Lotusblossum, Sounds good to me! Just don't fuggidup like a lot of us did (ie hard drugs, too much liquor, joining cults or anything cultlike etc. a good friend of mine once said something about "trading one jail for another" on those subjects...and too bad he didn't follow his own advice or he would be alive today!) I dropped Skip a line the other day and he was in Spain. The hippie thing really took hold in Europe (and really got stomped out here). There is a photographer in the photo section-"Sun Angel" I think-posting some great photos about the Hippie thing in Poland. Like I was telling Skip "I think the torch has passed" that the Americans passed up a rare opportunity. It doesn't have to be so forever. Tundrahopper4
There IS a new generation of hippies already, and I am glad. They're out there. The issues today are a bit different than before (not much), but humankind doesn't change too much over years. I'm relearning a lot that I forgot, and thankful to learn again. I thought for awhile that I had to grow up, which to the world means "forget the values of what matters, forget the meaning of life" but I never did really. Don't ever make that mistake, and you'll be fine. Follow your truths.
ON THE ROAD TO FREEDOM I'm on the road to freedom On the road to love Yonder can you see them Who they're thinking of I met a rich man on the road, he told me where to go To get my hands upon some gold, but I still answered no 'Cause freedom waits for me ahead, your gold will slow me down I smiled as I walked on my way, and left him with a frown I met an old man on the road, his eyes were clear and wise Can you direct me on my way, to where the answer lies? I'm looking for the road to freedom so I can be free He said 'keep thinking as you walk, and one day you will see I'm on the road to freedom, on the road to truth Yonder can you see them wasting precious youth I thought as I walked down the road of what the man had said It seems to me that what he meant is freedom's in your head The road I walk along is time, it's measured out in hours And now I need not rush along, I stop to see the flowers Stop to smell the flowers (Alvin Lee/Mylon Le Fevre)
Yeah, I've talked with Sun Angle much about the movement there. Seems very fun. But, tundra, to your remark about joining a cult, not all cults are/were like the ones that get a lot of attention. A cult really is just a small religious movement. Christianity was. Lutheranism was. Protestantism was as well. When looking at things like that though, you must have your eyes open to it all. People need to see the bad, not only the good.
Nathan, Well from my view there are meaningfull differences between "cults" and what I would call "associations of free souls." When you feel the hands on your wallet you are probably in a cult. When you see the "leaders" grasping at power and control you are probably in a cult. When you find yourself imprisoned in a new construct of cliches, tortured rationalizations and easy answers you are probably in a cult. This country is sick with cults, cultish behaviors these last few decades and I can't be anything but brutally outspoken on the subject. I was dragged screaming and kicking into AA a long while back and caught all kinds of flak for criticizing their cultlike control mechanisms. Too bad-it is a valid criticism. Corporations practice the same crowd control techniques-and if you want to study creeping fascism in the USA a good place to start would be in the workplace. The controllers will say that it is "all for the good of the human cattle we manage". They are not exactly stating the facts-it is pretty much for the benefit of the controllers. "Seeing the bad"-BIG 10/4 there Nathan! Now I went into my hippie years a callow suburban punk and came out something like "healed" but... there were a few bumps in the road. "Who can I trust" became THE central issue. Trust with your money, trust with your well being, and most important trust with your innermost essence? As it came out there is only a handfull of people I trust in this world-my wife (GOD was I lucky there!) and a few close friends from the day. Even most of my hippie friends will let you down when push comes to shove I found out. I keep anyone who has betrayed me EVER at arm's length EVEN if I really do like them. My best friend "Mario" and a few others never stabbed me ever and visa versa. This is a rare and valuable thing in this treacherous and nasty world. "Trust don't mean much," Mario once said back in the day "JUST EVERYTHING..."
