Post #49,974
8/20/02 9:21:57 PM
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I am (barely) quite literally a child of the 60's
Born 1969.
Growing up I was well aware that the hippy dream was largely founded on unexamined hypocrisy. And I got to the point where I stopped finding it coincidental that a lot of assholes couldn't stop talking about the era of love. (Friends report that the worst concert audiences to deal with were invariably the yuppies at 60's revivals.)
Sure, there were sincere people involved in the 60's. But it seems that for every person who thought and honestly tried, there were a dozen who were willing to chant slogans and go to rallys because of easy sex.
Given all of that, I am not willing to accept the claim that the peace movement in the 60's deserves to be regarded as "progress".
Cheers,
Ben
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930-2002)
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Post #49,976
8/20/02 9:39:24 PM
8/20/02 9:40:40 PM
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There were good deeds done in the 1960's.
More than in the 1980's and 1990's combined.
My issue is with the motivation for those good deeds. In the presence of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, to name just two, how can you say that the 60's does not deserve to "...be regarded as 'progress'"?
Perhaps you are a "Constitutional minimalist"? Is a black man worth < 1 white man?
<Foster's Lager spelling corrections in Edit>
Edited by mmoffitt
Aug. 20, 2002, 09:40:40 PM EDT
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Post #49,983
8/20/02 9:52:38 PM
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Note the qualification on my last sentence
To specify that the peace movement wasn't progress.
Most people that I knew who glorified the 60's were far more involved in the peace movement than civil rights. They are the ones that I have the strongest impressions of, and hence the ones that I ranted about. But my impressiond second and third hand of the civil rights movement are much better.
Hence my (rather significant) qualification up front, exactly to exclude the civil rights movement.
Cheers,
Ben
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930-2002)
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Post #49,982
8/20/02 9:50:55 PM
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And OT: YOU are a Gen-X'er.
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Post #49,985
8/20/02 9:59:22 PM
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Nope
I miss Gen X by nearly a decade. Gen X happened when all of those teenagers in "The Summer of Love" grew up, settled down, and got serious about having kids. I was born in a baby bust.
And I have even less in common with Gen X than most people my age. My father served in WW II (I was his last kid), and I grew up without a TV. Neither of which left me in sync with the kids around me.
Cheers,
Ben
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930-2002)
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Post #50,061
8/21/02 4:54:30 PM
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Oh yes you are.
Google it ;-) Mostly X'ers are defined w/birthdays from 1960 or 1961 through 1980 or 1981. That's you, buddy :-) Generation Born Builder 1920-1942 Baby Boomer 1943-1960 Generation X 1961-1981 Generation Y 1982-2000 [link|http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cafamilies/generations.html|Example 1] Tulgan defines Generation Xers as those with birthdates falling between 1963 and 1977 ... [link|http://www.gca.org/attend/2000_conferences/Spectrum_2000/note3.htm|Another Example with different dates]
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Post #50,069
8/21/02 5:13:20 PM
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Square peg -> Round hole
While I don't dispute the validity of your dates and categories, I don't think that those of us born in the sixties ('65 here) fit with the GenX'ers. The term [link|http://www.tweeners.org/|"Tweener"] has been thrown around to describe those of us caught between the Boomers and the X'ers. I'm not sure how well it has caught on, but I think it works nicely since I'd rather not be associated with either, thankyouverymuch.
"With the bravery of being out of range." - Roger Waters
Cliff
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Post #50,081
8/21/02 6:59:26 PM
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Exactly
There was a baby boom after WW II, that is generally known as "The Baby Boom". Then there was a baby bust, which is when I was born. Then the Baby Boomers had kids and you had another Baby Boom, and that is what I think of as generation X.
The people in the middle don't share that much with either baby boom, and in my experience don't like being associated with either.
Cheers,
Ben
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930-2002)
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Post #50,166
8/22/02 12:08:35 PM
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Guess that's something we have in common...
Born in '71, I never felt like part of the "hard rock"/disco is dead croud growing up in the '80s - but then I didn't really fit into the Gen-X Seattle Grunge scene, either.
There are 10 types of people. Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
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Post #50,171
8/22/02 12:57:19 PM
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Ben, Cliff, it's called "denial" ;-)
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Post #50,175
8/22/02 1:32:10 PM
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Isn't that a river in Egypt?
It isn't just denial, its "plausible denial."* I say that I'm a "tweener" and not an Xer. That's my story and I'm a-stickin' to it. So there. :)
*Note: I've seen it work before. . .
