I was just reading about the Renaissance the other day and how it was a return to the humanist values of the ancient Greeks during the neoclassical age. This was a contrast from the strict religiosity of the dark ages. And I was just thinking about how the hippies in the 60's kind of did the same thing. They went against their strict conservative upbringing and to me I see similarities between them and the ancient Greeks. So anyways I thought it would be interesting to discuss the similarities between the hippies and the renaissance and if maybe it could be considered a sort of renaissance in American history. I'm a millennial so I don't know what it was really like then but I've always wondered what it would've been like
I don't know if I'd describe hippie philosophy as humanist. There is optimism there about the potential of mankind, but much more regret about man's destructive nature. Hippies are skeptical about the so-called 'progress' of mankind, technology and the use of reason and dialectical thought. I thought the renaissance was about man's greatness, and supreme confidence in reason and logic.
That's true I think the renaissance was about humans being at some highest god-like potential or something like that. What you bring up makes me wonder about so-called progression too. I mean I've always wondered what humanity is aiming for in terms of "progression." It's kind of scary to imagine the future being so robotic and everything but I wonder if nature would even let us get there.
