Notices tagged with counterculture
-
Embed this notice
simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 25-Sep-2023 02:09:50 JST 
simsa03
Whatever "the" "Right" means. But anyway, it's easy to have left- or green-ecological political inclinations. One is never forced to prove that one can actually do things differently. Which "the" "Left" can't as can be seen all over the Global South as well as historically in various parts of Europe.
What is needed is a progressive Social Democratic Party like that of Brandt and Schmidt, a party that opened universities for working class people, that built #nuclear power plants... It was Helmut Schmidt who insisted in 1977 to build NPP *because of* the already running climate change. (Same did Franz Josef Strauss in 1982 btw.) He was fought (and was later ousted) by the Erhard Eppler wing of the SPD, by the "Peace" movement, by the No Nukes-movement, by the Greens, by the #counterculture.
And more: The International Hedonist Left, the Hippies, and their consumerist hedonism since the early 1960s cost the International Union Movement at least two generations of active members, thus weakening the unions in their struggles and helped accelerate turbo capitalism and Neo Liberalism. And today? "The "Left" (or Greens or climate doomers and all the other self-righteous acitivists) insist on the comfort and consumerism made possible by the system they pretend to critique. They are the new bourgeois who think they can run modern societies with morals and renwables. And show off with their morality by blaming "the" "Right".
It pays to have all these "left" positions. The moral highground is theirs, the lack of accountabiliy is theirs, the benefit of never having to come up with working plans is theirs... I can hardly imagine a more reactionary and self-congratulating people than those who call themselves left, green, or ecological.
Just saying, no personal insult intended. -
Embed this notice
leonianUniverse (glaroc@dragonscave.space)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jul-2023 14:16:39 JST 
leonianUniverse
I had heard about there being non-alcoholic bars now due to the counter-cultural shift, but I don't know where to find one. Any ideas? I live near D.C. #Food #Bars #Counterculture
-
Embed this notice
simsa04 (simsa04@gnusocial.net)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 21:42:22 JST 
simsa04
What a niece play of words. But I think that the #counterculture indeed countered culture, just not in the sense (or extent) you seem to deem necessary. The invention in music, social gatherings, the introduction of colours in fashion – remember all the grey-suited organisation-men of the 1950s? – the turn to "alternative healing practices" etc. have all been a renunciation of highbrow culture. On the other hand, the revitalisation of land and Nature came along with an intensive interaction, study – and expoloitation, I'd say – of indigenous cultures, in the Americas predominantely with the Hopi nation and the struggles for Indigenous rights, then with the study of Shamanism and "native religions" in Eastern Europe (in the 1990s) and earlier in Asia. That historically an understanding of Nature as vivid and vitalised did not (and does not) prevent various Indigenous communities from exploiting and destroying habitats – the Maori in New Zealand are a famous example – is something that often escaped the attention of such idealisations. -
Embed this notice
simsa04 (simsa04@gnusocial.net)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 10:49:05 JST
simsa04
@scribe
Finally, is it really about "to simply be aware of it in the first place"? Everybody is "aware" of "it" today, and it drives people nuts and into despair. And as long as "it" doesn't increases solidarity with all living beings, pity and compassion with all, it still keeps being an autistic navel-gazing. Awareness is not the thing needed but compassion and solidarity. Because it's rather compassion and solidarity that keeps the hubris at bay, esp. when the hubris comes in the form of "planet saving" "world changing" "ending the climate catastrophe" etc., which is not different an attitude than the one that brought us into "the" "mess" in the first place: that we treat the world to our liking.
To put things differently: When and why did the things around us stopped being neighbours and became mere objects, objects, that is, capable and suitable to be the carriers of our emotional projections? Because there is no real difference what you project – fear, greed, aesthetic pleasure, moral worth, etc. – as long as you have something to project on. Turning the world into stuff we can exploit without it having a meaning of and from its own, coming into our sight only inasmuch as it fullfills the role of obedient carriers of our projections, that is the major aspect of the tragedy of the past 60 years. In this the #counterculture was no less instrumental than the other "movements" as well as Capitalism brute. -
Embed this notice
simsa04 (simsa04@gnusocial.net)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 10:31:38 JST
simsa04
@scribe
Thus I don't think that "the" counterculture even offered us new ways of thinking about old conundrums. Economic warfare, natural abundance, the stream and interconnectedness of data, stories, cultures and all... they all appear the same when seen from the prespective of systems thinking, of ecology, of environmentalism etc. Which is obviously a prerequisite to first merge, then substitute the topics of societal and individual liberation (i.e., the liberation of people) and the different topic of "freeing the minds", "information wants to be free", and widening the personal horizons" (i.e., the Capitalism-affine and Capitalism-supporting creation of the online sphere since the late 1960s).
