Provocative quote
Aug. 21st, 2008 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleFrom what appears to be an excerpt from a book in progress that I stumbled across on teh intertubez:
It cracks me up when I hear these so-called “’60s-icons” congratulating themselves for the greatness of the ‘60s (and the greatness of themselves for bringing us the ‘60s). This would be all well and good, aside from one niggling detail: Virtually every aspect of American life has gotten worse since the ‘60s. Much worse.
In a radio interview, cartoonist R. Crumb talked about coming to the Haight-Ashbury in ‘67 right before the so-called Summer of Love. He mentioned what a beautiful city San Francisco was then: the streets were clean and safe, the people were friendly, housing was cheap and plentiful, living was easy, etc. And he mentioned an idea that was very much in vogue then amongst the countercultural set: How much more wonderful the city (and the world) would be when the Age of Aquarius set in and all the old farts died off and all the groovy hippies took over.
Well, I’m here to tell you, all the old farts did in fact die off, and all the hippies (including me) did in fact come tramping through the city. And it was hardly improved by our presence. But here’s the funny part. These “’60s icons” seem to think it’s still 1967 and that they should be judged on all the groovy, idealistic things they intended to do, as opposed to the actual effect they’ve had. I think it’s getting a little late in the game for that.
In the ‘50s, Oakland was averaging about twelve murders a year. After the ‘60s it started averaging about 150 murders a year. What would we have done without all the “love” the hippies invented in the ‘60s?
I think we all could benefit from an honest appraisal of what actually went down in the ‘60s. Lord knows we still haven’t sorted it out. Lord knows this society is schizo in its attempts to assimilate the counterculture into the mainstream.
I think of the day Jerry Garcia died. The mayor of San Francisco gave a heartfelt eulogy and lowered the flags at City Hall to half-mast in honor of this Great Man. And then, after shedding a few tears, went back to his Matrix program of busting and throwing into jail any of the street freaks dumb enough to try and emulate the example of this Great Man.
Which reminds me of George Carlin’s great joke about Jerry’s death: “It’s a sign of the great progress we’ve made since the ‘60s that rock stars are no longer O.D.ing in hotel rooms, but they’re now O.D.ing on the way to detox centers.”
My opinion? LSD is garbage, Jerry Garcia was an idiot, and the ‘60s was bullshit. The ‘60s was basically a dead-end we went staggering down. The ‘60s impacted on the modern street scene in several devastating ways:
1. Drugs (need I say more?)
2. The sloppy sexual unions that came out of the so-called “sexual liberation” movements - and the shattered family structures and the generation of orphans (especially in the black community) that resulted from that.
3. The romanticized notion of being against the mainstream society. Number three is probably the most devastating, because usually the street person starts out feeling alienated enough from society to begin with. Then the counterculture ethos feeds him this romanticized notion of the Hip Rebel Outsider, which locks him permanently into this state of alienation. Why try and integrate yourself into society when your alienation is your badge of honor, the very source of your identity.
Criticizing certain aspects of this world is one thing. Hating the world is another. It’s one of the most damaging things for the human psyche to endure. And all too often, the counterculture encourages and justifies this sense of alienation from society. Over and over I’ll hear these Counterculture Casualties give me a big speech about how they’re “against the multinational corporations, man.” That’s fine, except for one thing: the corporations own virtually everything. What world are you planning to live in? Well, the sidewalks, I guess.
What does it actually mean when you say you’ve “dropped out of the corporate system?” Most of the food you eat, the clothes you’re wearing, the beer you’re drinking, 95% of the media you’re consuming, all the electricity you’re using, all the money in your pocket... all these things were produced by big, big corporations. All you’re saying is: you’ll consume, but you won’t produce. Does that somehow make you more noble?
The ‘60s was a noble experiment, perhaps. All I’m saying is, the time has come to clearly assess the results of that experiment. I’m not looking to go back to the ‘50s. Maybe what I’m looking for is a counter-counterculture. In the meantime, beware of the pitfalls of the generation that preceded you.
This (and more by Ace Backwards) can be found via the SF Herald home page.
