[MD] Barbarians & Hippies

[Ant McWatt]

SA,

Thanks for your query (from yesterday).

>      Ant said:  "And that mistake (of confusing
>biological patterns with Dynamic Quality) is also an
>SOM error because SOM (as viewed in LILA) doesn’t
>recognise Dynamic Quality!"
>
>      I have not gotten this far in Lila where SOM is
>discussed readily.  Yet, this is an interesting
>comment.  I could just finish the book, which I will,
>or you might make another comment about this.  The
>confusion of biological patterns, as the 1960's & 70's
>hippie had, was in rejection of social and
>intellectual motives.  Was this attachment to biology
>done because nothing else seemed to be a way out…

Possibly.

>an escape…

Possibly.

>and subversion of the then current social and
>intellectual thought of the day?

Again, possibly.  I think the hippy philosophy (in as far as there was one) 
was about “blowing the mind” (not necessarily through psychedelics but 
obviously one of the main methods – meditation is another way) and freeing 
people from the social conventions of the “1950s Ronald Reagan clean cut 
character” / Establishment way of thinking.  Moreover, in his text “Hippies 
>From A to Z”, Skip Stone, the Webmaster and Editor of Hippy.com, states that 
being a hippy is actually more to do with freedom and an openness to new 
experiences than anything else:

“Let’s see what defines a hippie. Some say it’s the way people dress, and 
behave, a lifestyle. Others classify drug users and rock ‘n’ roll fans or 
those with certain radical political views as hippies. The dictionary 
defines a hippie as one who doesn’t conform to society’s standards and 
advocates a liberal attitude and lifestyle. Can all these definitions be 
right?”

“It seems to me that these definitions miss the point. By focusing on the 
most visible behavioral traits these limited descriptions fail to reveal 
what lies in the hippie heart that motivates such behavior. To understand 
The Way of the Hippy, we must look at those circumstances that preceded the 
birth of the hippy movement, the important events that changed our lives, 
our resulting frustration with society, and the philosophy that developed 
from our spiritual maturation.”

“My view is that being a hippie is a matter of accepting a universal belief 
system that transcends the social, political, and moral norms of any 
established structure, be it a class, church, or government.  Each of these 
powerful institutions has its own agenda for controlling, even enslaving 
people. Each has to defend itself when threatened by real or imagined 
enemies. So we see though history a parade of endless conflicts with country 
vs. country, religion vs. religion, class vs. class. After millennia of war 
and strife, in which uncounted millions have suffered, we have yet to rise 
above our petty differences.”

“The way of the hippie is antithetical to all repressive hierarchical power 
structures since these are adverse to the hippie goals of peace, love and 
freedom. This is why the ‘Establishment’ feared and suppressed the hippie 
movement of the ‘60s, as it was a revolution against the established order. 
It is also the reason why the hippies were unable to unite and overthrow the 
system since they refused to build their own power base. Hippies don’t 
impose their beliefs on others. Instead, hippies seek to change the world 
through reason and by living what they believe.”

(http://hippy.com/hippyway.htm)

SA, especially note Skip Stone’s comment that “hippies were unable to unite 
and overthrow the system since they refused to build their own power base” 
which comes back to Pirsig’s claim in Chapter 24 of LILA that it was this 
complete rejection of social level patterns which undermined the integrity 
of the hippy movement.

“The Metaphysics of Quality suggests… it is immoral for intellect to be 
dominated by society for the same reasons it is immoral for children to be 
dominated by their parents.  But that doesn’t mean that children should 
assassinate their parents, and it doesn’t mean intellectuals should 
assassinate society.  Intellect can support static patterns of society 
without fear of domination by carefully distinguishing those moral issues 
that are social-biological from those that are intellectual-social and 
making sure there is no encroachment either way.”

In addition, though “seeking to change the world through reason and by 
living what they believe” (as Skip Stone states above) is fine for the 
intellectual level and Dynamic development in themselves, is has to also be 
remembered that the means of communication between intellect and biological 
patterns is not directly through discussion but indirectly via social 
patterns e.g. “prisons and guns and police and the military” (LILA, Chapter 
24).

>Does this have to do
>with body is primal, instinct is primal and thus,
>something unconscious is where the truth is only if we
>can tap into that truth?  Was this the idea?

I highly doubt many hippies thought things out this far.  With such things 
like Vietnam and the invasion of Czechoslovakia happening, I think many 
young people just thought things were generally going the wrong way.  
However, I think this “tapping into the truth” is a Dynamic perception 
rather than a biological instinct.  As Kevin Booth, a close friend of Bill 
Hicks explains:

“As far as seeing things more clearly, well yeah, especially the first time 
a kid takes acid or mushrooms or something like that, I mean you do have 
certain walls that come tumbling down and you realize that reality is just 
kind of a veil. Everybody has created their own different veil in that they 
all can depend on their lives; on their upbringing, on genetics, on 
everything they do, it’s all a combination…. Instead of the phrase, ‘see 
things more clearly,’ I would say it is more like turning a key that peels 
away a wall, a wall that held you from seeing a certain perception.”

(http://www.fadetoblack.com/interviews/billhicks/4.html)

Note the reference “to upbringing” and “everything they do” i.e. the static 
patterns which are Dynamically “squeeged clean” (to use a phrase from Bill 
Hicks).

Finally, you have to remember that Pirsig’s writing about the hippy movement 
is largely a generalisation so I think it would be unfair to think that 
every hippy confused biological quality with Dynamic Quality and then simply 
became degenerate.  For instance, some of them decided to look where the 
movement went wrong and write books such as “Zen & the Art of Motorcycle 
Maintenance” and LILA!

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig duit!,

Anthony.



“This was in '67 when I was a sophomore in college. The interest in altered 
states of consciousness came simply from, I don't know whether I was a 
precocious kid or what, but I was very early into the New York literary 
scene, and even though I lived in a small town in Colorado, I subscribed to 
the Village Voice, and there I encountered propaganda about LSD, mescaline, 
and all these experiments that the late beatniks were involved in. Then I 
read ‘The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell’, and it just rolled from 
there. That was what really put me over. I respected Huxley as a novelist, 
and I was slowly reading everything he'd ever written, and when I got to 
‘The Doors of Perception’ I said to myself, ‘There’s something going on here 
for sure.’”

Terence McKenna

Interview quote from “Mavericks of the Mind” by David Jay Brown and Rebecca 
McClen Novick

(http://www.levity.com/mavericks/terence.htm)

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