It's not black and white. I remember a hope and a missed chance.
At its best, it reminded everyone about love and earth and peace. It nourished the nascent ecological movement, the body work therapies, the grasp for consciousness. It sought to obliterate class divisions. It scoffed at ownership. It flouted the logic of aggression and competition.
At its worst, it alienated the mass of people that had to continue to labor for a living and it devolved into the psychobabble of the next thirty years.
I would not be unhappy to see them again, except that under current economic conditions, they would become indistinguishable for the mass of beggars we call the homeless.
Joanna
Carl Remick wrote:
>> From: ravi <gadfly at exitleft.org>
>>
>> ... In his autobiography, "Killing Time", the philosopher Paul
>> Feyerabend
>> hopes that all that is remembered and remains of him is not some
>> philosophical declarations and technical papers, but 'love', that which
>> he finds the most worthwhile and meaning-giving in his life (and I would
>> include friendship, community, kindness, caring). Not platitudes or
>> touchy-feely stuff, but that which we are born with before our Cartesian
>> speculation can take wing -- that "brotherhood of man" which is "no mere
>> phrase" "but a fact of life" (*).
>>
>> That is what the 'hippies', at their best, embodied to me and taught me
>> In short: "Don't be hatin" ;-). And I am glad that before I saw anything
>> or anyone else from/of the West, I met with the hippies.
>
>
> That's a beautiful tribute, Ravi. I don't understand the point of
> beating up on hippies. What's wrong with the world today is triumphal
> capitalism, militarism, imperialism -- none of which can be ascribed
> to any delusions or excesses of the hippies.
>
> Carl
>
>
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