Religion vs spirituality

First let me say that your last paragraph is very true---and I think that we are seeing this religious transformation happening in society now. It is certainly true, it is very difficult for society to return to an era before the institution. Though on an individual level there are many people who find more meaning outside of the institutional setting and it is partly because of this that the institutions are changing. I see a future where institutions become a synthesis of the group (institutional) ethic and the individualistic ethic----society is certainly changing in this direction too. It is what the author of Future Shock called, The Third Wave, in a book of the same title.

And while it is true that Hunter-Gatherer societies have a rudimentary institutional structure. I would disagree that the societies are institutional-based. The ethic that goes into the structure of their societies is very individual focused. This is especially clear when you look at their spiritual belief system. The focus is on an individual's relationship with the spirit world. An example would be the Vision Quest of the Plains Indians who are more nomadic and tribal then the southern tribes. The Vision Quest is a very individualisitic experience. The sun dance is a group activity, but the focus still is on the inidividual spiritual experience, as opposed to the 'show' put on for the group that you have in the institutional setting.

If we move south we see planter societies and the transition from a nomadic culture to a village culture----the pueblo's and so forth. Here you start to see a group ethic (institutional) take hold---the Kachina ceremonies, the group rituals in the kivas, and so forth. This is the 'show' put on for the group, I referred to earlier---still spiritual, but with a group orientation. The Vision Quest is no longer a significant part of these cultures. As man began to live in villages, his survival depended on a group ethic---it takes more combined manpower to work the land, than it does to go on a hunt to feed the respective societies. This is when you see the emergence of religion rather than the spirituality that existed from atleast the paleolithic. The Goddess cults emerged because it took a group effort to maintain the fertility of Mother Earth. There is a clear change in mythos from this period, coinciding with a change in social structure.

I also agree with you that there were many people who joined the band wagon in the hippy movement----but that is why I stressed that I was referring to the early point of the movement. This early point was a time when everyone was creating their own style----they imitated, but they did their own spontaneous thing---you wore what you wanted, no matter how outlandish it was. And it was very outlandish. By the time you speak of, when everyone was in their blue jeans and tie dyed t-shirts, the earlier spontaneity had fallen to its own form of conformity----and indeed a fashion was created. Madison Avenue and London's fashion district took part in creating this, and the outlandish ways of the early anti-fashion aspect of the movement were gone. I guess this is one side of the movement you would have had to have seen to understand.

I don't mean to paint hippies as a rosy wonderful utopia. It wasn't. A lot of people were just following the trend too. But it wasn't a bunch of blind sheep following the leader either. I was too young to fully embrace the movement until the early 70's. So I could have been considered a trend-following sheep. But I was very sincere in my beliefs and ways, I embraced things that made sense to me, I discarded those ideas and ways that did not. I wore bell bottums and long hair and tie-dyed t-shirts because that represented a life style and rebellion that I believed in. I truly questioned the establishment and my disdain for the institution today comes from that questioning. I experimented. I sought out aternative life styles to see if they worked. And I had friends that were the same questioning-sincere-rebellious thinkers.

I had no respect for those people who parrotted anti-establishment bunk just to be trendy. I didn't like fake people then, just as I don't like fake people today. However, I look around society today and I see far more conformity and fakes than I did then. Too many young people today are hypnotized by tv and video games, and don't even take the time to question. And look at the group ethic that is taking control of our inner-cities with gangs. Look at the comparatively weak anti-war effort...

But as I said early in this post---there is a continued and growing individuality shaping the dynamic of society. Part of it is a result of that questioning and thinking we did as hippies, part of it comes from the advance of technology, and how it is individuating trends, tastes, and fads. And us baby boomers are still changing society just as we have been doing since the years after World War II. This is especially happening in religion and the rise of a more non-institutional spirituality---and the synthesis this is creating even within the religious institutions.