Pop culture and underlying unspoken truths..

[undergroundpanther]

I wish so bad the hippies and yippies had not lost hold of the dream that could have changed everything we are facing now....And I wish those weavers of daisy chains were aware of what was happening to their minds and their connections the manipulations..and not imploded in to drugs and excess,into guru bullshit like charles manson's family and the fear of the fucking authority reinforced by ,kent state,..Oh I am so sad.

People in the 60's seemed to be lured by baubles of the new age "enlightenment",This created an inward focus as in self improvements,age of aquarius delusions..Started the trends of trying to enlighten themselves instead of the original OUTWARD focus of the hippies original dream of sharing,love and taking care of each other(not simply fuck each other),and radical rebellion in solidarity together and that desire to liberate all, create a new world and the guts to take action against authoritarians..the things that began the revolution..

When the dream slipped out of focus.It was replaced by an inward focus,a slight of meaning...The pursuit of self took over enhanced by acid trips and TM ,naturally that abandonment from others to fill the self with self was,symbolized by the beginning of"latchkey kids".

That led to a generation that was taught to fear the unknown,shun radical things (red light green light) abandoned and inauthentic fashion expressed as vain images.disco and gay bashing, cocaine binges and drinking excess to fill and numb the hollowed out lonely self searching for itself. A quest that is fruitless without a community or desire to give it meaning.Pop culture became a soul destroying cluster fuck party Party replaced the community that nurtured love and respected life.

A veneer made up to cover the sickness inside expressed by press on glitter nails,and farrah hair,insanely tight jeans, the dance of masks in perfect coiffed hair,denial and escape began in earnest.Yet the gas crisis remained to remind people they could go nowhere really.That was the conflicting ugly stuff percolating underneath pop culture in in the 70's,I think.At the end of the 70's was Jones-town,Jim Jones symbolized the end of trust of the commune and collective spirituality ..as a viable means of revolt from the stifling world of abuse or be abused of the state and authority.There was no escape. Aids took it's toll unseen at first...

Than came the stark self for selfishness sake mentality,in the 80's with the yuppies,preppies and coveting of the rich,filling themselves up with the consumer establishment,and fuck you I got mine, playing the success game.

The disorganized earthy punks were poor and did not want to assimilate opposing the yuppie culture with politically aware anger punctuated with with spikes,hair of blue and green and fights against racist skinheads,leather and mosh pits metal heads waxing cynical began screaming.

The vapid shallow side of sex combined with the whited sepulcher of religion that was already emptied of meaning long before Madonna said the symbolic truth that offended the establishment,that spirituality was nothing more than a fetish for many,and donned her bullet bra and rosary, in her underwear fucking the air onstage.

Than when some were convinced there was nothing good left in the world that was not tainted,And the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare began.

Than the angst of the nineties,brought the love of all things dark,became a way to live,werewolves and vampires, were the wail of despair of a caged animal,S/M and so many songs about murder,suicide, insanity, torture and rape, Nine inch nails and the downward spiral..And fashion also reflected the uncaring deadness inside and the pain of acceptance and love denied, dragons were everywhere on clothes,as were devils,and so much black. A venom action figure pissed off parents because it said"I wanna eat your brains"....and Shorts that could only fit a ten year old kid with porn star written across the ass...all at the mall.

Now I think we are in the last stages of mourning of a dream long lost.My approximations of years and stages in how 1. Denial and Isolation.Late 60's and 70's
2. Anger.80's,early 90's
3. Bargaining.80's thru 90's
4. Depression.90's -OO
5. Acceptance. 04-08

There are long neglected decaying memories of what almost was in the 60's,still. It winks out as every old hippie grows too old to remember the dream in the vividness it requires to be shared in to compete with video games and House..I was taught the dream by my hippy anarchist sisters, in the seventies before the distracting, process of gizmo's set in..I understood it than and still find solace in radical writers.

Teens nowadays are beating up homeless people for fun ,shooting up schools because of pervasive boredom powerlessness and dread that violence seems to relieve because they know they are on their own now.So We see hello kitty assault rifles..Rap is talking over past artists meanings chopped into loops,ranting about bitches and money. Real art is fading to ugliness,music is so much of the same old death made over pretty..in so many ways.

Reality TV exists because no one wants to risk or invest money in creating anything beautiful or sentimental without a touch of death or despair in it.Imagination has turned sour.Teens lives are so boring, busy with things that mean nothing and so trapped,that for some pretending to be a car thief on a video game looks alive more than life does now,so they become the character to create a self. It is sad.

Compassion and ability to form meaningful relationships that last,is a lost art,and things that are not funny have become funny.Like watching people fight,abuse,rape,suicide, getting hurt or dying.Stuff like pedophile jokes( google pedobear),jackass,people being sick and why is this supposed to be funny?? Maybe it is funny in that suicidal manic way when you realize there is nothing you can do?

Now the style reflects a deeper pathology, for those that can read it.It reeks of that false desperate soulless optimism of those who can't relate to that dream of so long ago anymore, they are lost..in a miasma of conflicting disconnected meaninglessness post modern chaos.Chaos magick is popular more than it ever was before,Chaos as a magick system came to exist, ironically in the 50's..
And this generation can't assemble experiences into a cognizant whole meaning.Osmond Spare may have given this generation a great gift if one can bear it.

Younger people wear peace signs but have no clue of it's history and don't care to find it out either. Some dare not risk investing themselves in deep relationships but they fuck all the time and use DRAMA to fill up the holes where love and meaning should be but is not there, so petty hierarchy games take it's place.

