New age cosmic hippies and the far right

[LLETSA]

It's 10.56pm here.

It might be, but you're still saying precisely nothing.

 

[rekil]

This thread's bliss balance is all over the shop. Get your Tibetan singing bowls out ladies and gents.

 

[TruXta]

As I say, it was liberating in one sense but a source of pressure and, inevitably, more misery in another. And relates to the mass industries of worry and vanity that the 'cult of health' you point to forms a part of. (Of course people obsess about their health at the same time as doing things which are bad for them. It's because people are constantly bombarded with the message that you can have it all ways. Profit on fags and booze, profit on 'health products.' This is the new capitalism; it's win-win.)

But that's really not to do with the post-WW2 era. Look at the late Victorian era, that's when you see the first boom of self-help books and medicinal fads, amply popularised by mass circulation papers. As for the sexual revolution, in some ways that can be seen as a return to pre-Victorian sexual mores, with of course some massive differences like the appearance of the pill and changes in law to allow homosexual relations.

 

[TruXta]

This thread's bliss balance is all over the shop. Get your Tibetan singing bowls out ladies and gents.

No thanks. If you'd said Tibetan smoking bowls we'd be in business.

 

[LLETSA]

This thread's bliss balance is all over the shop. Get your Tibetan singing bowls out ladies and gents.

All our fucking chakras seem to be out of line.

 

[TruXta]

All our fucking chakras seem to be out of line.

If that's the case see a doc immediately, your spine could be misaligned!

 

[LLETSA]

But that's really not to do with the post-WW2 era. Look at the late Victorian era, that's when you see the first boom of self-help books and medicinal fads, amply popularised by mass circulation papers. As for the sexual revolution, in some ways that can be seen as a return to pre-Victorian sexual mores, with of course some massive differences like the appearance of the pill and changes in law to allow homosexual relations.

The point is that it became a mass phenomenon with the mass media promoting all its different sources of pressure and dissatisfaction (in order for new industries to profit from manufactured personal insecurity.)

Anyway, I'm offline for a bit now-I've got an appointment with my Emotional Freedom Technique therapist.

 

[LLETSA]

If that's the case see a doc immediately, your spine could be misaligned!

These days I never seem to be away from the fucking doctor.

 

[TruXta]

The point is that it became a mass phenomenon with the mass media promoting all its different sources of pressure and dissatisfaction (in order for new industries to profit from manufactured personal insecurity.)

Anyway, I'm offline for a bit now-I've got an appointment with my Emotional Freedom Technique therapist.

And I'm saying it already had been that in the Victorian era! Anyway, don't get too happy clappy now.

 

[Idaho]

If it wasn't for industrial society there'd be little time for leisure as we'd be working for our subsistence.

Working hours in subsistence, agrarian and industrial societies is another can of worms.

So you are saying that activities are either supporting the industrial base or attacking it? There is no room for activity out of the industrial sphere entirely?

 

[crusty bloomer]

It might be a good idea to 'find an alternative lifestyle to the industrial one,' but as some people don't seem to be able to grasp, all such 'lifestyles' rest on the platform of the industrial society and would be impossible without it (by industrial society, I don't mean a society of factories, iron foundries and mines, by the way.)

What Houellebecq is getting at is all contained in the quote I posted: the promotion of the cult of youth and sexuality in a mass media society is another aspect of the triumph of individual desire over collective well-being. Whereas individuals once only had to compete for sexual partners among a small pool of people, nowadays they're under pressure to compete with the 'beautiful people,' compared to whom their small group of personal associates seem dull and unglamorous.

But I wasn't talking about people quitting their jobs I was talking about the fact that people don't have jobs to leave anymore. I agree completely with what you are saying that 'post-industrial societies' still depend on industrial society, of course. But do you not think looking at it through a historical lens that young people would inevitably reject the lives offered to them by industrial society when there clearly wasn't anything on offer?
Of course on the surface the whole idea of just turning camping out with your friends in the summer into a lifestyle is ridiculous, but I think there is a bit more to it than that, I think it was more a reaction to what they saw/see as a continuation of a society based in the European and American Industrial Revolutions despite the fact it was a model that had already failed a number of times back then, which I suppose is the crossover between the left and hippies
I think that the hippies were reacting to the lack of progress that industrial society was showing rather than industrial society in itself (of course a lot of people didn't and still don't realise that because, you know, we are all thick....)

