They sat around and got high, screwed around like bunny rabbits, tuned in and dropped out, and made us forget what made us great.

Nah, they realized that it (Great America) fully sucked, so they turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. This resulted in progress that half the nation doesn’t want, for some unfathomable reason.

Jesus fucking christ, are you really going to claim that Boomers solved racism in America? Yeah, try and claim the Million Man march for the boomers, just to see how black folks react to that one. — Akanthinos

What an odd idea. You think baby boomers were only white.

What an odd idea. You think baby boomers were only white. — Brett

That’s Brett. Making us all uncomfortably aware of our own internal biases. :lol: :up:

"WHY are you leaving the lights on, Akanthinos?" — Akanthinos

Okay, that did make me laugh. We're fucked anyway, unless we all make big changes, and make them fast. So, whether you, Akanthinos, leave the lights on is trivial with the bigger picture in mind.

But the hippies of the sixties were great in my opinion. It was before my time: I was born in the late eighties. But I love the philosophy, the music, the fashion, the lifestyle, the icons. :victory:

And why not?

I get the distinct impression from some that ‘baby boomers’ really means ‘privileged white males’.

I get the distinct impression from some that ‘baby boomers’ really means ‘privileged white males’. — Brett

Was that meant to be a reply to me? If so, then I commend you for your efforts. Sometimes we need to hear these things so we can become aware of them. Only when we are aware of our biases can we address them.

White, Male) Baby Boomers benefited greatly from the New Deal and post-War economy and then fucked it up for younger generations, so they indeed suck — Maw

No, it was aimed at Maw.

Ok. It would be cool if you never gave a hint as to your age, ethnicity, gender, and other characteristics. Then you can keep pointing out other people’s Idols of the Mind. You could be like the Philosophy Forum’s anonymous conscience...

Yep. I’ve made up my mind. That’s the role I will give you. Now, into the world with you, lad! :grin:

How civilised you are.

How civilised you are. — Brett

I resent that, speaking as a white trash redneck. :blush:

To my point, I think it's pretty clear what ethnicity and gender took part in the society that you delineated

To my point, I think it's pretty clear what ethnicity and gender took part in the society that you delineated — Maw

I shouldn’t have to do this, but here goes:

The March on Washington. It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.

On March 7, 1965, the civil rights movement in Alabama took an especially violent turn as 600 peaceful demonstrators participated in the Selma to Montgomery March to protest the killing of a black civil rights activist by a white police officer and encourage legislation to enforce the 15th amendment.

The Black Panthers, also known as the Black Panther Party, was a political organisation founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

The Young Lords,Young Lords Organisation (YLO),Young Lords Party, and later again Young Lords, is a national civil and human rights movement. It was officially transformed from a Chicago turf gang under the leadership of Jose Cha Cha Jimenez on September 23, 1968,

The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s.

The National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers union, UFW).

During their medal ceremony in the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City in on October 16, 1968, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos each raised a black-gloved fist during the playing of the US national anthem, “The Star- Spangled Banner”.

Malcolm X. Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI) and the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) to emphasise Pan-Africanism.

Nor were the events of the sixties and seventies specifically American. It happened all over the world.

For instance:

The Soweto uprising, a series of demonstrations and protests led by black school children in South Africa that began on the morning of 16 June 1976.

I don't know why you two are arguing when it is perfectly clear that the only people capable of accomplishing great events are white people, and sometimes yellow hordes (thinking of Genghis Kahn), various Chinese emperors, the Japanese (helped with WWII). But mostly it was us whites: the American Revolution of course -- white on white violence; Civil War (white on whites on behalf of black people they had kept in slavery for their self-improvement, the British Empire (white people, again, on behalf of many, many helpless colored folk); the War of the Roses, 30 years war, 100 years war, 27 year war, 16 year war, a few dozen 1 and 2 year wars, WWI and WWII both started and fought by very white people mostly, (and the yellow horde) except for the brown people in various colonies who eagerly signed up out of immense gratitude to their colonial masters, The French and Spanish empires; the Reformation, the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, railroads, atom bombs, television, McDonalds, and so forth.