There are tons of friends on the cell phone,but no one real enough or there to trust...Fashion is drenched in the joy of death's inevitability ,the cumulation of the unconscious desire shackled by learned helplessness,looking retro, a symbolic searching for something..lost..and dying inside. Like when a depressed person has finally decided to kill them self .This happy/dead is a symbol of the point at which the person has made the decision to suicide the perceived elation in the face of immanent threat of ruin is actually relief.

(what is this Relief of?) That civilization,is collapsing and humanity is dying off soon. Stage 5 of Grief.. Acceptance.

I see this same meaning when I see a cute skull with childlike style,death is presented as life...For I have felt it in myself..My drawings of my worst times are now expressed through fashions at the mall. It is really creepy..being older and seeing these changes..There are girlie pink skulls with heart shaped eyes,guns and knives and hearts and smiley faces and peace signs combined in a jumble on a bandanna.. A massacre aftermath with cutesy animals with xed out eyes and blood spatter and guts all over the place.Repeating combining of incompatibles of love as Death , hug is defeat, and embrace makes the gruesome and sometimes suicidal/relief, murder /relation images now are made over as CUTE,
http://www.zazzle.com/death_is_cute_shirt-235485379465581188
http://gizmodo.com/338916/hello-kitty-expands-upon-arsenal-with-ar+15-rifle

But what does this merging of opposites say about meaning? The Alphabet of Desire it speaks the unspeakable truth via culture of the younger ones..Can you read it?
http://www.thefoolof.chaosmagic.com/photo3.html
Chaos in life inside,as a spiritual path,to one starved for meaning leads one into meaningful meaninglessness...The empty looks full,fool.And the slight of hand is repeated.
http://www.spiralnature.com/magick/chaos/sigservgodpt2.html

I watched yellow submarine recently,I got it on VHS..and the beauty and innocence and inspiring color drenched beautiful meaning filled ART and music in that movie never fails to make me cry now.
I just feel so sad seeing what has become of each generation that arrives ,the things they find beautiful are so empty and so much, what they have internalized is fragments from generations before them .I showed Yellow Submarine to some of my twenty something friends, they could barely sit through it, liked the blue meanies,but some missed the dazzling sun and the message therein..A psycho-spiritual deficit here? Unable to process meaning? That is why I sense things are not going to "turn around"., The generations after mine have nothing enduring to turn the world upside down FOR anymore.

[ismnotwasm]

1. It's about the rebels

I missed the 60's, --too young-- but I lost nearly every friend I ever had from the '70's, I was a street kid, trying to find meaning in apathy I suppose, but I remember the ones who gave a shit, the ones who fought like demons against hatred and injustice and rejection in any way the could until life took them down. AIDS changed a whole generation. I'll never get over those losses.

The eighties were weird, stumbling around decade, but this is the decade that brought hip hop up off the streets, much as punk came from the english working class. Love or hate it, rap and hip hop also defined a angry generation, and while current mainstream music doesn't have the same soul shaking effect, man, those were some powerful voices. Another huge difference. The music industry eats up whatever and whoever they can, but there is always that magic beginning in a sound that ultimately shakes the world

The nineties WERE like one long funeral dirge, always summed up to me in Cobain's lyrics "Teenage angst has paid off well, now I'm bored and old" At least that thought was expressed, somebody recognized it. But the '90's also had raves, and as dangerous as ignorant drug use can be, many of those kids, male and female found love and commonality in more than sex.

And now? Well we have the internet. We can cruise around and find causes and beliefs, righteous anger and productive protest. We change the world once again.

I see apathy and ignorance all around me, grand look at me fashion statements that are really intended to piss off moms and pops, but I always have. The percent of people who want to make a difference, to truly break out of mediocrity, who speak up, has never been high. Fashion means something to me, but music means more, so I always pay attention to what "the kids" are listening to. And I always pay attention to the street. Change often comes from youth and revolution from the oppressed.

Please don't give up hope, you're one of the more interesting people on this board-- one of those people who is a nexus I suspect.

:-)

[villager]

10. I've suspected the same thing about u.p. myself...

;-)

[Thothmes]

42. I do not miss the sixties.

Spent the last years of the decade sweating over being drafted in to President Johnson's Army.

[Vilis Veritas]

2. I slipped off my sandals and put on penny loafers...

and never looked back.

I remember being a young idealistic kid protesting Nixon at a rally. My GF, Snoopy and I held signs that said Make Love not War...typical for the era. Nixon actually stopped and gave us both the Double Fisted Peace Sign that he made famous. We were only 11 at the time...a short time later he resigned and soon thereafter the war ended...and I slipped off my sandals and put on penny loafers...

saddlesore

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. Pop culture is depressing.

Reality shows are full of humiliation and degradation of the contestants.

Death and destruction are presented as something to concentrate on, for your amusement.

People creating beautiful music and art are ignored, or called unrealistic or naive.

As Grace Slick warned us, "Feed your head".

Feed your head positive images and work to make the world better.

Feed your head death and destruction and violence, and I am convinced you will go crazy.


And just the other day somebody on this board told me the Rothko Chapel was a peaceful place. They told me I should go there. I have been there more than once and find it to be a complete bummer.
I find it quite depressing. Mark Rothko painted dark, almost black paintings, so my comment was "No wonder he shot himself".

Society is trying to tell us that depressing things are happy and good for us. Some of us can see through that.

