60s/70s Student Activists/Hippies Vs 2010's Millennials

[8bitagent]

One of the many things I love about RI, is that a lot of people over the years on here actually got to live through the 60's and 70's, that my Gen X have only been able to glean about via documentaries, books, etc. And one of my favorite sub-sub-sub niche documentary film topics is the anti war 60's student activists and 60s/70s hippy communes. Or the overall 60's/70's counter-culture.

I'm 38, but my overall impression of 20 somethingers is often times clouded by the know-nothing trendy iphone barista hipster variety.

But for those old enough to remember the 1960s civil rights/womens rights/anti-war student coalitions, and 60's/70s era hippies...how would they compare to the so called millennials of today?
Were they more free spirited, but more racist? Less engaged in LGBTQ rights, or more open to philosophy?

My image of late 60s college protestors are brave, insanely awakened, community oriented warriors...while my view of 20 somethingers is often of iphone obsessed trendies...
but the recent support of the Dakota Pipeline and Bernie Sanders gave me a bit of hope.

[Freitag]

I'm not old enough to remember. But when I was younger my impression of the 60s/70s, formed from books and documentaries, was that everyone was a hippy. But of course it wasn't like that. Hippies got all the press but straight society never went anywhere. It's a mixed bag, like anything else. I sympathize with the crop of idealistic, well-read intellectual types standing up for their ideals. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test blew my mind, I love all that stuff. But of course the criminal element came in and ruined everything, and nobody had any money without jobs, and the State thought it was a commie plot so all the headwinds just killed the movement. Today my opinion of hippies is much more negative. I just associate them with homelessness, body odor, drug use, and financial irresponsibility. (I do respect the activism, and understand that not all activists were hippies.)

Anyway, back on topic - I'd say the original hippies were more intellectual than millennials. They were well-read. Young people today can't even spell (how old did that make me sound). They share disaffection, but not the attention span to do anything about it. Whatever. It's all generalizations and stereotypes anyway.

[NeonLX]

I'll be damned if I know. And I lived during the 1960s and 1970s. My viewpoint is clouded by the fact I was at one time optimistic. And probably hopelessly naive. Also, I was quite isolated, being a farm kid in a rural area. But most of my cohorts were anti-war, as we watched the carnage of the Vietnam war on teevee, and had friends & relatives get killed over there. I'd like to think that the media were a bit less propagandistic in those days, but again, see my naivete.

[Wombaticus Rex]

"Activists/Hippies" is egregious, my sweet fuck. Hippies are lifestyle consumers, every bit as vapid and selfish as Generation iPhone.

"60s/70s" makes sense since "The Sixties" is a concept quite detached from the actual decade spanning from 1960-1969, but lumping activists in with hippies is a recipe for total category collapse.

[barracuda]

Hippie/activist:

hippie.jpg

[Wombaticus Rex]

Via: http://rigint.blogspot.com/2006/06/chan ... on_23.html

Yesterday on the RI board, "Johnny Nemo" remembered Abbie Hoffman saying "There were all these activists, you know, Berkeley radicals, White Panthers... all trying to stop the war and change things for the better. Then we got flooded with all these 'flower children' who were into drugs and sex. Where the hell did the hippies come from?"

[norton ash]

Tantra-induced delusional syndrome, of course. Don't you read the front page?

[brekin]

Being around quite a few millennials last few years daily, I have to say that most of them remind me of the 80's. From what I remember of the 80's (and obviously this was my umwelt) it was very apolitical, competitive, unemphatic, materialistic (worshiping plastic crap), anti-fashion & anti-musical (while putting great stress on what you wore and listened to), individualistic and alienating, with an unwarranted faith in technology improving everything, and with disdainful, detached irony as default operating mode.

Most of the hippies/activists of the 60s/70s I'd met later (late 80's early 90's) seemed to have been converted in the 70's or 80's to the inner ethos of the 80's, while holding to deep freezed nostalgia of their "golden ages", even if they became retroactively much more hippie and activist then they were in effect during that time. Those who actually seemed to continue living their 60's lifestyle/creeds/ethos I think (and I know this will sound flip and too easy) had more to do with pot use (which kind of made them default suburban outlaws in the anti-drug craze of the 80's) or lived more rural or West Coast, so operated more as those exiled during or colonies of the 60's. Sadly more than long hair, politics, or music, pot was the membership card to be a hippy/activist for many of the flower generation. Now that pot is becoming increasingly more legal, we are all now "hippies", and many from the 60's and 70's who gave up on the establishment decades ago, there one great battle now won, will probably just turn on their Jerry Garcia and finally and completely turn on and tune out forever.

