The 60’s

Those were the days of social revolution, of beads, beards, long hair, flared pants, dope, and of changing the world. “Make love not war” was our chant”. So what happened? And …is the world improved,  or is the world merely cosmetically changed?

In an episode of Murphy Brown, this very subject was  discussed. And those who were once activists, were surprised that they were now conservative. Where once they were hippies, now they wore suits, had children and mortgages. Some even found that despite voting along left wing politics all their lives, a lot of their ideas had turned direction towards the right. When did it all go so wrong, was their complaint.

Did getting older have anything to do with it. Are older people naturally more conservative. Does responsibility change a person. The questions are endless and frankly they are Diversional and off the mark. This discussion clouds a deeper truth.

Is the fact that you are left or right winged, radical or conservative a sign of whether you are still a vitally important part of the  society?

Does what you think really change anything??

 IF your intention is for the betterment of yourself, your family, and the rest of the world, then no, you didn’t cop out of the social change movement, you are well and truly still in it. It only looks like you may have opted out because perhaps we have a far too rigid idea of what is the RIGHT way to go about making the world a better place, looks like.

Both wings of politics are “right on, man”. Both have declared that their ways will be good for the people.  Certainly at an ideological level, this is true, and every  war waged between both wings is based on the concept that only one idea [our idea] can be good for people.

I don’t know about you, but having been alive long enough to have lived through both the left and the right, I have found that both in different ways, long to be helpful to the people they represent.

This of course is diluted by both parties constantly waging war, to either stay in government or to get in. So the radical and the conservatives fight each other. So what, it’s only a matter of scale anyway. Little different to what you and I do. We have fights and disagreements with friends and colleagues all the time over many of the same things.

We hold to our views like leeches to a bloody leg. We know that we hold the truth and the other person is just plain stubborn and not just a little dumb.  Perhaps this discontent will cause resentments that might never be overcome.

And yet the motive of both is not that each says “ ONLY I HOLD THE TRUTH” , But that both are hinting… I want something better to happen. All we really disagree with then, is the means to our getting there.

So you hippies of yester year  and the counter culturists of today and the more conservative in society. You all want the same thing. Peace, love, security, happiness, satisfaction, security, nurture…shall I go on.

Us, the people of the Earth however we express it, are all attempting to remove the blocks to  “A better way to live”. Be of good cheer then. We stand a good chance of getting there.

Paul