[otherlander]

4. Was it because people became too inwardly focused

or was it because outwardly focused people realized that changing the world would just get you shot? I wouldn't blame selfishness, really, just being human in a world that kills the love-makers and glorifies the war-makers.

[bbgrunt]

5. It seems we are being sheparded into the

reality of a mad max world. No, more like a terminator world where what we once thought of as "human qualities" are being marginalized and deplored and, well, terminated. The popular culture reflects this brutal reality. There seems to be a macabre human death wish playing itself out. All is insanity. But then, what can you expect of an existence that depends on the death of others to survive? The food chain imperative is a depressing reality of earthly existence. Maybe we are just becoming more honest.

[undergroundpanther]

17. Good point

Tell ya I hate this world and you pointed out one of the many reasons why..
What gets me those with vivid imaginations might feel this too..I dunno..it is almost torture to leave the beauty I can imagine within,but I have to come out here I don't want to come back to this.I am split in two half a psychedelic paradise half ghastly world.

[silverojo]

6. Nothing like being totally negative about things!

I suggest getting a copy of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire", and play it on repeat until its message sinks in.

There was no point in history at which everything was on the verge of being hunky-dory, as you appear to believe. There has been the good, the bad, and the ugly in every generation, since the dawn of man.

Yes, negative things abound in this world. The only difference between then and now is that everything's out in the open. And when you think that existence itself is based on the food chain...that tells you, it's a tough world. But it's also a world filled with beauty.

There have been a lot of positive things in the past few decades, which you've obviously chosen to ignore. Just because you think that the world should be as simplistic and childish as an animated movie (?!?!?), doesn't mean that other people even want that to be their reality. What you view as "innocent" is viewed by many others as "dorky". Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The beauty of kids and teens is that they do find a way to turn the world upside-down (even if we, as adults, are too dense to see and appreciate what they're doing).

And all this pseudo-spiritual gobbeldygook you were going on about...I'm a Wiccan, but that stuff's even too out-of-it for ME.

Ironically, the hippies you love so much are responsible for everything you're complaining about. They're the ones who became the 1970's "Me Generation", and the greedy 1980's "Yuppies", whose children have become the way they are because their parents were too busy keeping up with the Joneses to notice that their kids were bored shitless...getting high in their bedrooms to numb the pain of having parents who had no clue. Pop culture didn't create all this; it only REFLECTS what people are thinking.

You want to watch a movie that has real meaning? Watch "Over The Edge", Matt Dillon's first film. It shows, in dramatic fashion, why kids go bad. Hint: pop culture had nothing to do with it.

But you need to remember, that there are a lot of good kids and teens out there, as well. They are our future, so many of them care about our environment, and I have total faith that they'll be able to accomplish what the rest of us couldn't.

If you can't see their wonderful potential, I feel sorry for you. Clinging to the past, watching "Yellow Submarine", and fearing the future, must be a miserable way to live.

No, I'm not being sarcastic, either. I'm serious.

[otherlander]

7. Of course things weren't "okay" in the past.

Nobody is claiming that they were. But something that is past is the idea that things might be okay in the future. It's not about how the past was, it's about how people in the past thought the future might turn out.

And the "me" Generation = the rightwing Reagan-worshippers. Any old lefties who are posting here are therefore not part of it.

[tavalon]

12. Actually, the true hippies are still hippies

and I run into them all the time because I live a hippie lifestyle, even though I was just a kid in the sixties. The people who became the Me's and the Yuppies were and are the hangers on, the ones who knew how to glom onto a fad. They weren't truly any of those things, just doing the fad.

[undergroundpanther]

19. I don't hang around

people my age.I get along better with twenty somethings and teens and old hippies. I really cannot relate to some in my own generation.

[ConsAreLiars]

8. Very insightful observations and analysis, but only one aspect of the whole.

From the historical side, a couple of worker-owned and operated revolutionary orgs I participated in are still around, as are many others that I was more remotely involved with. Some very influential on the left, others, well, not so much. And many of the names and people I knew then are still active and making a difference. Same struggle, same fight, and making a difference.

For the contemporary generation I look at my kids, two opposites in some sense, but more deeply and truly, very much the same. One a Type A TG activist who travels the world, the other a laid back wage-slave doper and herbalist and artist who teaches compassion for all life by example. Same struggle, same fight. They love one another, and know they are on the same side. The same side as I fought and fight on.

Maybe not a majority, certainly not backed by the corporatists, but on the side of justice and history.

(edit typo)

[Chulanowa]

9. You had me nodding up until this:

"Teens nowadays are beating up homeless people for fun ,shooting up schools because of pervasive boredom powerlessness and dread that violence seems to relieve because they know they are on their own now.So We see hello kitty assault rifles..Rap is talking over past artists meanings chopped into loops,ranting about bitches and money. Real art is fading to ugliness,music is so much of the same old death made over pretty..in so many ways."

Panther, usually I'm right on with what you post, but that above is bullshit.

Teenagers don't beat up the homeless for fun. Some cocksmacks did. And I'll bet there were teenagers in your generation who did the same. Just as there were adults who did. It's not a zeitgeist, and it's certainly not restricted to "teens these days." Hello kitty assault rifles are gags. You think there are people out there buying them for their little girls or what?

As for rap... you don't listen to rap, do you? I could recommend some to you. What you hear on the radio is the same as ALL music you hear on the radio. It's meaningless pulp. But there is also a lot of rap with deep meaning and message to it. The genre of music is the black community's version of punk, has the same roots and the same message - and was just as easily hijacked by the record companies, to turn into profit pulp. Listen to anything by Immortal Technique for starters. Even mainstream rappers like DMX and Eminem have a lot of songs that are never played, but that are laden with meaning.