I don't believe that Americia has lost the "vib" and I resent your saying so. What's wrong with Americia? Nothing. The people are wonderful as in all countries. Traitors! If you don't like what's going on here, be part of the solution not part of the problem. That's why we vote. To bring about change, what doesn't work try something that will. The Old ways are a changing. The GOOD OLD BOY chapter is dying out and a new order is in the making. If more Americains would pull together and VOTE for change it can happen. You want to leave, then go, but don't bash my country on your way out. Some of you people need to think about Americia and what it's done or the world. We are the richest country in the world and hold more freedoms than most and support the whole fricken world. And as a Woman I would rather be here than a country where women are lower then spit and have to cover their faces to be out in public or be shot. HA! Or standing in line for hours just to get a loaf of bread. Where crippled children are tossed aside to beg on the streets for food and the elderly are locked away in some cruel institution. I don't want to live in Africia where AIDS kill thousands a day from no medical facilities. Or places that have no clean water or clean foods to eat or drink. I also dont want to live in a society where child porn is leagel or the exploitation of minors is excepted. I would not like to see full blown sex in my local park for my grand daughters to wittness as they play on the swingset or jungle jim. I do not want to see Heroin addicts sitting on park benches sticking needles into their arms puking on them selves. This is not LOVE and it is not how it was intended to be. If this is what the OLD HIPPIE ( ME ) brought to the world then I am ashamed to call myself hip. This is in no way hip or what the movement was about. You think because you cant leave campus it's unfair and that Americia sucks cuz of it. I left school once and was walking around and got dragged off into an orange grove and molested, I was 12. The school is responsible for you while you are there. If anything happens to you on their time they are responsible to the parents of the missing child. I would have a fit if the school let my 7 yr old grandchild roam about the streets alone. Good Grief!! Are you kids thinking at all???? Y'all gripe about everything that's handed to you on a silver platter while you sit and type out how miserable you are. You create your own misery, you create your own beauty. It's your attitude that sucks not americia. Let me ask you this. If Americia is so bad then why do millions of people risk their lives and their childrens lives to get here everyday. Why is it that illeagels come pouring in over our borders to get a peice of the American Pie. I wonder how many of you ever count your blessings. A roof over your head, food in your bellies, nice clothes to wear, shoes that fit and don't have holes in them. Education that is free and in every city in americia, and your medical needs, and your teachers that listen to your incessive whinning how your so put upon to be asked to do your homework, so you wont be idiots when you grow up. We have churches of every domination which you can worship freely. It may not be perfect but this is earth not narvanna. I don't mean to be harsh, but I love my country and I will stand by her. She ain't perfect but she's better then a lot of other places. No one place is perfect, if it has people in it. People are not perfect the Earth is. No matter where you live there's going to be something you don't like about it. It's how you look at things. I have so much. I have my family, my land, my home,cars,trucks, cows, goats,chickens,turkeys,donkeys and socres of animals and posessions. I come and go as I please, I can buy and sell what I want. I can love whom I disire, I can march up and down the avenue in protest and not be shot at. I can have sugar in my tea or not. Whatever I want I can get. I can get out and work for it and call it mine. I can stand here and protect it with my arsenal, that I have a right to have. I will not leave my country to fight but I will fight for my land and the right to have it. I will fight for your right to bitch about it too. In closing I would like to add: Americia is a beautiful place she has done no wrong to mankind, mankind on the other hand has treated her badly. I'm just thankful I am here and have a place to call my homeland and a time to count my blessings. May peace be with you and The Light shin on your path to ease your journey.
I think because America is so big that it has both good and bad aspects to it. The bad aspects are what most people focus on, especially since the last few years of international affairs. I know there is loads of young people in the world today that want to change the world today. But didn't the movement in the 60's come together sort of naturally and with the help of the beatniks? There was certain factors that triggered it that I don't think exist right now. How is the modern movement going to come about?
The anti-globalisation and other movements are growing but if the truth be told most people are far to self-absorbed in their little lives to care about anyone else.
I relize that there is need for change. The question is: change to what. There must be a plan for reform, there must be ones that are in charge of the dicission making. and what about laws, are we to have laws. What will they be. Who will decide. Will there be voting. Will we have currency, will we all be farmers. I mean, how will this be any different than what we have now. How will we change things. What way is there to please the ALL. Will everyone just walk around doing their own thing. And what if their thing is to harm. How would we handle that. Will there be a prison system to put the criminals in. Will there be crime and punishment. If we were to overthrow the gov, what then. Total chaos, looting and murder in the streets. What a legacy to leave the children. Who will clean up after the smoke clears and are we to bare arms and kill the ones in office or throw them into prison. Can we get everyone to agree on what is to become of americia when we take over. Are we to burn the oil fields and bring down the towers. Do we bring the cities to a close and go. Go where and do what? What will we eat and what will we drink with all the factories/facilities demolished. What will the plan for humanity be, and who will plan it. I ask these question of you as I ask them of myself daily. I know I spout off and get mouthy, but I'm not judging you I'm judging