The true way to understand something is through understanding its
mechanism. It is to see what drives something and how it takes place.
It is to understand it from inside out; as opposed to typical Western
practice of judging by appearance.
I was put off reading this article by the opening paragraph. Vague
generalisations are not usually a good way to begin an article -- it fails to
grab the reader's attention.
The people who judge by appearances fail to see the spirit, the
feeling, that guides things.
This is perhaps where you should have begun.
Onion magazine in its coverage of
Woodstock says that all that happened was that a bunch of people got
laid. That's not all that happened and that's not what was special
about it; what was special about it was the feeling of love and warmth
and camaraderie and shared power that permeated the place. A person
who judges by appearances fails to see this, fails to notice this, and
thus fails to understand what is happening when people have beautiful
experiences. And it is of beautiful experiences that people, as a
result of such manner of thinking, are being robbed.
<SNIP>
When I went to college, the propaganda was that hippies did not have a
correct view of reality and therefore suffered the consequences. It may
very well be that they had an incorrect view of reality; but let us not
place them in that category alone. Let us also say that Apostle John,
Plato, Hindu gurus and quantum physicists who made statements that can
be reasonably interpreted the way in which hippies did, also had an
incorrect view of reality. And that it was these beliefs that are
responsible for the 60s.
Again, you generalise too much.
This suggests that hippies were a coherent group, with clearly defined views,
opinions and behaviour.
It wasn't so.
Hippies were a movement, people in different places who had a few things in
common, but differed from one another in many respects. One of the things they
had in common was the vision of an alternative society that could become a
reality now. But the alternative socity they envisaged was not necessarily the
same thing. Some had a primitive Christian view (the "Jesus freaks), some had
a Hindu one (the "Hare Krishna" groups), some just wanted to live in a
drug-induced fantasy world, some wanted a political revolution (the Che
Guevara fan club), to give just a few examples. Some mingled some of these
themes, and others, but in different combinations.
ObBook: Ringolevio, by Emmet Grogan.
--
Steve Hayes
E-mail: ***@hotmail.com
Web: http://www.geocities.com/hayesstw/stevesig.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/books.htm