Rap is about ranting about bitches and money like classic rock is about gnawing the heads off small animals. I could honestly go on about the current state of music these days for hours... but the absolute core of it is... there is amazing music today, in all genres. The trick is... you have to look for it. You're not going to hear it on the radio, and you're probably never going to see it on MTV.

After that... you pretty much descend into gratuitous self-patting on the back about how wonderful, perfect, and awesome you are for happening to have been born in time to tag along with the rest of the herd in the 60's, while the rest of us are meaningless trash.

You really wanna know why current generations have the anger and desperation they do? Because YOUR generation fucked us. Like a bunch of dumbasses, you decided that the best way to elicit change was cultural and political non-involvement. Your philosophy was basically "Dude, if, like, we don't vote, nothing bad will happen, and they'll, you know, totally go 'why aren't these kids voting' and then, like, stuff will change, man!" Basically you thought that by leaping out of the car, it would stop moving. It didn't, a worse driver just took the wheel for you.

We're angry, we're depressive, and we're desperate because we're the inheritors of a political nightmare, an environmental timebomb, a culture with all the personality of a styrofoam cup, and we know it. Know what else we know? We know that we haven't been around long enough to have caused all that shit.

We're also the ever-so-lucky recipients of an entire generation of the most selfish fuckers the nation has ever seen, entering old age. Your parents gave you a free ride on the crest of strong labor and new deal economics, and after you - and you exclusively - have gutted both principles, and are entering nursing care, you expect your children to still give you the same free ride. The generations of the 80's and 90's are dropping with AIDS and cancers from god knows where, and you know what's #1 priority in the medical community? Making sure there's enough boner pills and hair restoration tonics to go around. Subsidized by the government, of course, both in research and distribution. The greedy multitudes of you are pretty much ensuring that there will not be any such thing as "Social Security" left by the time I'm up in those years - and if a number of you got your way, you'd write that into law!

So hey. Squawk about iPods, slutty pants, and rap all you like. Just keep in mind that Ronald Reagan and the crash and burn he brought to this nation, rode into office carried on your shoulders.

[KoKo]

14. "Underground Panther's Generation" .....Fucked YOU and Yours?

Did you ever think you might be responsible for your OWN GENERATION and are just whining about some past generation you know nothing about or have a grudge against for some "blame game thing" that comes from some personal history you have that has nothing to do with the reality of that generation? :shrug:

Really dreadful paintbrush you carry around with you....:-(

[Chulanowa]

15. It's called inheriting your parents debts

You really believe that my little sister, at 18 years of age, and her generation has had more impact on the current situation of our nation and its culture, than my Undergroundpanther - or my mother - and their 55 or so years of involvement?

You want to talk about dreadful? Try reading the post from perspective of someone her age - or mine, 25. How, pray tell, do you think I should react to some baby boomer blaming me for this country's fucked up state, calling me spiritually dead, and accusing me of rampant meaninglessness - which is exactly what Undergroundpanther is doing in the second portion of that post.

[KoKo]

40. ...

[blues90]

16. I have a bit of a different take on some of this .

I am 59 so yes I was there in the 60's. Yet I would not say Hippie would describe me.

I was certainly against authority figures as I have always been.

But to say that we lived off the wealth of our parents is complete none sense.

What there was for the most part jobs and most were labor or trade jobs where many of us boomer's worked and our parents at least mine and most of my friends did not get a free ride from our parents.

I feel what happened more than anything else that projects the idea that all these hippies existed was this marketing strategy that was spawned by the ad's and where our own parents bought into this crap and fashion as their way of feeling young again. It was this so called mod period of horror that crept into the lives of many people and it was a fad. It was the fucking thing to do and make a buck and that's all it was.


We had a sudden take over of groups like the Monkeys who attempted to mimic the real deal , very much in the same way and time this mod fashion foolish cheap crap came about.

But in no way would I ever say that the youth of the 60's had a free ride or had it easy, this was far from the case . Certainly some with parents with money may have but I knew and saw few other than the trendy bunch. Do you actually think we did not get blamed by our parents generation , we were battered by their rule and ways.

What most of us wanted was just a chance to stop the machine of greed and destruction , stop the wars and the lies and let it be known we were aware.

We did not create the industrial revolution , we resented it for what it was doing. So we focused on music and art and books and communities of like minded people , anyone then could spot a phony miles away.

As far as social security we worked and we paid for it all these years and double when Reagan came along.


Most all of the music was against war and greed and fake society, not hate but reality set to music most could not dance to.

No , we did not create what there is now , we had to endure and try to change what we were left by our parents and their war hero's. We wanted to break that TV land of Ozzie and Harriot where sex or the body was not a thing of shame. We were not gun toting death hungry freaks.

Now there was and most certainly were and are people from that very same time that were from a think tank culture who were of greed and profit and these are still here today as a result of our failure to recognize their existence at the time. But even if we had what were we to do , exterminate them?

All we wanted was peace and the damn truth which is not what lead to what we see here today.

There are so very many false ideas about the 60's and they cannot be lumped together anymore than the teens of today.

You cannot get the truth of the 60's on the TV or movies but from the music or having been there.

It was not the stupid yeah dude yeah man give me a toke image.

Schools were a long hard day in the 50's and 60's as well. I can't think of a thing that was easy .

If anyone wants to point blame then look right where you need to look today , at the corporations and the war machine and that damn fake and phony TV set. Shut that thing off and go out and change something ,see if it's easy, don't depend on some politician doing it for you , ain't going to happen.

