Technical advancement rather than nature?

Is being technologically advaced and progressive as opposed to embracing the era of no computers somewhat taking away from being a true "hippie?"
Just curious, my Dad, bless him for being the stubborn non moving into the eighties soul he is, refuses to live apart from his life of the sixties-no computers.

Just curious...

 

maybe. concepts like advanced and progressive can be misleading unless you also take into account that we are advancing toward a progressively deteriorating enviroment with landfills of old toxic computers. are we better off now than in the sixties? i would say no, but there are many other things to blame as well. yes, the myth that technology is progress has set us up for a big fall and until we live a life where we value nature over consumption of what industries feed us we are in trouble

 

Well said Mati.


I was a teenager in the '60s, and all the time and energy that we spend on computers today was spent on each other in the '60s.

Instead of searching through Google, we sought each other out.
Instead of the internet, we connected with each other directly.
We were drawn to each other for all our connections; we were always face to face; we could feel each other's flesh and blood.

 

m6m I think you have a good point, but I also find that the world has become smaller with the internet. We are in some ways closer to a wide variety of people that we would have never come in contact with in the 60's. Unfortunately wider reaching and larger quanities of relationships, has often ment a lessening of the quality of relationships.

 

technology has brought with it mind expansion and the knowledge of the world at your fingertips.It has also brought with it surgical strikes so we can cripple and kill without having to feel guilty.

 

I feel your but, and that's what brings me to come on-line.

 

let us face it, we are techno-addicts. the arguments for technology are self-serving. the bad outweighs the good. like most junkies though, we love it and will try to rationalize it anyway.

 

You can't go backwards in time.

Hippies of the 60's spent so much time sitting in front of radios, record players, driving vans, and basically harnessing and using the technology available to communicate. A lot of the natural living communes failed, and the ones that succeeded only did by sheer bloody-mindedness or by adapting technologically.

Technology has always been part of our lives. If we were to abandon technology, where would we draw the line? Petrol? Electricity? Yeast? Fire? Flint?

Now we have the internet. If we tried, we could harness it and use it to create a global counterculture that's networked on the individual level. Groovier...

 

Certainly technology is no substitute for mother nature, I think that "hippiedom" requires us to be grounded in nature and not technology. You can't live your life in cyber space and be a healthy person...

...but, technology can be useful to further the cause, I mean, this forum wouldn't exist without it, and I'm finding all kinds of cool ways to harness what nature gives us on here, so it's sort of an irony.

I guess the key is to harness technology in an earth-friendly way. Unfortunately in the US we consume stuff that is manufactured using tons of toxic material with no foresight of disposal, it's just instant gratification, the American Way. What we should do is pay up front for the cost of disposal, so when we buy a computer or other consumer electronics, it might cost twice as much, but it'll cover the cost of disposal/recycling in an environmentally responsible way.