I found it kinda provocative... and maybe more or less on the mark, though I doubt the causal relationship between the Summer of Love and every social ill in the world. That, and I think that both LSD and Jerry Garcia have a lot of value - just not nearly as much as some people seem to think! They have both, perhaps, been placed on too high a pedestal.
Everything from #3 onward seems especially pointed, and it's a message I find hard to deny.
Having missed the 60s entirely, I wonder what those of you who were around make of this little rant.
It cracks me up when I hear these so-called “’60s-icons” congratulating themselves for the greatness of the ‘60s (and the greatness of themselves for bringing us the ‘60s). This would be all well and good, aside from one niggling detail: Virtually every aspect of American life has gotten worse since the ‘60s. Much worse.
In a radio interview, cartoonist R. Crumb talked about coming to the Haight-Ashbury in ‘67 right before the so-called Summer of Love. He mentioned what a beautiful city San Francisco was then: the streets were clean and safe, the people were friendly, housing was cheap and plentiful, living was easy, etc. And he mentioned an idea that was very much in vogue then amongst the countercultural set: How much more wonderful the city (and the world) would be when the Age of Aquarius set in and all the old farts died off and all the groovy hippies took over.
Well, I’m here to tell you, all the old farts did in fact die off, and all the hippies (including me) did in fact come tramping through the city. And it was hardly improved by our presence. But here’s the funny part. These “’60s icons” seem to think it’s still 1967 and that they should be judged on all the groovy, idealistic things they intended to do, as opposed to the actual effect they’ve had. I think it’s getting a little late in the game for that.
In the ‘50s, Oakland was averaging about twelve murders a year. After the ‘60s it started averaging about 150 murders a year. What would we have done without all the “love” the hippies invented in the ‘60s?
I think we all could benefit from an honest appraisal of what actually went down in the ‘60s. Lord knows we still haven’t sorted it out. Lord knows this society is schizo in its attempts to assimilate the counterculture into the mainstream.
I think of the day Jerry Garcia died. The mayor of San Francisco gave a heartfelt eulogy and lowered the flags at City Hall to half-mast in honor of this Great Man. And then, after shedding a few tears, went back to his Matrix program of busting and throwing into jail any of the street freaks dumb enough to try and emulate the example of this Great Man.
Which reminds me of George Carlin’s great joke about Jerry’s death: “It’s a sign of the great progress we’ve made since the ‘60s that rock stars are no longer O.D.ing in hotel rooms, but they’re now O.D.ing on the way to detox centers.”
My opinion? LSD is garbage, Jerry Garcia was an idiot, and the ‘60s was bullshit. The ‘60s was basically a dead-end we went staggering down. The ‘60s impacted on the modern street scene in several devastating ways:
1. Drugs (need I say more?)
2. The sloppy sexual unions that came out of the so-called “sexual liberation” movements - and the shattered family structures and the generation of orphans (especially in the black community) that resulted from that.
3. The romanticized notion of being against the mainstream society. Number three is probably the most devastating, because usually the street person starts out feeling alienated enough from society to begin with. Then the counterculture ethos feeds him this romanticized notion of the Hip Rebel Outsider, which locks him permanently into this state of alienation. Why try and integrate yourself into society when your alienation is your badge of honor, the very source of your identity.
Criticizing certain aspects of this world is one thing. Hating the world is another. It’s one of the most damaging things for the human psyche to endure. And all too often, the counterculture encourages and justifies this sense of alienation from society. Over and over I’ll hear these Counterculture Casualties give me a big speech about how they’re “against the multinational corporations, man.” That’s fine, except for one thing: the corporations own virtually everything. What world are you planning to live in? Well, the sidewalks, I guess.
What does it actually mean when you say you’ve “dropped out of the corporate system?” Most of the food you eat, the clothes you’re wearing, the beer you’re drinking, 95% of the media you’re consuming, all the electricity you’re using, all the money in your pocket... all these things were produced by big, big corporations. All you’re saying is: you’ll consume, but you won’t produce. Does that somehow make you more noble?
