07-30-2020, 07:04 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-30-2020, 07:09 PM by Eric the Green.)
In the counter-culture, the human potential movement, the new age movement, and other fields, it was said by one of its practitioners that we were now going to discover what it fully means to be a human being. It was THAT significant.
People had discovered being human to some degree before, no doubt. The Greeks demonstrated the spirit of victory and beauty. The Christians discovered agape and spiritual healing, and their medieval followers discovered amour and dedicated devotion, expressed in unequalled, soaring craftsmanship. In the age of revolution, in Wordsworth's words, blessed was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven. And the dreams of Natural Man were no longer confined to some island who knows where, but in the very world which is the world of all of us. Wordsworth truly did have the best words. The transcendentalists put us in touch with the Oversoul and Walden Pond. Through the 20th century, the depth psychologists, existentialists, modern artists, new scientists and beat poets explored the forbidding darkness of the void of commercial and communist culture, and opened the door to the next level to come.
Only in the sixties though, did we discover how to live without recourse to external authority; how to truly live from the heart and to release our impulses; to be authentic with each other instead of behaving according to some program or internalized gyroscope. Natural Man returned again, in full flower. Psychedelics tore a hole in normal consciousness that can't be closed again on Planet Earth, and the new life (as the late Tom Wolfe described it) and the new culture followed it up with the most widespread distribution of both ancient and new spiritual wisdom and practices ever seen. As Joni Mitchell sang of Woodstock, it was the time of man (although soon we learned to say "human" instead). It was the time when we learned to be human, and its legacy lives on in its discoveries and in the authenticity of our being. And so do all the liberal political and social movements that the era unleashed, which as John Lewis said, will make good trouble for the old and unfair ways.
So did this cause Reaganomics? Really? I hardly think so.
It did unleash human self-empowerment, which Reaganoids co-opted and appealed to in a totally fraudulent way. It's not the new culture's fault that many people were fooled by the charming faux-macho actor. But the counter-culture itself was also collectivist and, yes, not so different from the authentic Marxism Einzige describes, except that it correctly realizes that no just, equal, workable society can ever be built unless there's an enlightened spirit among us that reveals to us the miracle and divinity of humanity, and all of life and being, and which liberates us from our own personal reactive fears, greeds and indulgences. Human society will always be composed of flawed human beings. But the dawn of a new society depends on renewal among humans, always and forever. May human potential continue to unfold and transcend more of its flaws. There's something in the air! The revolution's here. And you know it's right. And you know that it's right. We have got to get it together. May the spirit of the sixties be kept alive!
People had discovered being human to some degree before, no doubt. The Greeks demonstrated the spirit of victory and beauty. The Christians discovered agape and spiritual healing, and their medieval followers discovered amour and dedicated devotion, expressed in unequalled, soaring craftsmanship. In the age of revolution, in Wordsworth's words, blessed was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven. And the dreams of Natural Man were no longer confined to some island who knows where, but in the very world which is the world of all of us. Wordsworth truly did have the best words. The transcendentalists put us in touch with the Oversoul and Walden Pond. Through the 20th century, the depth psychologists, existentialists, modern artists, new scientists and beat poets explored the forbidding darkness of the void of commercial and communist culture, and opened the door to the next level to come.
Only in the sixties though, did we discover how to live without recourse to external authority; how to truly live from the heart and to release our impulses; to be authentic with each other instead of behaving according to some program or internalized gyroscope. Natural Man returned again, in full flower. Psychedelics tore a hole in normal consciousness that can't be closed again on Planet Earth, and the new life (as the late Tom Wolfe described it) and the new culture followed it up with the most widespread distribution of both ancient and new spiritual wisdom and practices ever seen. As Joni Mitchell sang of Woodstock, it was the time of man (although soon we learned to say "human" instead). It was the time when we learned to be human, and its legacy lives on in its discoveries and in the authenticity of our being. And so do all the liberal political and social movements that the era unleashed, which as John Lewis said, will make good trouble for the old and unfair ways.
So did this cause Reaganomics? Really? I hardly think so.
It did unleash human self-empowerment, which Reaganoids co-opted and appealed to in a totally fraudulent way. It's not the new culture's fault that many people were fooled by the charming faux-macho actor. But the counter-culture itself was also collectivist and, yes, not so different from the authentic Marxism Einzige describes, except that it correctly realizes that no just, equal, workable society can ever be built unless there's an enlightened spirit among us that reveals to us the miracle and divinity of humanity, and all of life and being, and which liberates us from our own personal reactive fears, greeds and indulgences. Human society will always be composed of flawed human beings. But the dawn of a new society depends on renewal among humans, always and forever. May human potential continue to unfold and transcend more of its flaws. There's something in the air! The revolution's here. And you know it's right. And you know that it's right. We have got to get it together. May the spirit of the sixties be kept alive!