[Chulanowa]

22. That is where I'm looking

Who heads these corporations? Boomers.
Who's consumerism swelled these corporations to an obscene size? Boomers
Who are the politicians behind the war machine? Primarily boomers
Who voted for them? Boomers
Who is now mumbling about how awesome a draft would be to end the war? Boomers
Who're the producers of phony TV and music? Why... boomers!

The baby boomers waved signs and talked to each other about changing things. It had its effectiveness - other boomers, those actually involved in the civil rights movement, organized, and did stuff. Placards and slogans didn't end the Veitnam War, but mass arrests and hte unspoken threat of nation-wide rioting did get civil rights.

Looking around at my generation finding its political voice, I see more similarities to the activists of the turn of the century, and those civil rights activists. More willing to step over the line drawn in front of them than their parents or grandparents were. We're still coming out of the Baby Boomer / Generation X political dark ages, where participation and involvement were derided. But we're getting there.

[blues90]

25. The only reason that is is because it takes time to build the

money to be the corporations that do all of this , this is why some boomers are at this point as were our generations parents as will be you some day or at least your generation.

It is not going to be our generations parents who are in control , few are , they are far to old and many are dead. They were the generation who brought our generation Vietnam. We had no choice with the draft and most had no desire to fight their fake lie of a war. What ended Vietnam was for the most part the soldiers who refused to fight and exposed the truth much like the vets against the war are trying to do now. We at least had a media then that told the truth as best as they could and we saw the effects which we don't now with Iraq.

This does not mean that all boomers sold out and bought into this corporate greed mindset but this is spawned from every generation.

This is the core of what the hippies fought against. There are all aspects in each generation , there has always been . Don't take my word for it look back through history.

If you believe in the good of things then just hold onto this and don't sell out , many hippies never sold out ,I happen to be one of them that did not sell out and remained honest which does not relate to money making so you have to choose where you stand and always be aware of the hype .

No matter how you look at it there is and always have been the money makers who control and the workers who just want to live who are under their control and the only way you have around this is not to be the mass consumer, there is no other way.

To groups all the boomers in one lump is very far from the truth just as it would be to group all in your generation in one lump. We are not robots yet so lets not allow this by dividing and lumping all together. This is exactly what the corporations want , a sterilized mindless worker group to do their bidding. Don't fall into that.

[undergroundpanther]

18. reply

<"Teens nowadays are beating up homeless people for fun ,shooting up schools because of pervasive boredom powerlessness and dread that violence seems to relieve because they know they are on their own now.>

What I meant by that ,I see you are defensive,and MISSED my point..
In the 60's,70's 80's the idea to go beat up a homeless guy,would have not been something you just didn't do. let alone for 'sport'.Bumfights?WTF was that?There wasen't repeating stories of teens beating up the homeless back then. But there is now.I wondered why.I am not saying EVERY teen does this shit,but it is happing for some reason now,and it seems to be happening repeatedly.

I already know not all rap is bitches and ho's.But SOME is.and that rap I don't like.
I have almost all of Eminems CD's FYI.
I like Tech9ne..Insane Clown Posse.Few others.
The I can make it thunder song Boom shake the world I don't remember who does it at the moment..
Do you remember Sugar Hill Gang?
I like a huge range of music.
I listen to everything from classical,some country,to industrial,electronica,trance,punk,metal,rap and some really weird obscure stuff like Vangelis's 666.or The Cows.or the rednecks.


<We're also the ever-so-lucky recipients of an entire generation of the most selfish fuckers the nation has ever seen, entering old age. Your parents gave you a free ride on the crest of strong labor and new deal economics, and after you - and you exclusively - have gutted both principles, and are entering nursing care, you expect your children to still give you the same free ride.>

I don't have kids,I didn't want to force a being to be born into this hellhole. So I won't be getting any"free rides" if that makes you feel better.Other people well they were selfish, but they were also oblivious,they didn't keep the corporations leashed.They didn't want to 'get involved'or risk,they laid down on the watch so to speak.I feel anger at my mom for being such a doormat and politically unaware.
And for what it's worth I will probably die fighting along side your generation,unless they haul my ass to some death camp. My parents were basket cases caught up in thier own craziness.And I raised myself in the woods.

>We're angry, we're depressive, and we're desperate because we're the inheritors of a political nightmare, an environmental timebomb, a culture with all the personality of a styrofoam cup, and we know it. Know what else we know? We know that we haven't been around long enough to have caused all that shit. >

And neither was I alive long enough to be able to stop it.I am pissed and depressive,too.I grew up in hell,a school full of bullies and a town that could not deal with me. In the 80's I would walk the roadside and cry over roadkill,ok? I saw the changes in the climate way before ANYONE was saying shit about it.I could sense it.I noticed one year all the huge flocks of birds were gone.It has been terrible..I know what the generations before you and I have left us, it's a fucking dead world..and I do my best to help my younger freinds Stand by them, because I inherited the same shit I had inherited from previous generations too.It sucks as bad for me because I ain't old enough to kick off soon enough to avoid the shit hitting the fan.

No I will be old enough to be a shitty fighter hit by a damn microwave active denial system,old enough to be in pain while the shit goes down so I will be living through most the shit you are too but doing it with a fucked up body.And no I won't expect anyone to"give me free rides" because I never had one. I'm used to doing shit on my own..

And if you didn't figure that out,yet my whole post was SYMPATHIZING with you.And your generation.

.