myself. These are my thoughts that I share with you. I am not looking to condem but to seek the truth and learn just like you. I love life and I see light ahead for us. Each and everyone of us evolve everyday as we learn and grow. What we take from the experience is up to the individual and what lessons each is to learn. We can make the expierence what we will, according to what your disire for it to be is. We can look at the beauty of it, but how would we know that it was beauty if there wasn't ugly to compare it too. If there was no darkness how would we know when it was light. Without the Ying there is no Yang. Life is a game of karma and you have to learn how to play, knowing when to hold and knowing when to fold. Knowing that you are but matter manifest in this time and this space, you are where you are meant to be, you are where you are at this moment in time to learn and grow, as I am as we are part of the ALL. So that leads us to what conclusion. We are not ready yet to manifest it. We have no alternative to offer, no replacement, we just whine and gripe about how screwed up it is. Me too, I am no exception I've been clammoring about it for 35 yrs. Gnashing my teeth, stomping my feet, jumping up and down hollering about the injustise of it all. Some listen some walk away scoffing. Has it changed anything. I don't know, I still hear crying. I still see a need for change. But are we not ever changing. Do we not learn and grow everyday. Am I just a fool that believes the illussion I have created for myself. Is it me that needs to change. Am I an idealist or stuck in a distant past. Can I change my destiny by changing my mind, can I change my mind. Somewhere in my ramblings there is a point. Maybe it's that life is what you make of it. It's on the board, all the things that you want. How to get to them is up to you. It's the choices you make, the intent in which they are made. The good you do and the love that you share. I really don't think it matters where you are in the world, every country have is negitive side. I think it's who you are, not where you are. You can be in the most beautiful ,calm place on earth and still be a sonofabitch, if that's what you choose to do. Before I go really far. I think I will stop here. If you have any trouble understanding what I have just posted, smoke a bowl and read it again. It may make more sence and if not, at least you were stoned while reading it. Have a Blessed Sunday or whatever day it is where you are at right now and forgive me if I have done harm, not my intent. My bluntness i one of my short comings.
I totally dig that man. You're right about America being filled with these organziations. But when I was refering to cults, I was speaking of the "associations of free souls" like you said. Because, technically they are a cult as well. But there is a THIN line between these cults you speak of, and the ones I speak of.
I feel I have to join in this discussion, with many of the themes being touched on so close to my heart. In no way do I believe in a total coup, or an abolition of government. Shameless has a good point, that without some central form of government, there is only anarchy, and anarchy is more dangerous than even the regime of George II. Unfortunately we live in the world (we being the ones who long for peace and freedom to do our own thing) along with others who wish to subjugate. Without some kind of systems in place to protect the kind from the unkind, the unkind will seek to subjugate the kind through violence. The only options left to the kind, then, would be either to accept subjugation or to retaliate with yet more violence. This is the dilemma, at least as I see it. That being said, neither do I believe that just accpeting the current status quo is the way to go either. I find the current direction of my country (U.S.A.) very frightening, not only for the domestic abuses of the principles on which the nation was founded, but also for the effect it is having abroad. Current policies foster anger, frustration, hatred and mistrust. And in so doing, a cycle is begun which can easily lead to further abuses of the grand principles of our Constitution, and everything keeps spiralling down. What to do about it? Man, I wish I had the answers. I pray every day, I try every day, knowing full well I alone cannot make it right. I can't even presume to have that kind of wisdom. But I do what I can, day by day, to make my little part of the world just a little better. Maybe that's the key, each of us improving what little we can, trying to get others to do the same, and maybe with enough willing shoulders put to the cosmic wheel, we can help it turn. On a separate note, lotusblossom, I applaud your spirit. People like you make me glad I've found this forum. You opened up a good topic that cries out to be addressed, and maybe the discourse here can help answers to be found. Personally, I'm just starting to wake back up after years of sleeping, having given up on the possibility of making a difference. Now that I am awake, I'm glad to meet people like you and everyone else on this forum, and I accept your invitation to try to both learn and teach whatever little I can from my experience, in the hopes that together we can find some answers. A good friend of mine, and the best musician I've ever met face to face (you know who you are) once told me that in everything we do in life, we are both teacher and student. So for now, I guess the best advice I can give is learn well, teach well, and whenever you get a chance, bring a friend to class.
Lotus, Peace Sister, I was just asking questions of what we are to face. I was not blasting or blaming just putting out questions. The things that go through my mind as I listen to topics in here. I have oft wondered what would happen if there was a revalution. Myself I would like to have some sort of idea as to what I'm joining in. What plan there is to guide people through, what seems to me to be holicost/armageddon or the end of the world as we know it. I can survive a lot. But I'm not jumping into something that has no basic plan of achievement. Just a bunch of wild 'hippies' running around yelling freedom. I did that already in the 60s. Too much freedom generates mischeif. If you leave children alone too long something usualy gets broke or someone gets hurt. Adults are not so different. If I do not ask question then I am but a sheep perhaps being lead to slaughter. I only post these question to stimulate thought. They are valid question that one would ask of any life changing event. I meant no harm or to pose an arguement.
