THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

[pasithea]

Preface: This post is really questioning myself using an external voice. All use of the word 'you' should be interpreted as being about the writer, not the audience.

You've always moped and been sad that you missed the 60s. That far off fantasy time of great cultural change. And yet, you know that like the magical heterosexual 50s, they didn't really exist. It's a myth. Hippies were a subculture. Most of america was exactly as it is now. A bunch of miserable people who hate pretty-much everything that's different from them.

So.. Look around you right now. Burning Man, Free Hugs, and great stands against racism, homophobia, and the rape of our planet. Perhaps you're missing the revolution. Look at everything that's going on in the world today. How can you be involved? How can you be a part of it? How can you join the revolution and make change happen? The world is largely what you make it, and you live in a time and place where great cultural change is within your grasp if you're willing to reach out and be a part of it. Make the world a better place. You have the power. Everyone does. A million tiny changes add up.


So... Now back to the audience: What can I do to make the world a happier, nicer, more beautiful place? How about you?

Comments

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.

[kit-kaboodle.livejournal.com]

I think a trap I personally have fallen into is the notion of changing the minds of the enemies of freedom. I think it is a lost cause to trying to explain to people that they are in Plato's cave or the Matrix. The Dominator Culture wants and NEEDS enemies here at home. Let's not play their game.

I was melancholy about this very subject today. I'm the kind of chap that desperately wanted to "beat them at their own game." I don't think that is possible. I think the game is rigged. Actually, the game is so slimy, that I wonder why I took the Faustian bargain to begin with.

But enough cynicism. To answer your question about making the world a better place...

You are quite correct to bring up the hippies. I think those are a few people who really took Dr. Leary's advice to Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out to heart. This advice says nothing about throwing Molotov cocktails, that is something the Dominator culture would understand. Actually living a life that is about peace and love, and really meaning it, not just some fashion, is far more dangerous and world changing than anythng the Yippies did. To some extent, the Punks, who dropped out of society, were dangerous to the status quo, but their embrace of nihilism derailed them.

Hippies are still reviled as the most dangerous thing to ever happen to the status quo. This is strange, since they failed to bring about the changes to society, even to themselves. If you do a google search on 'hippy' there is plenty of propaganda still from the mainstream. Stuff like "I hate Hippies" t-shirts for little clean cuts to wear. The hippies were thrown into a political context, but that was never their goal. It is to the hippies, the punks, the bohemians, the dadaists, the artistic movements of the past that we should look for inspiration.

Re: Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

I think there's a problem for me in that some kind of line must be drawn. For me, I can't have a tolerance for intolerance. The They Might Be Giants song really kind of sums it up for me. I can't stay silent and tolerate someone being a racist or anything else hateful in front of me. I feel compelled to take a stand.

The trick there, of course is that you attract more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. Simply calling them mean, petty, and hateful probably isn't going to be productive and ignoring them doesn't make them go away; if anything, it emboldens them. So. I don't know precisely how to deal with that. My main thinking is that I need to change the world enough that people like that don't exist to begin with, but it's a big job.

How do you change the world and teach respect? My current strategy is art and animation that takes a positive position instead of a negative one, but sometimes it's so hard not to be negative. Also, an indirect positive message generally takes a lot of time to produce, where anger is cheap and plentiful, and even a direct positive message is often interpreted as condescending. But we are only human and sometimes we need a quick release. So.. A good solution there would be helpful.

Burning Man, Free Hugs, Flashmobs, raves, conventions, and stuff like that seem to be the best path. Turn people to your point of view not by force or talking down to them but just by having so much fun and being so pretty that they want to join you.

The problem there is that at some point, one also needs to deal with law because the hardcore haters are going to try to legislate away your culture in a ditch effort to keep their paradigm predominate and that gets us back to proselytizing and sometimes being angry. It's a vicious cycle. We're winning ever so slowly but it's three steps forward, two steps back every inch of the way.