[MD] Barbarians & Hippies

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
I have yet to hear what a new "liberal hippie movement" would be like.

[Arlo]
Since "hippie" as I said is simply slang for following DQ, who can answer 
this question? The best I can do is, again, offer the following on 
"contrarians" by Pirsig.

"Once you see it in another culture like that and then come back to our own 
you can see that in an unofficial way we have our contrarian societies too. 
The "Bohemians" of the Victorian era were contrarians. So, to some extent, 
were the Hippies of the sixties. ...

But sometimes it's Dynamic, where your whole being senses that the static 
situation is an enemy of life itself. That's what drives the really 
creative people-the artists, composers, revolutionaries and the like-the 
feeling that if they don't break out of this jailhouse somebody has built 
around them, they're going to die.

But they're not being contrary in a way that is just decadent. They're way 
too energetic and aggressive to be decadent. They're fighting for some kind 
of Dynamic freedom from the static patterns. But the Dynamic freedom 
they're fighting for is a kind of morality too. And it's a highly important 
part of the overall moral process. It's often confused with degeneracy but 
it's actually a form of moral regeneration. Without its continual 
refreshment static patterns would simply die of old age."

[Platt]
Would it entail living in communes, having group sex and adopting the drug 
culture of its predecessor? Would its followers forego bathing, wear rags 
and grow beards? Would its political statements consist of rioting, 
destroying property and defying the "pigs." Would the women parade around 
in T-shirts and no bras saying "Make love not war?"

[Arlo]
Again with the "group sex" thing. Platt, Platt, Platt.... what is that, 
some kind of envy at being excluded from the fun?

Again. Pirsig. "The Hippie rejection of social and intellectual patterns 
left just two directions to go: toward biological quality and toward 
Dynamic Quality. The revolutionaries of the sixties thought that since both 
are anti-social, and since both are anti-intellectual, why then they must 
both be the same. That was the mistake."

Whatever the movement, it is away from social and intellectual patterns, 
towards DQ. I would guess those who cling vehemently to social patterns 
would find this frightening, even to the point of ridicule. Just like the 
priests likely ridiculed the Brujo, and the Victorians ridiculed the Bohemians.

But, whatever, your description certainly sounds more vibrant that uptight, 
sexually repressed men in ties and women in ankle lengths dresses and 
corsets, concerned with appearance over substance, patting their virtuous 
backs and parading saying "make war not love". Eh?

I mean, that IS the right-wing slogan, is it not? Can't show a couple 
"making love" on television, but you can show all the bombs dropping, 
bodies flying apart, killing and violence as you want. There was a Mel 
Gibson movie on a few weeks back, I think it was the first of those ones 
with Danny Glover. At any rate, they showed all the shooting, blood, guns 
flying, bodies dropping, etc. But the one second scene where a girl comes 
out of the shower with her GASP nipple showing, they edited out.

[Platt]
I mean, could you give us some idea of what we might expect from turning 
the clock back to the 60's to abstract what was right?

[Arlo]
Pirsig said that the hippie movement was "moral". It lost its way when it 
confused bq and DQ. But since its origins were "moral" (in its movement 
away from social and intellectual patterns), I would think that would be a 
good starting pointing for looking at the way forward. Pirsig had said, 
"The end of the twentieth century in America seems to be an intellectual, 
social, and economic rust-belt, a whole society that has given up on 
Dynamic improvement and is slowly trying to slip back to Victorianism, the 
last static ratchet-latch."

You are interested in furthering the slip back to Victorianism, I am 
interested in how we can get back towards Dynamic improvement.

Also, "Of these periods, the last two seem the most misunderstood. The 
Hippies have been interpreted as frivolous spoiled children, and the period 
following their departure as a "return to values," whatever that means. The 
Metaphysics of Quality, however, says that's backward: the Hippie 
revolution was the moral movement. The present period is the collapse of 
values. ... The Hippie revolution of the eighties was a moral revolution 
against both society and intellectuality.

Don't get it backwards, Platt. Embrace your inner 
hippie/bohemian/brujo/contrarian. It has to be in their somewhere... even 
it's not getting any "group sex".

Arlo