And on the other side, Jose Cha Cha Jimenez?

I wish I could be white.

I wish I could be white. — Brett

You’re not living up to the charter I drafted for you. Remember? Besides, being white trash isn’t all that great.

Besides, being white trash isn’t all that great. — Noah Te Stroete

Unless you’re really into NASCAR for instance.

What do Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, Jerry Garcia, the Beatles, Robert Crumb, Jane and Peter Fonda, Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, James Brown , Muhammad Ali, Janis Joplin , Jimi Hendrix, Andy Warhol and Ken Kesey have in common? Technically, none of them were Baby Boomers(1946-62).
The Boomers didnt invent the counterculture, they just jumped on the bandwagon. Musically, Boomers were more likely to have contributed to post-'60's trends like punk, disco and new wave.

"The young people these days, however, have a lot in common with the baby boomers of that time. They are passionate about big issues, they take a strong stance against corruption and oppression, and many of them are attracted to the same beliefs to which the baby boomers were attracted when they were younger."

To the extent that has any meaning beyond a broad generallzation, that would be precisely why the young people these days are exactly the opposite of the vanguard of the counterculture.
The measure of a movement's significance is bound up with how strongly it departs form the norms of the previous establishment. The norms handed down by the 60's counterculture(thinking outside the box, political activism, etc) have become the very definition of establishment thinking, which is =why so many millenialls and Z'ers still admire so much about the hippies. A social revolution as radicallizing as what took place 50 years ago would have to discover a new fork in the road that leaves behind the by-now stale , stifling 5 decade old rhetorical tropes that contemporary activists conform to.

Generational speach is not strictly 'generational', at least not just biopolitical. It refers also (and mostly) to the material conditions that came to be historically associated with those cohorts. That is why its relevant to distinguish between Gen Xers and Xillenials, and again between Xillenials and Millenials. While they are part of the same generational years, the material and formative conditions of their youth and early adulthood were significantly altered by their position in regards to the technological media revolution. I dont know why or how, but mass media's reach has become so great that it is now culturally relevant to distinguish between those who grew up in the golden years of the Simpsons and those who had to submit their brains to the filth of Family Guy's later seasons as a preteen.

So, no, 'blacks' werent specifically boomers. Or perhaps more accurately, black folks had conditions that were so specific to them that while they marked their times significantly, they didn't become a major engine of change as Boomers, or as part of the Boomer pathos, but rather as black folks. Boomers coopted (and continue to do so ever since) the language and history of the Black social mouvement because it conveniently fits their purpose and timeline.

As for hippies being cool, no, that is exactly my point. Hippies werent cool. Just about every single good impulse they had was actually fuelled by a barely conceiled libidinal forces. If they really wanted to set up viable alternatives to the capitalist lifestyle, their communes would at some point managed to set a working command economy with a functional yet fair distribution of labour, not the vectors for chlamydia infection that they pretty all ended up being. THAT is why the 'sexual revolution' basically consisted of lots of unsafe sex followed the acceptation of both the pharmaceutical corporate hold on sexuality, and this modern sexual lifestyle ethos which weirdly allows you to both have lots of uncommited sex AND yet doesnt constitute an obstacle to the capitalist need for productive and reproductive power. Because it was all about getting laid. "Yeah, ok, gays and lesbians can and probably should get laid too, so I guess we should fight for that too, but that'll come a bit after. Wait, what's a "in-ter-sex"...?". Once the social powers acknowledged that the sexual revolution had indeed happened and that they would divert their benevolent attention and open a market for it, hippies had no care in the world for pushing forward the sexual revolution agenda. That is also why its been left to the Zoomers to continue this agenda toward true sexual liberation. Sadly, Gen Xers and my generation were actually for the most part fooled into thinking the work had been done.