 

[Idaho]

But I wasn't talking about people quitting their jobs I was talking about the fact that people don't have jobs to leave anymore. I agree completely with what you are saying that 'post-industrial societies' still depend on industrial society, of course. But do you not think looking at it through a historical lens that young people would inevitably reject the lives offered to them by industrial society when there clearly wasn't anything on offer?
Of course on the surface the whole idea of just turning camping out with your friends in the summer into a lifestyle is ridiculous, but I think there is a bit more to it than that, I think it was more a reaction to what they saw/see as a continuation of a society based in the European and American Industrial Revolutions despite the fact it was a model that had already failed a number of times back then, which I suppose is the crossover between the left and hippies
I think that the hippies were reacting to the lack of progress that industrial society was showing rather than industrial society in itself (of course a lot of people didn't and still don't realise that because, you know, we are all thick....)

The hippy lifestyle was also more appealing from a cultural and human perspective. It embraced the hedonistic and irrational. What were the leftist cultural offerings at the same time?

 

[butchersapron]

You see a separation between leftism and the hippies then?

 

[LLETSA]

Working hours in subsistence, agrarian and industrial societies is another can of worms.

So you are saying that activities are either supporting the industrial base or attacking it? There is no room for activity out of the industrial sphere entirely?

It isn't any can of worms.

Of course there's room for activity outside of the industrial sphere; industrial society eventually provided unprecedented leisure and wealth to enjoy them. In the pre-industrial era there was little time for anything of the kind for the great mass of people. Life was hard, laborious, disease-ridden and short.

 

[LLETSA]

But I wasn't talking about people quitting their jobs I was talking about the fact that people don't have jobs to leave anymore. I agree completely with what you are saying that 'post-industrial societies' still depend on industrial society, of course. But do you not think looking at it through a historical lens that young people would inevitably reject the lives offered to them by industrial society when there clearly wasn't anything on offer?
Of course on the surface the whole idea of just turning camping out with your friends in the summer into a lifestyle is ridiculous, but I think there is a bit more to it than that, I think it was more a reaction to what they saw/see as a continuation of a society based in the European and American Industrial Revolutions despite the fact it was a model that had already failed a number of times back then, which I suppose is the crossover between the left and hippies
I think that the hippies were reacting to the lack of progress that industrial society was showing rather than industrial society in itself (of course a lot of people didn't and still don't realise that because, you know, we are all thick....)

I can't really understand what you're saying. Are you claiming that because there's nothing down for lots of youth in today's society that they're rejecting this society in the way that hippies did (while reaping its benefits)? Because if that's the case nothing could be further from the truth.

What do phrases like 'the lack of progress industrial society was making' actually mean?

 

[Idaho]

You see a separation between leftism and the hippies then?

You like reading butchers, have a go at Set Theory and answer your own question.

 

[butchersapron]

You like reading butchers, have a go at Set Theory and answer your own question.

Seriously, what's wrong with you?

 

[LLETSA]

The hippy lifestyle was also more appealing from a cultural and human perspective. It embraced the hedonistic and irrational.

So did fascism.

 

[Idaho]

It isn't any can of worms.

Of course there's room for activity outside of the industrial sphere; industrial society eventually provided unprecedented leisure and wealth to enjoy them. In the pre-industrial era there was little time for anything of the kind for the great mass of people. Life was hard, laborious, disease-ridden and short.

Wealth, yes. Leisure time? The evidence for there being more leisure time pre-industrialisation, than post is not insubstantial. But that's a whole other topic.

 

[butchersapron]

So did fascism.

Yes, indeed. Thanks idaho for stressing the possible right-wing nature of much hippy culture and the distance of that culture from leftism.

 

[Blagsta]

Working hours in subsistence, agrarian and industrial societies is another can of worms.

So you are saying that activities are either supporting the industrial base or attacking it? There is no room for activity out of the industrial sphere entirely?

I think one of the things LLETSA is on about is this - last year I met a crustie in a pub who was boasting about being "off grid" (as he put it), having some land and using solar power, not paying any taxes, working for himself, not being on the electoral roll etc. He was still happy to use pavements, roads, health services, benefit from an education etc, despite being unwilling to pay for it or wanting to associate with society in any other terms but his own.