[Chulanowa]

21. You like ICP?

Good god. They have treatments for that nowadays - though you'll always suffer recurring cravings for faygo redpop, you can lead an otherwise normal and productive life. Don't give up hope!

Ahem.

I was unsure of your intentions, because, well, to be honest, a lot of what you were saying was hugely generalized bullcrap. Both about your generation and mine. As other posters pointed out, most of yours sat on their asses and watched stuff happen. I did get defensive, because you know what? Seemingly not a day goes by without some baby boomer, from somewhere, ranting and raving about how they are the golden age of mankind, and we're all a bunch of worthless degenerates.

Your sympathy came across a lot like the sympathy that used to be popular directed towards the natives - "Poor ignorant savages. They have no idea how bad-off they are with their backwards and unchristian ways. We must go and help them learn to be more like us, to cure them of their heathen beliefs and barbaric practices so that they can enjoy the light of civilization!"

And from your story there, you and I have pretty similar backgrounds and upbringing. I wasn't speaking of "you" alone, and you should know that - I was speaking in the general "you" of your generation, the one that believes they changed the world to some near-perfect better place, and that those of us who came after ruined it all.

[blues90]

24. I really don't get where people feel the boomer generation

Feels they were the best generation who are better than all others.

All my friends , at least those who are still breathing aremy age and boomers and we always talk about how screwed up things were and the topic of being better never comes up. What does come up is how things have changed in a way that is not so good in our eye's.

There is a lot of crap out there now days , a lot of useless crap .

Just to name a few , car alarms that produce all sorts of insane mind burning tones that no one needs to hear, 300 watt car stereo systems shaking the earth. Most all of it is noise pollution.

We really could live without the hate and the ho and pimp garbage and cheap so called stars who really have done nothing , we had them too but to a much lessor extent and they faded away real fast .

Still over all I don't feel the boomers like myself feel we are the best of the best, this will never be , each generation has it's faults and each should at least be open to admitting them otherwise we never learn a damn thing.

Each generation is a product of their time and this is the root of the problem , we should not desire to be the product of anything , this is what all of us need to battle against . What we don't need now and never did is to be sold ideas that are allowed to become the way times are, which are all manufactured and sold and in an add which is all a form of brainwashing .

This is really all the boomers/hippies were against.

[Chulanowa]

26. That's right. I live in a fantasy world, and have no idea what I'm talking about

It couldn't possibly be because the boomers just love bragging about how they "changed the world" and that hte rest of us are lazy good-for-nothings, could it? heavens no. I'm just a youngin' who hasn't gotten past imaginary friends while wearing my pants hanging halfway off my ass.

You know why the "hate and the ho and pimp garbage and cheap so called stars who really have done nothing" persist nowadays while they faded so fast in your day?

Because in your day, corporate music was in its infancy. It's a fully mature monster paired with media monopolies now, and it's staffed by... Well, not to belabor the point, but it's not my generation manning the halls of MGM, BMG, and Virgin. These guys collude with the broadcast stations to give us fifty-song lists per genre that are deemed "sellable" and then these are all we hear. These are advertisements for the cheaply produced boy bands, bling rappers (I'll take thug over bling any goddamned day), whisper-breathed pop divas, and stamp-pressed alternative groups.

By limiting exposure to just select music, the music studios profit by reducing their own stables, trimming down from hundreds of labeled artists, to a few dozen with inflated album sales. These artists are rarely the good ones, as good artists know they're good and are harder to get a weasel contract with, while a "star" born in the halls of a music corporation (Say... Ashlee Simpson or Milie Cyrus) is far, far more contractually controllable.

Want to know why the record companies hate the mp3 trading culture? It doesn't cut their profits, at least not in the way they say it does. Record sales are down and music "piracy" (how can you pirate something that's been thrown to the wild, anyway?) is up because these labels can't produce a good album to save their lives. Even in their opposition, the record companies stress their fifty-songs-per-genre model, claiming that every download is on that list. Fact is, these songs are rarely passed around. Mostly it's music you can't find on the radio or at the front row of the music stores. After all, why waste bandwidth and disk space on something you can just turn on the radio for?

If you want to judge my generation's music tastes, you're going to have to turn off the radio and turn on a filesharing program. Or if you feel like being legal, visit http://www.pandora.com - an absolutely fantastic source for musical exploration. Aptly named, too - Once the music is out of the box, it's not going back in.

[blues90]

28. We had the very same thing in the 60's

Only the pop popular was played on the radio called the top 10 or top 20. It was never the hard core songs on the albums . This is why pirate radio came along when FM came along and we had DJ's who played the entire albums.

Certainly things have changed but not that much , it is just bigger now.

Our music was censored too.

You seem to really have bug and a narrow view of generations. I don't say this to put you on the defense , I say this because you are looking at it all from once view point .

If you feel all the boomers are your enemy then you are selling yourself short.

I have not judged your music other than to say ho and bitch does not help anything or does hate.

I have no idea what you listen to to judge it as you have no idea what i listen to to judge me.

All I suggest is that you take down the defense shield and look a bit further into things. It is not my generation against yours , this is the mindset sold to create a divide but this does not make it true.

Corporations target certain generations for a reason and it's for profit based on who has the money to spend , they could care less about you or me as they never have.

They create the demand , we don't.

Take the generation gap away for a second and just look at the words. I did not create the gap nore did you but if we buy into the corporate message we all lose.

If they can't destroy the old they cannot bring in the new which relates to profit and that's all it is aimed at.