Obviously individuals are to be judged differently then mouvements. Kim Stanley Robinson, for example, is very often clearly guilty of being at the keyboard while horny. He's still a top tier hippie and a total bro.

It refers also (and mostly) to the material conditions that came to be historically associated with those cohorts. That is why its relevant to distinguish between Gen Xers and Xillenials, and again between Xillenials and Millenials. While they are part of the same generational years, the material and formative conditions of their youth and early adulthood were significantly altered by their position in regards to the technological media revolution. — Akanthinos

What geo-media event was so significant that it would serve as a watershed between age groups in the last 40 years? Sorry, I don't buy the idea that the difference between The Simpsons (kneel and genuflect) and Family Guy (thumbs down) was of bio-political or geo-political significance.

Hippies werent cool. Just about every single good impulse they had was actually fuelled by a barely concealed libidinal forces. — Akanthinos

Gasp! Hippies weren't cool?

According to Signmund Freud (who was not a hippie, last time i checked) EVERYBODY'S impulses are driven by barely concealed libidinal forces. Makes sense to me.

not the vectors for chlamydia infection that they pretty all ended up being. THAT is why the 'sexual revolution' basically consisted of lots of unsafe sex followed the acceptation of both the pharmaceutical corporate hold on sexuality, and this modern sexual lifestyle ethos which weirdly allows you to both have lots of uncommitted sex AND yet doesn't constitute an obstacle to the capitalist need for productive and reproductive power. — Akanthinos

I was not aware that chlamydia infections were the #1 disease concern i the hippie communes. Seems unlikely. For one, there was no diagnostic test for Chlamydia at that time. For two, even after decades of the sexual revolution, chlamydia is not a dominant health concern (and in saying so, I'm not discounting the seriousness of chlamydial infection). It seems more likely that your average hippie would have been more affected by gonorrhea (clap, drip), which present more dramatically and quicker than chlamydia. For three, "safe sex" or "safer sex" was not a concept in the hippie era. That term became current in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, 1981-1991. Safe sex changed to safer sex changed to harm reduction changed to PREP or ... whatever they are calling it now.

gays and lesbians can and probably should get laid too, so I guess we should fight for that too, but that'll come a bit after. — Akanthinos

Well, yes -- they should get laid too. Maybe they were getting laid a bit too much. But gays getting laid was part and parcel of the first round of the sexual revolution in the 1960s-1970s. (The sexual revolution extended well into the 1970s.)

Obviously individuals are to be judged differently then mouvements. Kim Stanley Robinson, for example, is very often clearly guilty of being at the keyboard while horny. He's still a top tier hippie and a total bro. — Akanthinos

Explain, please. This is a bit obscure.

“Generational speach is not strictly 'generational', at least not just biopolitical. It refers also (and mostly) to the material conditions that came to be historically associated with those cohorts.”

Shared Material conditions are way too broad a metric to differentiate a multitude of world views within a generation, or even a family.

There’s no mention by you of specific ideologies embraced by hippie leaders , from zen to Marcuse to existentialism and Schopenhauer. This is the core of the diverse set of the ideas that did indeeed
represent a revolutionary break with precious social mores.
Since the music played a central role in spreading such ideas, it’s worth mentioning the amount of mutual borrowing and influence tha went back and forth between artists, black and white. Motown artists covered Dylan and the Beatles as much as the Stones covered Motown.
Huey Newton and the panthers incorporated yippie theater and subversive lsd inspired themes. James brown led to parliament funkadelic , and
Psychedleicized funk. Marvin Gaye embraces feeemlove and mysticism on ‘What’s going on’.
So there was much overlap in the direction of new ideas n put forth by black and white, despite the differences.

I remember a lesson in the University, which was for those writing their master's thesis. When explaining about her thesis, a social history student girl went off on a rant on how awful and suffocating the 1950's were and how terrified she would have been living back then. The woman professor holding the lesson replied to her comments: "Hey! I grew up in the 1950's, it wasn't like that!"

