Woodstock?

[Foofoogal]

maybe you haven't seen as much as me. I definitely think our experiences change most. Some never learn anything I guess. Ignorance is bliss also.
I have just come to slowly accept because of the above people are going to do what they are going to do.

Propaganda scares me and it plays a huge role. I never know who is spinning the wheels though.
Get the youth.
I have never understood how teens rebel and don't want to listen to parents but then just listen to other teens and follow blindly.

My mother died when I was 27. I missed years spending with her because I bought into the lies at the time. How I regret it.

 

[Doctor Strange]

And maybe I have seen as much as you, but it just had a different effect on me. We all have different experiences, which is why (as I said in my first post on this thread) I dislike seeing anyone making sweeping pronouncements about anything. Generalizations are very dangerous: propaganda thrives on generalizations. Life is far too complex to really be figured out - except for what you do with your very own, and even that is sometimes a mystery!

Let's see how the sixties (and the current era) are regarded a hundred years from now. It's still too recent, and passions still run too high, for a proper assessment.

As for me, as far as I've seen personally, most people just don't seem to change all that much over the decades...

 

[Spitfire]

I dunno, some of us are still hardcore liberals.

In my experience, people don't really change. The people I've known for 30 and 40 years are all still essentially the same - the same strengths and weaknesses, the same passions and interests. Despite the mantra of CHANGE! that our society promotes so loudly, I just haven't seen it.

Sure, financial situations, families, careers, experience/wisdom, bring their particular variations in people's lives... But look beneath the trappings of middle age, and I'm still very much the same guy I was at 25!

It may be that I'm just a poor example, but the vast number of my old friends are still pretty much the same people after all these years. The ones who were self-centered and immature still are; the ones who were social butterfiles still are; the ones who were political (or in my case, non-political) still are; the ones who embrace every trend (vs. the ones who follow their own drummer) still do; the ones who strive to make money - and conversely, the ones who live for artistic satisfaction (or to just make sexual conquests) - still do.

The older I get, the more I see human life as a continuum, not a series of ongoing redefinitions. Heavy, man...

Well spoken:eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap

 

[Foofoogal]

I do think seriously that until television and tech stuff people had it much easier with much less influences.
Locality, background and experiences make us who we are but now it is like overload.

Mass thinking is more profound than it ever was before. Probably.

 

[Foofoogal]

but Spitfire. Don't you think it is because of your locality?
I do know it is my locality and experiences that make me think like I do.

I made a complete metamorphosis in my life. Completely.

I do think people can choose where they live and surround themselves with like thinking people though. I love Doran's honesty in all of it but he is still influenced by where he lives or has lived. We all have been.
So the problem I see is it is moving faster and going global.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

I think one of the answers as to why teens rebel from their parents and follow their peers, even when the choices are not good ones, could be rooted in our genetics -- we may be programmed to do so, many of us, so that we will grow away from our parents, and go to seek mates, our own lives, and not cling to our orginal families.

There are many people who would be stunted in their mental/emotional growth, never bond outside their families, never be married and create their own new families, never try anything new if they were to cling to their parents. I know people who did that.

Years later, the children may return, especially once they have their own kids and create their own families. They see their families with new eyes and understanding.

Obviously, some go too far -- and get caught up in self-destructive activities and behavior. But, most of us get far enough away from our parents too discover who we really are, then return as whole people.

I knew a goodly number of people who became hippies. Some were gentle, peaceful people, trying to create a better world, living on the land, growing organic food, learning older crafts to survive (candle, soap-making, quilting, stained glass making, pottery). Some got caught up in drugs and criminal behavior. Most went through a phase and came out the other side intact.

Some of those people are still at it, out in the country creating pottery. Some opened their own shops and stores. Others later became Yuppies (remember them?) working on Wall Street for big money. And some self-destructed and are now dead.

They were all once part of Woodstock Nation.

karol

 

[Foofoogal]

so that we will grow away from our parents

for what it is worth I was actually taught that in sociology class. It is almost a given but I still think when parents expect the kids to go crazy at a certain time it is a self-fufilling prophecy somewhat.


In truth even when I was as high as a kite I was always the mama trying to take care of all of us yoyos.

How 40 years has gone by is unreal I will just add. Time flies for sure.

 

[Spitfire]

@ Foofoogal:

Not so sure about that. Just because Woodstock happened in US. And the Hippie thing started out in San Francisco it's not just a US thing.
In Europe we had the youth rebellion in so many other ways. Remember Paris '68. The Prague spring in '68. We had Jimi Hendrix before you had him. We had the whole musical sceene in UK. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, The Cream etc. etc.
I was a part of all that - but I awas also pretty sure that I would work in advertising!!! Which at that time was a total no-go. "Don't tell my mother I am working in advertising, she believes I play piano at a brothel in Rio!" as Seguela so nicely put it.
I took as much of - and enjoyed the hippielife, as I could. But I also had a plan. I left my parents and started my own life. I worked hard and became a wellknow advertising person in Denmark. I won the national and international awards I should and could. I started my own adverting agency - twice! But there are still some virtues, some ways of life from back then, that shines through. In my way of thinking, in my way of voting, in the way I see other people, other nations - and myself.
Wow man!