"With the bravery of being out of range." - Roger Waters
Cliff
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Post #50,419
9/4/02 4:14:03 PM
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Good one. You should run for office ;-)
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Post #49,994
8/21/02 1:48:48 AM
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Generalize 3rd hand a bit more and..
You can pretend that "Muricans today generally are" as alive? focused, interested? and involved - as in late '60's through much of the '70s. Really Ben, I don't think you can wing this one, the 'mood' of an era which you might have noticed ending -from afar- at about 6 years of age.
'Hippy' was transmogrified from the prior Kerouac, 'Beat' stereotypes, became the grab-bag label one could fill with any uncomfortable, uncouth qualities one planned next to dis (as one puffed-up one's own Bag du jour).
Hell, I recall as a 17 yo kid with my first scooter.. (a snazzy Museum of Modern Art-grade Lambretta 125 LD) bumping into a guy who was admiring it parked outside a local beanery - in the Tenderloin dist. of SF. Said he was an artist (! WTF did I know about being 'an artist' ??) I guess for sentimentality from Roma days and a nostalgic ride? - he hopped on back and showed me some of what later became Cathedrals of the Beats et al:
The Black Cat cafe, Ferlinghetti's bookstore, folks hanging about. He split on encountering some friends. I wandered, had a few naive conversations - learned an iota about whole groups I'd never encountered. (Turned out he really Was an artist - one Ken Potter, whose work I saw years later. Obviously a bunch of other folk thought he was, too).
Point? That was a minor Presence + first-degree hearsay and.. I don't know shit (save what I've heard and read) about: what I Saw, about the milieu or especially - who these people really Were. Then and later. Not from my experience, even after some later trips back. It was a mere taste albeit an eye-opening one. From outside, and not only via age.
I don't think you know any more about 'Hippies' or their natural antagonists - either. And especially not about - their 'average degree of hypocrisy'? VS 'the norm'. Not because you have it some% wrong but because - it's all just remote hearsay.
And you don't know shit about the 'peace' movement and its range of participants.. from the casual to the fanatical. Either. Logic isn't enough here.
Not like you to take the EZ Murican homogenization tack, so readily.
Ashton
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Post #50,000
8/21/02 6:46:42 AM
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Alternate hypothesis for you
You are assuming that I am forming my opinions out of complete and utter ignorance. And are wondering why I would choose to do that.
The alternate hypothesis is that I formed my opinion because growing up I knew a few too many ex-hippies, including some who were part of the beat movement, and I got sick and tired of self-congratulatory BS from that angle. I also knew more than a few too many fucked up people wandering around trying to figure out what had changed who thought that the world should consider them enlightened forever because they were at Woodstock.
I won't - and didn't - say that all hippies were shallow hypocrites. Or that they didn't think they were trying to change the world. But an undue proportion of the ones who were still talking about how great it was a decade after..?
Ben
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930-2002)
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Post #50,043
8/21/02 1:13:22 PM
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OT: Ben got the 50,000th post overall
-YendorMike
What if the hokey pokey really is what it's all about?
- Jimmy Buffett, June 20, 2002, Tinley Park
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Post #50,046
8/21/02 2:10:31 PM
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Milestone Woot!
===
Microsoft offers them the one thing most business people will pay any price for - the ability to say "we had no choice - everyone's doing it that way." -- [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=38978|Andrew Grygus]
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Post #50,074
8/21/02 6:16:50 PM
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Wasn't even looking
Didn't I get post 100,000 on the original IWE forums as well?
And post 99,999 at Perlmonks is [link|http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=99999|antithesis].
Cheers,
Ben
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930-2002)
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Post #50,056
8/21/02 4:32:08 PM
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OK Man___ I dig the post-prandial 'self-congratulatory' part
Stalemate I guess.. the loud-mouths always tend to portray the worst aspects* - and we don't hear from the quiet ones who learned a few things and went on.
* while taking credit for the better - casting doubts that there ever was any ... 'better', considering the source. Catch 42
{sigh}
Ashton
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Post #50,021
8/21/02 10:15:49 AM
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Re: the Peace Movement
It deserves capitalization. I lived in D.C. in the early 70's. I was there. I saw it, I participated. The peace marches and protests were NOT just a bunch of hippies shouting slogans. Hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life succeeded in forcing our gov. to end an insane war. How is that not progress?
Re-elect Gore in 2004
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