I have to say, though, activists (and even activist/advocate personalities) I meet or run into these days minted in the 60's & 70's are still quite impressive in facilitating/organizing/rapping about social issues, come across as very authentic and heart felt, even if they have no real end games or long game solutions.
Activists from the 60's seemed to be FOR something. Activists from the 80's just seemed to be AGAINST things. (The 70's it seems everyone got heavy into drugs or religion/cults). The 90's seemed a good balance between being FOR something overall (no matter how vague, hello Seattle Protests) and fracturing into "lifestyles" that were about being AGAINST many things, (being a a fifth or eight degree -ist or -an, of multiple isms). Millennial activists, on the other hand seem to have a much, much more short conception of strategy over tactics and instead of FOR or AGAINST something, it's WHAT CAN THIS DO FOR ME? I think that is why most of their protests/organizing come across as impromptu and spontaneous tantrums and snively entitlement blame sessions. I'll blame the easy culprit of technology making showing up and getting your picture or video taken as the goal. Like most of all social media its not about relationships, but the artifact that promotes you the best over everyone else. Activists now seem not to want to prevent or draw attention to a Kent State, but want to be the picture of the iconic girl at Kent State. How else to show how more noble/suffering/enlightened/progressive/committed one is over the millions online self promoting? Social media seems to fracture most mass movements, unless a main strategy and operating procedure is to remain anonymous.

I have to say there really is nothing more depressing than millenial activists vilifying and shaming their 60's/70's era parents/grand parents in authority positions. Who themselves masochistically have never forgiven themselves for becoming part of the establishment and want to be applauded for being so progressive, inclusive, and open minded, not understanding that the role they have to play now is the authoritarian heavy. And as its never been easier to mobilize and inform people of an action, there is less and less debate and thought of whether 1. There should be and 2. What then? The internet has promoted the amateur and hobbyist over the pro in everything and this is true in activism now.

Just the ramblings of a 90's anarcho-hippy living deep undercover in the Federal Whiteness Protection Program.

[Joe Hillshoist]

"I saw the decade in when it seemed the world at the blink of an eye
And if anything then there's your sign of the times."

Fuck what happened...

[Joe Hillshoist]

In the 90s we really felt part of one world. Like we were all in it together. It was possibly the least racist most human time I've ever experienced (even tho there was plenty of resistence).

I know a lot of kids now, mostly they've grown up in alternative communities or with access to those ideas and those kids are ok. They know the only real issue facing us is the environmental destruction of the earth and with it our ability to actually live. they work so hard, some of those kids. they travel round the world, work with communties in the developing world. They are really active in Australia, but we are up against it too.

Someone mentioned financial responsibility upthread but the sad reality is that financial responsibility and environmental responsibility are mutually exclusive now. Things are too far gone.

It sucks mate. My oldest daughter just turned five. If she has kids they will struggle to live in the environment we leave them.

Maybe the best hope for humanity is ww3, perhaps the only thing that will keep the planet cool enough to enable ongoing life that we recognise is a nuclear winter #Vote1Hillary.

[brekin]

In the 90s we really felt part of one world. Like we were all in it together. It was possibly the least racist most human time I've ever experienced (even tho there was plenty of resistence).
I know a lot of kids now, mostly they've grown up in alternative communities or with access to those ideas and those kids are ok. They know the only real issue facing us is the environmental destruction of the earth and with it our ability to actually live. they work so hard, some of those kids. they travel round the world, work with communties in the developing world. They are really active in Australia, but we are up against it too.
Someone mentioned financial responsibility upthread but the sad reality is that financial responsibility and environmental responsibility are mutually exclusive now. Things are too far gone.
It sucks mate. My oldest daughter just turned five. If she has kids they will struggle to live in the environment we leave them.
Maybe the best hope for humanity is ww3, perhaps the only thing that will keep the planet cool enough to enable ongoing life that we recognise is a nuclear winter #Vote1Hillary.

Word.

The leviathan that killed the dream of the 90's.
The internet, the 90's version of copious bad acid.

[KUAN]

I live on a hippie trail and the current crop look like nice kids.
Who can blame them for trying to hold on to the dream - but really, it died with the '60's

[MacCruiskeen]

It's much older than the 60s, KUAN:

Not a full year since, being quiet at my work, my heart was filled with sweet thoughts... That the earth shall be made a common treasury of livlihood to whole mankind, without respect of persons; yet my mind was not at rest, because nothing was acted, and thoughts run in me that words and writings were all nothing and must die, for action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing.

- Gerrard Winstanley: A Watch-Word to the City of London, and the Armie (August 26, 1649)

You can dam up a river, or drive it underground. But:



Goodnight, all. Tomorrow is another day.

[semper occultus]

...the 80's Reagan / Thatcher generation always struck me as rebelling - much as the "Hippies" or in fact just many regular "teenagers" did against their straight & square parents - except their parents were the hippies and regular teenagers....or put it another way the mid 70's emergence of Punk was a nihilsitc rejection of hippie idealism - the antithesis with not alot to put in its place...which vacuum was then filled by what came next....

....although having said that I am always interested by those who make political journeys - intellectuals - from the 60's radical left to the 80';s radical right - and there are an awful lot of them....

[Joe Hillshoist]

Word.

The leviathan that killed the dream of the 90's.
The internet, the 90's version of copious bad acid.

The internet was ok in the 90s. When it was used by people to communicate in ways they never could before. There is no internet anymore. there is the www and facebook and some other kardashit.

9/11 was the leviathan that killed the 90s dream tho.