The ‘60s was a noble experiment, perhaps. All I’m saying is, the time has come to clearly assess the results of that experiment. I’m not looking to go back to the ‘50s. Maybe what I’m looking for is a counter-counterculture. In the meantime, beware of the pitfalls of the generation that preceded you.
This (and more by Ace Backwards) can be found via the SF Herald home page.
I found it kinda provocative... and maybe more or less on the mark, though I doubt the causal relationship between the Summer of Love and every social ill in the world. That, and I think that both LSD and Jerry Garcia have a lot of value - just not nearly as much as some people seem to think! They have both, perhaps, been placed on too high a pedestal.
Everything from #3 onward seems especially pointed, and it's a message I find hard to deny.
Having missed the 60s entirely, I wonder what those of you who were around make of this little rant.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 07:42 pm (UTC)All those things are just poles or edges of human behavior that people try or live with for a time. Mainstream patriarchal materialist culture has always try to marginalize those people, but they never go away. There will always be somebody who says "No."
no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 03:54 am (UTC)As for the plight of the children of the '60s ("think of the children!")... data, please?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 07:35 am (UTC)In #3, I get upset on a gay level because I've felt and been alienated all my life from gays. I even have a federal psychiatrist at the draft board certifying that I'm not gay, along with many gays who rejected me along the way. So I am "permanently locked into a state of alienation. QBT sometimes helps me forget that.
As far as protests are concerned, PBS just did a program that graphically shows through declassified documents: It had a very good effect, in that it ended the war at least 5 years before "The military-industrial complex" wanted to.
But as far as the current war goes, all you have to do is compare me to Bin Lauden. He's supposedly the #1 bozo we're looking for, right? How long have we been looking for him? 5 years?
The FCC found me with their antiquated equipment---twice in that time frame.
And that's before cellphones, satellites, and other spy stuff.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 03:54 pm (UTC)I was around for the 60s, but not really involved in it, I'm on the tail end of the boomer generation.
I thought the article generalized too much about what people thought at the time. The hippy movement was not one movement, but a series of movements. And blaming the hippies for the destruction of the black community in Oakland is too far fetched. The black community was and still is influenced much more by the history of racism in this country than the anti-racism [or free love] of the hippies.
The hippy community did reach back into history for much of their ideals, from Hindu gurus, to the founding fathers, to Thoreau, to Buddha.
The corporate thing is off base also. Hippies who moved back to the land and started the organic farming movement have had a profound impact on our whole society. Yes we all are involved on some level with corporations, but not all of us worship them. Corporations, like so much else, are both good and bad. Their bad effects are somewhat kept in check by the principles expounded by "hippies".
There's no denying the negative effects of the 60s, but much good came out of it, including the forward movement of society. Would the author really like to go back to the "jim crow" laws of the south, women dying from illegal abortions, gays being so closeted? All these things came about because the 60s brought them to the forefront of the nation, and it is not a 'given' that these things would have occurred in the absence of the hippy movement.
Not So Much Assimilation As Backlash
Date: 2008-08-24 09:00 pm (UTC)Rat is on target, and the modus operandi of assimilating the hippie ethos into the corporate/political mainstream ever continues, though ever since the start of the Reagan era, most good effects that remain have been separated from an accurate history of their origins such that most people are unaware that, for example, organics in the grocery store are connected directly to the hippies.
The ascendency of the religious-reich successfully made so many positive cultural aspects from that era into rhetorical hate-mongering (the creation the evil 'other') and a lucrative venue to reap dollars from the 'sheep'.
Just as 'liberal' and 'Democrat', by oft-repeated eliminationist screeds blindly repeated by the mainstream media, have become (by far too many) synonymous with traitor and worse, 'balanced' criticisms are still facing an ever-steeper uphill battle to be disseminated to the masses.
Notice that even though the religious-reich seems to increasingly fall out of favor, the same arguments are being repeated without the once-lucrative religious veneer -- the ultra-rich puppet-masters are still pulling the strings, and are loathe to give up the power that they've worked so hard to acquire (think of all of Bush's signing-statements and related powers that can be invoked if they can't 'bend' the election in their favor).
"Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it." --Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man", 1791
--Inspiritor--