posted by perkiset on Nov 11

Last night I took my family to go see Across The Universe. After having looked at the trailer I was mildly interested – we really went for my daughter who thought it’d be a cool love story. What I found was a 60’s tail wrapped in 21st century production values, a reverent updating of a wide variety of Beatles music and imagery that was simply breathtaking.

But what I really walked away with was a pit in my stomach, because the film made even more clear and obvious the nature of the young and focused people of that time, compared to the apathetic and selfish young people that populate my America today.

Now to be sure, if you are a Guiliani supporter and believe that we could have “won in Vietnam” if we’d just stayed longer, this film is not for you – but frankly neither is my blog so simply get away from me now – your mere presence is polluting my webspace. But I digress.

So to my question: Where have all the hippies gone? The people of the 60s were willing to put themselves on the line to cure a monstrous ill… which was our involvement in Viet Nam. I was brought back to Kent State, End The War marches, the civil rights movement, the fantastic diversity in music, the acceptance of all things different… and the repressive governmental and old-societal forces that pushed back. The 60s represented a time of enlightenment – the dawning of the age of Aquarius. A time when we threw off the confining borders of the cold-war ethos, a time when we yearned to be more that we were told we could be – a time when the best parts of the utopian notion seemed with grasp.

Of course that very mental and spiritual enlightenment also brought about the drug culture as well as sexual freedom that was so repulsive to a great many in the U. S. – so much so, that we gave rise to the contemporary conservative movement and the birth of the Goldwater conservatives. That movement has been bastardized and mutated into the neocon movement that created the war in Iraq, the notion of Values Voters and a push to constitutionally ban same sex marriage. Which in turn has begat the modern progressive movement.

By why is the moderm progressive movement so seemingly less effective than the hippies of old?

In my opinion, because it’s the same people. And they are tired, older, are less willing to claim that “Possessions are a bummer” and in fact ARE over 30 and therefore untrustable . The younger generation that might be moved by what we as a nation are doing are interested in changing the world only in as much as it affects their ability to play video games and interact in their own way. Has Internet Fund Raising been effective? Yes of course! Has it actually gotten people to talk about issues more? Yes of course! But computers will not line up at the foot of the Washington monument mall and scream for peace and justice. And the problem, is that the very thing that has made us more capable of communicating is in fact makin us more lazy and unwilling to do the REAL work of getting out there and letting our faces be seen. Regardless of how big the number is in an online-poll to change a piece of legislation, this is NO SUBSTITUTE for actually getting out there and being seen.

Don’t get me wrong – by simply reading my piece and forming an opinion of me for-or-against, you are doing something – you are thinking. But that’s still not the same as the commitment and conviction that my parents had when they were pissed off enough to try to move the earth… and stop a horrible international excursion and the deaths of countless Vietnamese people (as well as our own boys and girls) with marches, sit ins, rallys and all manner of peaceful civil disobedience.

Perhaps if we simply could get Dick Vader or his Imperial Lord And Master Dubya Bush to drop a little window pane our world would start to shift again. But again, I digress.

The answer is not just to be pissed off, but to actually do something about it. Be willing to speak out to your neighbor that takes smack about liberals. Be willing to attack, head on, the forces that make hate seem more acceptable than love. Be willing to fight for the notion of live and let live.

You say you want a revolution?
Well you know, we all want to change the world.

Well,

All you need is love.

Go see Across The Universe. Watch, listen and apply the imagery that confronts you to the world around you. If you’re not moved and a bit pissed off, then you need to read someone else’s blog.