There is music from your generation I like , there are fring groups I like. What I don't like is the cheap corporate produced crap just like I did not like the same crap in the 60's. The Monkeys are an example of that.

[Chulanowa]

32. Just to make a point...

"You seem to really have bug and a narrow view of generations. I don't say this to put you on the defense , I say this because you are looking at it all from once view point."

By which I presume you mean I'm looking at it from a position in the present, looking back at the past? Well, yeah. It's part of how history works.

"If you feel all the boomers are your enemy then you are selling yourself short."

I absolutely don't. But I do take great exception to the bullshit that tumbles so frequently from their mouths, the weird sense of entitlement and disdain for everyone after them. Might be common to lal generations as they age, but it doesn't mean I have to smile and put up with it - particularly when it's so ill-deserved.

[blues90]

37. which ones are you refering to?

"But I do take great exception to the bullshit that tumbles so frequently from their mouths, the weird sense of entitlement and disdain for everyone after them. Might be common to lal generations as they age, but it doesn't mean I have to smile and put up with it - particularly when it's so ill-deserved."

I can only assume you get your info somewhere because I have not come across it on this forum.

If you are refering to the freaks in power then you are looking at the exceptions not the rule.

I don't know your age and don't know your back ground so i can't tell what is the driving force that makes you feel the way you do .

[Chulanowa]

39. You're not paying attention

Ever week it seems, someone shambles out of the woodwork on DU to talk about how fucking magnificent they are for having lived through the 60's and 70's, and how "today's youth" have squandered it all. This is pretty in synch with the way my mother talks. Take a good honest read of UP's post. I'm sure she(?) wasn't intending to be malicious... but many of the sentiments and assumptions made there are, to say the least, blindingly offensive.

UP - and many others sharing the sentiments - are shoving the blame for today's problems off on the people who came after them, paired with a smug, smarmy, "We were better than you" attitude.

"i can't tell what is the driving force that makes you feel the way you do ."

I would suggest that, instead of assuming that my criticisms are the product of some sort of imbalance in my psyche, environment, or upbringing, you actually make the monumental attempt to take what I'm telling you at face value. Your - and others' - repeated attempts to, again, pin the blame on anyone else, just reinforces my point.

[blues90]

41. I don't spend a lot of time reading DU

I don't go to all the forums on this site .

I am not attempting to place blame , I am asking why you feel the way you do that's all.

I don't assume anything or do i take anything at face value.

I have not seen these posts you refer to but this does not say they don't exist.

I know the feeling of generation gaps and the result of change, anyone who is alive has at some point.

My parents thought they were the best thing on earth only we did not have the internet to express our feelings we just had our peers on the phone or in person.

You too someday may very well feel this way about the youth when you get old. Hell it's no fun being old and not much better being young , I have been both.

I don't go out of my way to criticize the youth, I don't have children and am not in contact with them. Can't say i like the way things have changed much but there is nothing I can do about it other than live my life what's left of it and stay out of the fast lane.

You have these new tools , use them and the hell with what the old boomer's like me might think , If I were young I would not give a damn anymore than I did when I was young.

[undergroundpanther]

30. I don't listen to radio unless I have to.

because it SUX.I'll listen to 80's theme nights ..but for the most part I get music from other sources. One of my buddies is a DJ so I love getting my paws on his mixes he puts some good shit in there.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

38. Your view of the boomers is media-generated, not what I experienced

I spent the 1960s in the Midwest, where it was basically a continuation of the 1950s, only with different clothes and different music on the radio.

Most people I knew were pretty conventional. The hippies and anti-war protesters were always a minority of their generation. The University of Minnesota didn't have any anti-war protests till 1971, and it was NEVER a majority of the student body. There were millions of boomers, only about 500,000 at Woodstock.

At my college, there were about 100 anti-war activists in a student body of 1700.

It's not that the baby boomers sold out. It's that most of them were never in the business in the first place.

I'll say one things about the 1960s, though. Most of us were high school kids and college students, and therefore unable to have much real influence. But the general mood of the country was HOPEFUL. We believed that it was a matter of time before we eliminated poverty and achieved racial equality. Native Americans, Latinos, women, and other groups were taking inspiration from the Civil Rights movement to venture beyond traditional boundaries. It is impossible to exaggerate the amount that social behavior changed.

Here's what you can do to get an idea: Go to the library, get an issue of Life magazine from 1964-65 or so, and look at coverage of the student demonstrations at UC Berkeley. You'll see men students in coats and ties and women students in dresses. Now go look at the coverage of student demonstrations at UC Berkeley in 1968-69: Now the pictures look like the stereotypes of the 1960s.

[undergroundpanther]

29. yeah I like ICP

Don't have cravings for redpop, I drank that in the 80's before they fucked it up with aspartame. I used to like faygo they had amazing exotic flavors in beautifully artistic cans , like chocolate cream ,peach melba,vanilla,and such.. no I have it worse, I crave suburban almond smash,it didn't exist for awhile,but I heard it is back. I wanna get some see if it tastes the same.(don't get a cat on a curiosity quest), it's just as red and it tastes better than redpop does but totally different taste and it goes really well with chuthulu themed movies..I don't drink much soda,now. I pretty much drink the goya flavors like coconut once in a blue moon..
What hooked me on ICP was Southwest Voodoo. Being a "magickian" myself,I love that song dammit.I been trying to turn bush's head into a lima bean for 8 years,no success..or maybe it's already a lima bean and they just put his face on it by digital editing??.

[ThomWV]

20. I agree with you, actually I thought the whole rant was bullshit

Just pure and plain nonsense.