I wonder why people hate so much the 1950's. The 1950's was basically the decade that people would have lived in the 1940's if there would have been all that war and killing back then going on. I wonder how barbaric will people later think of us who were born in the late 20th Century when time goes on.

Were baby boomers, as many gen-Xers claim, the worst generation? — Ilya B Shambat

Yes, absolutely.

There was this very dismal generation in the 9th Century AD, but even they weren't as bad as the boomers. :death:

I seem to have lost the thread a bit here. What exactly are we saying was so bad, the worst, about the ‘boomers’?

I wonder why people hate so much the 1950's. — ssu

For those of at least with some memory or knowledge of the 1950s, it wasn't a bad time. After all, what's not to like about a post-war boom? Houses being built, lots of guys going to college on VA benefits? The still-new Antibiotics? Millions of people getting married and starting families? Pretty much all good.

True, it was a bad time to have been a communist, or communist sympathizer in the 1930s or 1940s. The Army-McCarthy hearings on the infiltrations of communists and homosexuals into sensitive positions was definitely a chilling event. It wasn't a great time to be an out homosexual, either. We were, officially, sick--and fairly seriously sick, at that. On the other hand, all of the expulsions from the military of homosexuals at major ports (NYC, SF, LA) formed a critical mass of young gay men and women who as established adults by the late 1960s, would be the backbone of the gay community.

Was conformism any more of a dominant theme in American culture in 1955 than 1965 or 1975? Of course not. Group conformity and group deviance is pretty much a constant, always showing up in new costume.

What may have seemed like mass conformity to a person coming of age in 1990 and looking back, was the fact that the most of the parents of the Boomers (born before 1924, give or take a couple of years) were all relieved to be done with the depression and war, and were ready to rock and roll, even though rock and roll wasn't a thing yet.

The boomers weren't a very strong influence in the 1950s -- they couldn't be, since the oldest of them would only be 15 by 1960. It was the 1960s when the baby boom hit college and adulthood. Traditional values (whatever those are) probably were fairly firmly in place for the parents of the baby boom generation. The greater experimentation and deviation of the 1960s doesn't make the 1950s a period of conformity. Maybe it was just a period of "normality".

The 50s did have some stressors, for sure: There were concerns about fallout from nuclear tests; I grew up in the upper midwest and we were dusted a few times with (American) testing fallout. There were fears about a nuclear war and Soviet aggression in Europe; there was the Korean war; there was a mild hysteria about communism; there was the Suez crisis; there was a polio epidemic; there was a recession in the late 50s.

I think Bitter Crank has an IQ of at least 145. He’s like an encyclopedia.

some of us are saying there was nothing wrong with the boomers. We, like people born before and after us, were shaped by unique circumstances. If there is something that really differentiates the boomers from the two generations after their arrival in 1960, it is the fact that they were born during times of diminished expectations, rather than expanding expectations (which began during the 1970s). The Boomers did not invent diminished expectations. Some observers say it was peak oil (if it was passed in 1973 (-/+) that triggered the slide. Others say it was globalization, or Reaganomics (favoring the rich), or wasteful military spending on Star Wars, and so on. Baby boomers didn't escape diminished expectations altogether. The richer 25% of baby boomers maybe did, maybe not; the poorer 75% definitely did not.

And Reagan was no baby boomer. Generation X is just as much to blame as the boomers for the continuation of Reaganomics.

I don't think so. I don't know what my IQ is. There are vast encyclopedias of info I know zero about. On some subjects I can fake encyclopedic knowledge because I've had a lot of time in the last several years to read a lot. If an expert on some topic I wrote glibly about challenged me, they'd find my installed base of information to be kind of thin.

The other thing is a reasonably good memory. There are also the frequent consultations with Google and Wikipedia which you don't know about. I can't remember where I left my keys, but I do remember bits of stuff from documentaries, most of it is useless.

Naw. You’re a pretty smart bloke.

Naw. You’re a pretty smart bloke. — Noah Te Stroete

Indeed he is. :cool: