07-28-2020, 03:54 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-28-2020, 04:28 PM by Eric the Green.)
(07-28-2020, 02:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(07-28-2020, 02:00 PM)Einzige Wrote:
Einzige
(07-28-2020, 01:33 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: A Mega-2T would have to feature an intense Awakening, just as you consider the mega-3T to have a longer and more characteristic 3T.
This intensity however could just as easily be an intellectual intensity as an emotive one.
The Missionary Awakening was probably our most intellectually driven Awakening in American history. There was real debate on the anti-capitalist Left in that period in a way that there simply was not in the Boom.Awakening: in other words, there was more real content on the Missionary end of things than among the Boomers.
The Boom Awakening was intellectually weak and shallow for an Awakening. Psychedelic twists are not enough to make a great Awakening in culture. Note well that what followed was a 3T that at times featured extreme anti-intellectualism. Shopping malls, prosperity-cult religion, Reagan, and reality TV. Yuk!
But the Consciousness Revolution (again, it should NOT be called the Boom Awakening, as I keep pointing out; an Awakening is not the work only of a prophet generation!!) was YUM YUMMY! Like never before. It deepened enormously our understanding of spiritual religion. It was very deep in every way. Just because in our society Awakenings are suppressed, and therefore you and others don't know what happened or what was written and created in them, does NOT mean it did not exist! The best writers of the Consciousness Revolution were Silent Generation members, as were many great prophets like Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis.
Psychedelics and psychedelic culture offered the greatest potential EVER for opening up creativity and sensitivity. It was not only enough to make a great awakening, it made one. Just because our predominantly technological and materialist society whose spirituality is co-opted by shallow and oppressive religion cannot recognize and value the continuing richness of these arts and ways of living, does not mean they do not exist. You are well-versed in Bach and Mahler and so forth, but how much do you know of ambient electronic music? Not featured on mainstream outlets or recognized by academies, there are still so many artists of this genre everywhere doing so much great work that it boggles the mind, and even I, who hosts an internet program dedicated to it, cannot possibly keep up with it all.
Our 3T was pretty yukky, but I doubt it was much better than the 1920s, except that the yukky parts lasted longer. Still, in its early years I liked very much the Live Aid, the Hands across America, the Harmonic Convergence, and the wide distribution of new age culture and philosophy, and in the middle I liked the raves and the second summer of love and the fall of communism. But shopping malls were created in the 1T; the 3T just made them into huge indoor extravaganzas.
Quote:Quote:(B) The Boom Awakening counterculture was ultra-individualistic and by no means had any real anti-capitalist commitments. Even Bernie Sanders is simply a social democrat - his policies would leave production for exchange untouched.
... and that is the fault of the Boom Awakening: it was more about breaking free from institutions than about reforming them.
The hippies set up a new society based on free exchange and higher consciousness. It was a wonderful demonstration of what is possible. But it existed within the predominant materialistic, capitalist society. Nowadays, such a hippie society is too hard to establish because life is too expensive. Predominant capital has become too concentrated. If a middle class is established again and prices come down, perhaps another experiment can be done in the next Awakening. S&H prophecized that "Pepperland will recur".
The Consciousness Revolution established People Power as the primary method of revolution in our times. It aims to stop the machine and clog up the works until change can begin. But you are correct, reforms are needed once the machine stops long enough for freedom to be reborn.
The CR was not limited to utopian experiments by people in their twenties. Powerful reform movements happened and began. The Great Society reforms belong to the 2T, and they were expanded upon. The Clean Air and Water acts and the EPA were major reforms that followed the largest demonstration in world history, staffed by lots of hippies and hippie-elder visionaries-- Earth Day 1970. There could be no better reform than this, and boomers deserve credit for it. Further ecological reform movements continue from that day to this, and Earth Day was re-established in 1990. The civil rights law was followed by the Voting Rights Act, and then the National Organization for Women founded on the exact date of Uranus conjunct Pluto, June 30, 1966. I felt that cosmic energy and verified the correlation I predicted to exist, because there was "something in the air." Remember that. Ralph Nader began the consumer rights movement in 1966 too. That made a huge difference to the safety of what we buy. Also followed the grape boycott, united farm workers, and other movements for hispanics and chicanos. Gay Liberation followed from the Stonewall riot in NY in 1969, and gay marriage and gay rights were important reforms too. Boomers like me participated in these movements, and also staffed the McGovern canpaign. Although it failed miserably, you can't say that those of us who participated in it were not interested in reform, and it paved the way for left-wing candidates today like Bernie Sanders, who will have some influence on Joe Biden if he is elected.
The Consciousness Revolution contained as much reform energy as any other Awakening or 4T.
Quote:The Right found ways in which to co-opt religion and spirituality. Religion can offer Pie in the Sky When You Die as a substitute for prosperity and justice in This World. Note well that the elites need do nothing to create the pie in the sky. But the Right can make life miserable and demand that people endorse their own suffering, even having to praise their exploiters.
Quite so, and thus the need for New Age and other esoteric kinds of religion that are based on inner-discovery and eternal principles discovered within, rather than on just another power-play. The New Age as originally conceived and perceived remains, and un-co-opted, even despite its being co-opted by those who allow themselves to be such.
The elites can build their steel and concrete pies high up into the sky like Trump Tower, but it only lasts a few years, and then they must reckon with the hereafter just like everyone else. They must encounter the real pie in the sky when they die. And while still here, they may also discover to their dismay that health is the only real wealth.
But gaining greater knowledge of where we all have to go within just a few years, seems to me the true "last frontier" of exploration and discovery, rather than outer space. Every civilization but ours has recognized this. True life here on Earth must be related to that truer eternal life beyond this life. But instead of belief and dogma, and perhaps some real experience, now we have the chance to scientifically as well as spiritually discover and learn about this other life. That is our greatest project from now on. This life is pitifully short, and unless something remains within the eternal soul, it is utterly meaningless and fruitless. What we pass on to others here? For WHOM? Others who just die in turn? Life in this modern story is but a walking shadow, a poor player fretting and strutting an hour on the stage, and then heard no more. It's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Thus the increasing nihilistic perception of today that life has no value, and thus our mistreatment of one another in a disposable society. To create a truly sustainable and reformed material society on Earth, we need to rediscover and further-discover Spirit and Soul. So, keep the spirit alive.
Quote:The world will be quite different when people recognize that they do not need status symbols. People will still need dwellings of some sort, transportation, food, medical care, a narrow range of temperature, and of course some fun and enlightenment. People who hate their lives either obliterate themselves or turn to revolutionary and destructive revolts.
I wonder if the next 1T will bring back status symbols, like the ones the previous 1T so established and depended upon.