What a bunch of naive, pathetic bullshit that's really nothing more than a has-been pining for the good old days.
kpete Donating Member (1000+ posts) Sat Apr-26-08 03:57 PM
Original message
We need a Hippie resurrection.
The Saints Are Coming
by One Pissed Off Liberal
Sat Apr 26, 2008 at 11:08:13 AM PDT
(Cross posted from Docudharma)
If the hippies had won that struggle in the 60s we’d live in a more humane world today.
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If the hippies had prevailed, if our society had followed their lead, we'd have a world much closer to being ecologically balanced. We'd have mature alternative energy technologies and organic food grown on family farms would predominate. We'd likely be at peace in a peaceful world and we'd be actively engaged in helping other nations help themselves in purely benign relations with our fellow earthlings. Though the world would certainly still be imperfect, we'd be masters of diplomacy and things would be generally better in this world for virtually everyone. We might have fewer millionaires and billionaires but trust me nobody would miss them.
Kind of hard to follow the lead of people who aren't going anywhere. It's pretty easy to sit around dreaming of utopia when daddy and mommy are paying the bills and buying you that college education. If your idea of "alternative" energy means running around in a panic and forcing people to buy light bulbs that are MORE dangerous to the environment than the ones we currently use (if one breaks around young children or pregnant women they have to leave IMMEDIATELY...if it falls on a carpet, even the section it fell on needs to be cut away), way to save the planet, buck-o! Oh and then there's always "biofuels" which we also had to rush into. The poor can't afford basic staples, but by golly you had such noble intentions so that just makes it all okay.
Let's interject just a little more reality here...how do you suppose these family farms are going to be able to grow enough food to feed 300 million Americans, the majority of whom don't live on farms? Organic farming is very labor intensive and much more expensive. You people bitch about the cost of food now and how poor children don't have enough to eat, how the hell do you expect them to afford "organic" food? What about the times of the year where we have to import most of our produce...will we be telling other countries how to live as well? Whether it's meat, dairy, or produce "organic", "free-range" will always be a niche market. A banana is a banana...take the peel off and the inside is as "organic" as the one selling for $1.29 a pound.
We'd likely be at peace in a peaceful world and we'd be actively engaged in helping other nations help themselves in purely benign relations with our fellow earthlings. Though the world would certainly still be imperfect, we'd be masters of diplomacy and things would be generally better in this world for virtually everyone. We might have fewer millionaires and billionaires but trust me nobody would miss them.
Would that peace be before or after we forced other nations to adopt our "bio-organic-free range-fuel-food" standards? I can understand how easy it is for you to have kumbaya pipe dreams when you've never had to put your own ass on the line, but you might want to think on this a little more. There always have been and always will be good and evil, birth and death, light and dark. It's that whole yin/yang thing...I'd think people as enlightened as you folks try to convince others you are you'd understand this. Even a 2 year old who has his toy snatched away by a bigger playmate has a better understanding of human nature than you.
Do you honestly believe if hippies would've existed when Hitler was exterminating his "fellow earthlings" they could've convinced him to turn off the ovens, leave Denmark, and send all those concentration camp survivors home with a candy bar and a handshake? I know you don't care about the Jews, but he was killing gays too and they're the left's pet of the month. But, who knows, right? I mean that hippie revolution worked out so well for the Cambodians.
What do you do when North Korea invades South Korea and the south doesn't have the means to take care of themselves? Do we just say...sorry OUR peace is more important than your lives or freedom...we'd rather just pretend everything is wonderful! What about places like Somalia where women and children were starving...food literally ripped from their hands? Do we just say...sorry OUR peace is more important than you feeding your kids this week. Besides, once you're all dead the world will be peaceful again. What about places like Afghanistan where the lives of women and girls was about as close to hell on earth as you can get? Do we just say...sorry OUR peace is more important than you having to live your lives in abject terror. I bet it doesn't feel too peaceful to be stoned or burned to death or to be a 9 year old girl being held down while someone cuts off your clitoris and sews up your vagina.
The important point is that we would not be killing each other - we'd be taking care of each other.
See above
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Oh I know, I'm hopelessly naive. People couldn't possibly be good to each other. How ridiculous. I should just grow up and face the brutal fact that we are nothing but ignorant and mean-spirited savages.
No, WE aren't but there are plenty of them in the world and we're either at their mercy or we accept the fact that we have to deal with them. However, the world WOULD be better off if you all would just grow up. You're all either seething with rage, or dreamily pretending how full of love the whole world would be if everyone else on the planet (well, except the Palestinians, Cubans, Islamic terrorists, communists, etc.) lived exactly how you imagine. Might want to be careful there, though because that utopia you're planning sounds an awful lot like Heaven.
That kind of thinking is what has brought us to this point. We had choices. Peace, love and understanding are the choices the hippies urged. Fear, war and empty-headed consumerism were the choices forced down our throats by the rightwing. It wasn't inevitable - and it wasn't us. It could've all been very different.
You still have choices. YOU don't have to live in fear...luckily you live in a country where you have the right to defend yourself. YOU live in a country where braver men and women than you or I stand ready to defend us at a moment's notice. YOU live in a country where you can choose to NOT join the military. YOU can join organizations that protest against war, your government, the military and not have to worry about being hauled away in the middle of the night (I know you all dream about this in your quest for ultimate victimhood, but if it were really happening you'd already be gone). YOU can spend your free time volunteering at a battered women's shelter (now there's a way to really help someone find peace). YOU live in a country where you can buy a little piece of land with 10 of your favorite patchouli-drenched, organic, free love orgy-mates and have a commune. You could grow your own organic food, raise farm animals that you won't eat, sing
Imagine every night while passing around the bong. Hell, you can even DRESS like one of the farm animals. YOU, who have the wisdom of Buddha and the peaceful spirit of Gandhi can choose NOT to be roped into consumerism. YOU can choose to buy only what you need (of course you'd have to quit whining on the Internet because a computer is definitely part of that whole consumer thing...plus it's kind of hard to turn it on when you don't have electricity on Utopia Farm and Free Love Institute). Perhaps if you were willing to lead by example instead of always just talking about it...maybe you could just move to Venezuela...I hear the weather's great, there's no violence, and all your needs are taken care of.
Cindie
