38. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Charles Dickens

The best: The counter-culture of freedom

The Worst: Kent State, My Lai, and the return to business as usual.

[Emelina]

43. Freedom is key!

We need more of it. Sure, gay marriage and marijuana legalization is one thing but corporate control nowadays is really scary, especially how it has merged with the whole military industrial complex. Heck, now the military gets to censor movies???

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/iron-man-transformers-censored-military-6050507

[Zorra]

39. This thread has many posts that echo the conservative hippie haters who

despised us for exposing their nasty little Vietnam war when we hit the streets in protest in the 60's.

We were correct then, we are correct now, and we'll be correct tomorrow.

But sadly, no matter what we say, or do, we can't fix stupid...

Justice Scalia suggests asking a hippie about gay marriage. Here’s how to find one near you

The "hippie mantra", "live simply, so that others may live" is an incomprehensible concept to brainwashed Reagan baby consumerbots, who were fed a steady diet of "all things conservative are good, all things liberal are bad", and who Rush Limbaugh taught to hate hippies, while they were growing up.

I remember how we watched in horror, as waves of conservative propaganda filled all the airwaves, day after day, year after year, and brainwashed the populace, beginning after the Reagan coronation, and paid for by a 1% that was determined that no social, economic, political, and philosophical movement like the hippie/civil rights movements would ever again threaten their wealth, power and control.

Their efforts, judging by this thread, were enormously successful beyond their wildest dreams.

So, to all the hippies, and other free thinking liberals, past, present, and future, never give up, because "they" never have, and never will, until they either destroy everything, or we stop them from destroying it once and for all.

"Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth...there are many here among us, who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we been through that, and this is not our fate.

So let us not talk falsely now, the hours getting late...

Bernie Sanders moves to larger venue for Phoenix speech
Associated Press 12:31 p.m. MST July 16, 2015

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/politics/2015/07/16/bernie-sanders-phoenix-speech-larger-venue/30237471/

[Emelina]

70. And yet those conservatives have adopted many hippie ideas such as...

opposing GMOs and questioning the corporate media.

[Liberal_in_LA]

40. we had occupy wall street

[librechik]

41. yes, because hippies got nothing but respect and quick response from government

not--they are still trying to destroy us 50 years later.

[romanic]

51. Didn't most hippies from the 60s and 70s

grow up to be the people who voted for Reagan in the 80s or is that a political myth?

[randr]

54. No and yes

The world is a kaleidoscopic myth generator.

[sufrommich]

55. "The world is a kaleidoscopic myth generator"

Nice.

[GreatGazoo]

53. Um.. have you seen the scoreboard recently?

Pot is legal, marriage equality is the law of the land, confed flags coming down, the first Black President is about to be followed by the first female President or the first socialist, organic food is bigger than ever, there is a tiny house movement, recycling is at 90%, local food is red hot, social media has overthrown the MSM, big brands are fading while Etsy is now a $2.3 billion company...

The "Sixties" never ended. The PTB coined the term "hippie" to disparage the whole movement. Just like with Occupy, they wanted to ignore the serious and the well-reasoned and say that the whole thing was about getting high and shacking up. When you look at pictures of the civil rights marches and Vietnam protests, real pictures not movies like "Hair," you will see that most people were not young, not in beads and tie-dye but rather normal looking. Hippies helped but they were only a part of what ultimately got the changes we see today and the changes we will continue to see.

Here is the beginning of a great documentary, Mark Kitchell's Academy Award winning "Berkeley in the Sixties" that separates hippie fiction from the wider facts. This clip shows the hippie-free beginnings -- "after this it would never be the same...":

[Zorra]

66. Young people, particularly college students, played a primary role in creating tension

that resulted in the changes in cultural consciousness during the 60's, and many of these changes are manifesting into political reality right now.

And many "serious and well reasoned people" were actually, in fact, not benevolent middle aged white collar woodchuck capitalist businessmen in suits. like some historical revisionists would have us believe, but were, in reality, pretty freaky, radical folk who knew exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it.



At least, that's how I remember it; however, I did use seriously copious amounts of psychedelics experimentally back in the day, so, like, maybe I shouldn't trust what I believe I saw, as the effects of that mind warping hippie dope permanently turned me into a babbling illiterate miscreant who does not respect malicious, corrupt authorities, and who can no longer even write a coherent sentence.

http://beautifultrouble.org/theory/revolutionary-nonviolence/

“Whoever controls the media, the
images, controls the culture.”
― Allen Ginsberg



"Live Simply So That Others May Live"
"Commit Random Acts Of Kindness And Senseless Beauty"
~ Old Hippie Proverbs

[tabasco]

71. Pot is legal?

LOL

Please remind 48 states and the federal government of that tidbit.

[TacoD]

58. You forgot to mention how there are no protest songs like there were in the good old days (nt)

[Codeine]

62. Ha!

I remember that thread. Good times.

[CanSocDem]

63. Agreed!

[PassingFair]

73. Lovely video...

Thank you!

[grahamhgreen]

68. Should have been at the Dead shows! Hippies had the moral authority. War is wrong, etc..