I'm not sure what people should do, though. Do you care about anything? At all? You can support society as it exists, the status quo, I mean I assume someone out there thinks this is anything other than absolute shit, I'm not sure why. But somehow, we're here. And this shit exists. So if you support the status quo, I suppose great, you actually have something to support.
But suppose you think it's shit. Most people I know seem to think it's shit. Where do you go? Do you become an SJW? This is the worst kind of controlled opposition there is. You're literally just supporting the status quo under another name. Antifa? BLM? All corporate controlled shit.
The hippies were more or less in the same situation, although it was not as obvious back then. I know a lot of ex-hippies, neo-hippies and their ilk, and they're mostly good people. Kind of dumb but good people.
So where exactly does a well intentioned person who cares about the state of the world and is very troubled by where it's going go? I mean short of becoming the Unabomber or some other crazed maniac, what the fuck is there to do?
It really seems the only thing to do is drop out entirely, become an alienated, depressed isolationist, or go on a spree.
Don't tell me that being a hippie is worse than that.
I care about a lot of stuff to be honest. I volunteer at a local food bank, and otherwise try to be conscious of what I'm doing, but not obsessive and not a sanctimonious arse in real life or prone to simplistic solutions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all. Maybe its daoist, but the Gondola meme really got to me. I'm just not a utopian, and have very, very large delusions about anything utopian. The world isn't all pain, its not all good, and perspective is important- I think the big thing is to just not become nihilistic.
I actually think that a lot of the social movements are ironically just that. Its finding out there are are some injustices in the world, not being able to stand that, and rightfully being outraged. I just think that the outrage sometimes blinds people to the good in life as well, and sometimes the response to the outrage leads people down some roads that unleash things that can also have negative effects on society, that look good from far away- but the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side.
I think that adults have to realize, at some point or the other, that the messiah complex that most youth have just isn't realistic and if you can rile up the mob, usually riling up a mob has a habit of backfiring. I also don't think we need to change the world. We need to be concious of our role in the world at large, to try and minimize damage as much as is reasonable, but otherwise its more important to try and make the things within your immediate life and community better. Scope creep is a really psychologically damning thing when it comes to social justice. I'm not saying don't care about a tribe in East Timur getting slaughtered, make an active choice to try and avoid Indonesian goods if you can, but its not something worth falling on your sword for and forgetting your own local community's issues over. A lot of social justice, with forgetting the proles because theyre working class, but solidarity with x group in Tanzania seems to parallel on that in its most toxic form.
I don't like or think the unabomber is actually all that wise. I think he did a lot of wrong, and his ideology isn't even all that sound. Hes really just a recalcitrant luddite who thinks we can put the genie back into the bottle and turn back time. Maybe its more accelerationist (not the stupid collapsionist stuff that people laud), but a lot of our current society I do see as pretty inevitable. I also don't like living in the woods and like my technology. The right step would probably be to imagine a technological society differently, rather than imagine it not existing at all in its modern incarnation. Killing people over this sort of thing, just seems unironically autistic.
I don't think people should get depressed. I think the world will continue living, and just because its not a perfect world doesn't mean you don't try and take the time to look at the flowers as you go through it. Think Gondola, thats really the best of memes. Its a really shitty world in a lot of places. Put out a helping hand if you can, but don't get angry if people don't take your hand, and don't take it personally. Don't try and take on the entirety of the world's sins on your shoulder, thats entirely crushing. To add in another religious analogy, its a christ like messianic position to take, and something that most religions would teach you is unhealthy, psychologically damaging, and a bit narsissistic, tbh.
How do you think a Buddhist monk feels in a temple, knowing the darkness the world has? They acknowledge it, and find peace in accepting it, accepting their own meager role, and when their own meager abilities allow them to make a positive change- do so as opportunity presents itself and not obsessing over the cases where opportunity for change simply does not manifest.
This is TLDR at this point, but the reason I dislike hippies is they get a lot of that stuff wrong. Was talking with a friend about the current "Sex positive" movement now, and how it just seemed really anything but sex positive. It seemed more, nihilistic? More coomsoomerist, more self-indulgent, and more atomized- rendering individuals just the sum of their sexual validation from strangers. I don't think that hippies are worst than deranged doomers, but they have their own problems and a lot of them seem pretty dumb. The same way "woooo, drugs!" opened a dark side of humanity and was portrayed in a positive manner, a lot of naive thinking can actually just turn out to be just another form of an indulgent lifestyle that doesn't even necessarily open someone up to some of the greater things in life, it only makes them sink deeper.
Thats part of why I didn't like capitalism in the first place, I saw it as inherently a nihilistic approach to living and life as a whole. Its why, liberals, hippies, or whomever like to talk about how sex work is liberating, drugs are liberating, porn is liberating, this is sex-positive, that is sex-positive, cheap commodities are liberating, and a lot of it seems good natured, if quite recalcitrant, but when replicated as a mass level within society it can become another trap unto itself that people get sucked into. Where the
hate comes from is (and maybe thats a stronger word than how I actually feel), is that a lot of societal problems I do believe stem from ill thought out social drives that didn't turn out all that well for everyone. When things go fucky, its usually the bourjy types of people who are fine and the poor who suffer. Most hippies don't awknowledge that. In black communities, the 60s liberated the culture from a pretty stable social bedrock in a really fucked up way when the church was tossed out. Obsession with sex and liberation of sex saw a massive rise in prostitution within the poorer segments in society. Thats why I really dislike the hippies, and I see a lot of parallels between their generation, and antifa today.
