Hippies Were Right?

WERE HIPPIES RIGHT?

There was a joke in the 60s that went: If you think cops are pigs, next time you’re in trouble try calling a hippie!
But now, let’s say, we’re all aware of the needs of the environment, and so I can go back to the 60s when we were reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring or the even more seminal, and way earlier, Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, to those who were beginning to cry the unheard and unheeded warning, while being denigrated for being (or characterized as being) uncouth and unwashed –as if either were evidence of any other failing…
Well, what I’m suggesting, as advice and as honorific, is that the so-called hippies (intellectuals, radicals, revolutionaries, anarchists, tree-huggers, beatniks…) have been more right than anyone else for the past half-century, and are still finding it difficult to be heard or heeded.
Rather you go to a Henry Kissinger or Karl Rove for advice and solution, because they talk tough and their voices are strident, like your gym coach.
And not just about the environment, either. As Buffalo Bill Clinton, suggested, it’s the economy, stupid. Or the stupid economy. We’ve been for years warning the people that the fiction and the artifice would eventually lead to catastrophe, as if Enron or the first Bush’s Savings & Loan debacle weren’t enough evidence. Double-dealing is as double-dealing does.
Are you listening yet? Confused still?
I’m saying that these people who’ve been demonstrating, remonstrating, demanding, praying, revealing, displaying, providing, berating, belaying, complaining, decrying, etc., etc., that they really, really have something to say, have had something to say, have been saying something. You just haven’t been listening. You’re so indolent, so selfish, so scared…
The planet that we live on, so we’ve been trying to tell you, is already the paradise that you seek. Just stop mucking it up, is all.
For certain, you’ll have to give up a few things. I wrote a lengthy essay about ten years ago; started it ten years before that. Called “A Housewife in Akron as Leader of the Planet.” Akron is a city in the USA, not far from Detroit. A manufacturing town. Automobiles. One premise of the essay, as the title indicates, is that until normal housewives, who are preoccupied with a husband whose job is insecure, two children, growing debt, etc., well, in addition she must take on a leadership role regarding the health of our planet, the one we live on, that we depend on. Little things, like recycling and conserving energy, gardening, exercise…

Okay, we’re all accepting that now, or claim to be. But, in addition to all those positive things that will make her family healthier and more sufficient, she might also need to engage in –I hesitate in using the following word, so pregnant with horror— sacrifice.
You see, another of our problems is the equitable distribution of goods and services. It seems that somehow there are some people who own a lot more and consume a lot more than some others and, plainly, there’s just not enough to go around and at the same time keep our environment healthy.
It’s a question of television versus, let’s say, whales. Let’s say that everyone in the world who wants one can have a flat-screen digital TV, but that the cost of all that would be the loss of all the whales. Eventually, not immediately. And so, is it worth it?
I enjoy offering the following proposition: It’s the end of the 19th Century and the big cities in the world are getting buried in horse shit, literally. Plus, the expense of housing, feeding and maintaining all these animals is getting, well, out of proportion. Plus, the flies. Something, perhaps something drastic, needs to be done.
A stranger appears, a fast-talker, but convincing. He offers us a vehicle that operates on liquid fuel, that doesn’t need feeding or caring when not in use, that one only needs to press a pedal to move it forward, and at speed. Want it?
One little thing, though. In exchange, he wants in the next century, 40 million of our lives (not to mention the losses due to injury and destruction of property. Oh, and the oil…) Deal?
The price we pay for technology, I suppose. Would you say we’ve lost the industrial revolution?
Sure, people have died in all sorts of ways, even before there was industry. What’s a few million more or less. Right, Josef? Adolf?
Oh, but it might be a disaster if we lost us all, no? Or all the whales?
Back to the main premise. Being which, should we be listening to the ‘hippies’ now? Now that they’ve been proven right for the last half-century and all the other savants –the economists, academics, politicos, strategists, industrialists, consultants, and all the vested interests— proven wrong, or at least misdirected. As if putting all their, I mean, our, apples in the wrong apple cart? The one in their yard…
For sure, some of us seem to have benefited, at least temporarily. If unnecessary wealth is a benefit. If unnecessary largesse is a benefit. But, who’s to say how much of something, of anything, is unnecessary? How about when ¾ of all wealth is held by 1% of us? Feeling left out, are we? And, let’s admit, if you’re well off enough to be reading this, then you have lots, lots more than most.

So, we return to sacrifice. From the essay:

A scary word: sacrifice.

Images of a reluctant virgin offering, resigned to its fate.

The individual who must apparently give more than its share, unto all that it has, for the alleged benefit of the whole.

Charity. Much better. Voluntary; painless; select. From love, duty. Righteousness.

True relationships require full and complete sharing. They do not receive, as in charity; they demand, as in sacrifice.

Not what I am willing to offer, but what I must give.

The former may simply not be enough or proper; the latter need not be seen as sacrifice, only that it is enough and proper. Is it a sacrifice to gain, say, peace, love and understanding, by dropping a few points in the poll?


Would you be willing to sacrifice, say, your soapies, if it meant that others who have no TV could have a radio? Would you give up your daily pasty if it meant that others could have an egg? Your spare telephone for their taxi fare; your vacation home, your SUV, your cupboard full of clothes, your cosmetics, your extra shoes, the new set of golf clubs…? Not just for them, but for the planet and its other inhabitants, the animals, the plants, the brooks and streams…the clean night air…the Milky Way. Would you, would you make that sacrifice?
I wouldn’t expect you to be the first or the only. Volunteers?
Must we rely on the government to help us, to force us, to, dare I say, legislate sacrifice?! What’s in it for them? Am I suggesting that governments only work in their own interests? Hmm, am I?
And, if we can’t depend on them, what are we expecting from the corporations, the industrialists, whose whole life and livelihood require growth, more and more growth, more and more consumerism, more debt? And isn’t it these that finance government in the first place? It’s looking like a vicious circle… A very vicious one indeed.
Make no mistake about it. These people have in their minds fought for and won their privilege, are not about to give it up for the sake of the masses. For Henry, Karl, Josef and Adolf, the collateral loss of millions of lives, human and otherwise, is another ‘unfortunate’ line item. Their ‘solutions’ to problems of overpopulation, peak oil and peak water, carbon footprints, etc., you don’t want to know about.

The worldwide revolution of housewives, is what we need. But, isn’t it that when they do get up a revolution, it’s usually for more, not for less? How do we go about making this change, a change of direction, for not more, but for less? For the children, for the innocents.
It would be freeing, you know, to rid ourselves of the encumbrances and return ourselves back to the garden. Risky business, but a calculated risk; rather than the present conundrum and debacle. Righteous, rather than self-righteous.
Though, where to begin, and how? Right here, with this, and soon?
Ubuntu…I am because we are. Remember. Think. Believe. Act.

Aman Bloom,
Grahamstown, South Africa
February, 2009


I would be pleased to share the essay “A Housewife in Akron as Leader of the Planet” with anyone or any publisher who requestst: amanbloom@gmail.com