 

[Idaho]

Seriously, what's wrong with you?

What's wrong? I don't agree with you. That's beyond the pale isn't it?

 

[cantsin]

These days I never seem to be away from the fucking doctor.

your yin and yang are out of kilter I fear

 

[butchersapron]

What's wrong? I don't agree with you. That's beyond the pale isn't it?

I don't care if you don't agree with me. You just posted something stressing a certain characteristic that hippies found attractive (a trait or perspective often associated with the far-right) then suggested that this offered far more appeal then the culture of the left at that time. This suggests a separation between hippies and the left - on a thread that's been discussing whether hippies were left wing, right wing or all places in-between. I asked you if this is what you meant and your response was a terrified refusal to answer. Why i don't know - maybe you'd realised where the logic of your post led, i.e to the bolstering of the right-wing connections of parts of hippy culture and didn't like it.

 

[Idaho]

I think one of the things LLETSA is on about is this - last year I met a crustie in a pub who was boasting about being "off grid" (as he put it), having some land and using solar power, not paying any taxes, working for himself, not being on the electoral roll etc. He was still happy to use pavements, roads, health services, benefit from an education etc, despite being unwilling to pay for it or wanting to associate with society in any other terms but his own.

"No man is an island" - is that what it boils down to?

Misguided as this fellow you met was, surely we all pick and choose a little from society? Engaging with elements we approve of/can't avoid and avoiding elements we dislike and can skirt around?

I imagine that none of us in this conversation work as baliffs or have used the benefit-cheat hotline.

 

[Blagsta]

"No man is an island" - is that what it boils down to?

Misguided as this fellow you met was, surely we all pick and choose a little from society? Engaging with elements we approve of/can't avoid and avoiding elements we dislike and can skirt around?

I imagine that none of us in this conversation work as baliffs or have used the benefit-cheat hotline.

Individualism, a critique of.

5000 words, on my desk by tomorrow morning.

 

[TruXta]

Individualism, a critique of.

5000 words, on my desk by tomorrow morning.

Hippies were no more individualist than punks were. Fashion and fads.

 

[Idaho]

I don't care if you don't agree with me. You just posted something stressing a certain characteristic that hippies found attractive (a trait or perspective often associated with the far-right) then suggested that this offered far more appeal then the culture of the left at that time. This suggests a separation between hippies and the left - on a thread that's been discussing whether hippies were left wing, right wing or all places in-between. I asked you if this is what you meant and your response was a terrified refusal to answer. Why i don't know - maybe you'd realised where the logic of your post led, i.e to the bolstering of the right-wing connections of parts of hippy culture and didn't like it.

I don't think that hippy culture, in all it's messy, illogical and vague development and re-emergence maps onto left or right wing.

I confess my pointing you toward Set Theory, was meant to annoy you, and for that I apologise. However there was a serious point. The sets of hippy and right-wing may have overlaps, but they are separate sets. Same with hippy and left wing.

Left and Right are political terms that have relatively well defined meanings and markers. Hippy has plenty of markers, but not a great deal of meaning. Yes you could crudely map hippy individualism with the right. But you could map hippy anti-establishmentism with the left. There are no doubt a few other mappings you could attempt. I think the final patchwork would be unconvincing and contradictory at best.

My guess is that the desire to map hippyism with the right-wing is leftist post-punks want to unite their two pet hates out of cultural conveinience, rather than as a robust intellectual excercise.

 

[LLETSA]

Wealth, yes. Leisure time? The evidence for there being more leisure time pre-industrialisation, than post is not insubstantial. But that's a whole other topic.

Again, it isn't a whole other topic but integral to what we're talking about. I've heard those arguments about the abundance of pre-industrial leisure time, and I'm aware of the way life got worse for many when herded into the slums of the industrial cities. But it's still an inescapable fact that pre-industrial life was generally one of poverty and short, leisurely or not, and that industrial society eventually resulted in unprecedented and more widespread wealth and more leisure to enjoy it. While this process might now be going into reverse in the West, it in no way follows that the outcome will resemble some idealised pre-industrial idyll.

 

[Blagsta]

Hippies were no more individualist than punks were. Fashion and fads.

You don't think the fantasy of going "off grid" is particularly individualistic?