[starroute]

11. The "hippie" thing in itself was always a shuck

In the late 60's, I only knew one person who would admit to being a hippie. The writers and artists and underground publishers who were doing real creative work never called themselves hippies. "Hippie" in those days meant something more like "flower child" -- it was the teenage runaways and other drifters and wannabees who used the term. And those people did burn out, or moved on to the next hot fad, or went back to the suburbs and the rewards of materialism.

The inward turning that happened around 1968-70 also made sense at at the time. If you're trying to fight the system, and you find that the protest movement you're part of is just as hierarchic and patriarchal and violent as the system you're fighting -- well that's something you've got to stop and think about for a while.

The point where I really see things as having gone wrong is when Reagan was elected. Until that happened, I was convinced the 80's would be the time when the people who'd had a decade to work things out would come back and be more creative and productive than ever.

But instead, history played a nasty joke on us, and it turned out to be the anti-hippies who dominated the 80's -- the uptight New Rightists, who'd even kicked the libertarians out of their movement for liking drugs and sex too much, and their younger siblings in the College Republicans, like Karl Rove and Charlie Black.

While we'd spent the 70's out in the woods thinking about things, they'd spent the decade being lavishly funded by people like Scaife and Coors and setting up a network of think-tanks and foundations and taking over the public discourse.

Did we make a mistake in ceding the battlefield to them? If we'd gotten more political in the 70's instead of less and started fighting back, would it have made a difference? Or would we have been outclassed, over-spent, and demonized in the eyes of the Nixonian Silent Majority no matter what we did?

In the long run, though, we may not have been wrong. The Republican Party is imploding on its own greed and corruption, the New Right is out of ideas and baffled by the challenges of the 21st century, and the pendulum is swinging back.

But the real judge will be history. If the solutions we need turn out to come from the people who have spent the last 35 years thinking about the environment, a sustainable economy, and a more humane world order, then the time and effort won't have been misplaced. The veterans of the 60's will belatedly be recognized as honored pioneers, and the history books will explain (as they always do) why it was all inevitable.

On the other hand, if this last 35 years turns out to be a lost generation, with nothing to leave to posterity, then history will note the 60's as one of the great missed opportunities and wonder how so many bright and talented people could have been so wrong.

No doubt, we'll know within the next 5 or 10 years how it will be seen.

[Starry Messenger]

23. good post

I'll be thinking on this for awhile. I graduated high school in 1988 and went to college kind of riding on the same wave of expectation of the '70's I think. Growing up in the 'burbs in the years before the internet became common we were isolated from the real depredations of the Reagan years. Then getting to college and after college seeing how a lot of opportunities had totally dried up was an eye opener. I work in the arts and we are kind of the canary in the coal mine as far as some kind of funding is concerned.

I haven't had coffee yet, so I'm sort of rambling on here. Thanks for a good post.

MPK

[KoKo]

13. I think your post is about what MTV/VH-1 and other MSM sites have unfairly portrayed

about a generation. I see that alot around DU. It makes me sad. Not all who worked for Peace and the Environment and all of us getting along together were "pot smoking, acid dropping, flower children, commune living "children" or angry war protesters who were advocating this and that.

We were more than that...and that we are remembered by a "Pop Culture" who exploited it all for the few who were at the forefront that the Media Focused on trivializes a whole generation.

There were many on the cutting edge who did move so much of Civil Rights, Human Rights, Peace Issues and Environmental (Conserve our Resources) and Womens Issues forward. But, the "clownish faces and the stuff you see that is remembered is just the "Carnival" and doesn't take notice of the hardworking movement behind it that made many changes that would have saved our Planet if Reagan, Bush I and II hadn't destroyed or rolled back what they could. The Media always destroys those working for good and the protrayed the whole 60's and 70's through their "Commercial Lens" of the camera. It's what they have been doing ever since. THEY OWN US...and the CORPORATIONS WHO BACK THEM...and they have since the 1950's.

Look around today...and you can see how they filter to destroy any movement or issues that threaten them and their owners.

[Deja Q]

27. the hippies thought that loud wishful music and snorting mind altering substances were the panacea

Of course, now we have muzak and prozac, but whatever...

[sudopod]

31. While mall goths are annoying, I don't think they are heralds of the End of the World. :3 nt

[annabanana]

33. I remember I remember....

Too many felt the "job" was done when we got out of Vietnam... That was the birth of the "me" generation.. the 'let's get physical' dance all night implosion..

[arcadian]

34. Pop culture = corporate culture

[Bluenorthwest]

35. Jim Jones was not a hippy

People's Temple was a Church community from Northern California. The carried guns and pointed them at hippies, just so you know. They were not a collective, they were an authouritarian religious community under the command of a worshiped leader. The follwers there were not from the 'movement' they were church folk, pure and simple.
Too bad People's Temple was not the end of religionism. It was all about religion, not about the movement. They hated the 'peace people', trust me. They were a chuch, and not a hippy church, they were known to be insane by everyone in their area, for years. They shot at hippies, Baptists, police and tourists who happened by. No one liked them. Hippies and Pentcostals had nice long talks about how messed up the Jones folk were, how violent and how doomed. Jones used to strat his services by shouting the quesion 'who am I' and the followers would reply 'Jesus Christ'. The child abuse and the abuse of women was well known, and many locals attempted to end it.
And then one day, they were gone.

[carlyhippy]

36. I am still hoping the young people will get involved and we have winds of change

I can sort of see it on the horizon, but they are not quite there yet

Carly