Not only did the #counterculture not provide alternatives, they provided all the conceptual and technical means to harden, broaden, and put in into overdrive extractive Capitalism. (No #globalisation without the web.) And I'm not even talking right now how 50 years old images of small town "soft technolgy" are all there is to guide our current understanding of how to turn sustainable whole societies, their economies, industries, and infrastructures. Use these old images, no harm in that, just scale'em up, baby. #ecocolonialism is the least of the consequences that result from that approach. -
Embed this notice
simsa04 (simsa04@gnusocial.net)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 09:56:33 JST
simsa04
I'm not sure the "working class" has been in need to come up with anything. For one, their inherent violence against deviations from their own lifestyle (which oscillates between exploitation and condescension, like in all lateral violence) proves to be far more reactionary than revolutionary.
I was talking mainly about the snobbery of the #counterculture, the wide gap between their aspirations and reality, their moralistic entitlement, their inability to provide working solutions for societies, economies, and infrastructures as a whole. Even conceptually, approaches like systems thinking did not provide major progress but contributed further to a dehumanisation of people, their lifes, and the culture they live by. In that sense the may have been even worse than the reactionary "working class" (aka petite/petty bourgeoise).
On the other hand, I don't think that "the" countercultrure's aspirations of the past 60 years have been about "survival" (in all the facets you mention) but about "liberation" (in the broadest sense). So I think you may retrospectively ascribe a theme onto them that hasn't been part of their motifs and topics. (Even ecology and small scale organic farming wasn't pursued "to save the planet", but to "heal" some land or end some local exploitation). Thus I don't think that the "planetary vision" was ever more than a catchphrase, and when it became more than that, it turned into urgency and despair. -
Embed this notice
simsa04 (simsa04@gnusocial.net)'s status on Tuesday, 16-May-2023 23:15:04 JST
simsa04
It saddens me to see that apparently there hasn't been made any conceptional or programatic progress in the past 40 years. All the mentioned trite proposals in this articvle are revamps of endeavours already widespread and practised in the 1970s and 1980s, with the same clichês (like #indigenous people having been egalitarian, etc.). And foremost: that people and their individual behaviour changes are centrepieces and origins of "change". That attitude led to the #Esalen Ideology of self-centered spiritual self-improvement in the first place.
The most awful impact the #counterculture as well as the various other movements had since the early 1970s is that they never bridged the gap between the life of individual people and their immediate #communities on the one hand and the problems of how to change the foundations of #infrastructure, societies, and industries on the other. Not only did they deprive the #unions of at least two generations of new members (thus enabling #globalisation); as they couldn't come up with suitable proposals for industrialized societies as a whole, they became a lifestyle choice and a fad, presupposing for the viability of their daydreams the full-fledged functioning of an extractive economy and society they were out to critique and to be an alternative to in the first place.
Like decades before, #degrowth and voluntary simplicity are ideals of the young affluent petty bourgeoisie, not of the working poor. -
Embed this notice
simsa04 (simsa04@gnusocial.net)'s status on Saturday, 10-Dec-2022 08:55:39 JST
simsa04
To me #UFoI (https://ufoi.org) sounds a bit like the old "Underground Press Syndicate" (later: "Alternative Press Syndicate") of the 1960s to 1980s. In the UPS, many alternative magazines joined to redistribute content from each other (without charge, only an annual membership fee and voucher copies to the media they reprinted from required). The effect was that even tiny magazines could reprint articles by "more famous" authors or sources, which overall lead to an explosion of alternative magazines primarily in the U.S. but also in Europe and the UK.
The advantage of #UFoI may primarily be that very small instances can better "see" (and are easier "seen" by) the #fediverse. That seems to me a far more interesting angle than the trite virtue blocking discussions.
The flipside is that #UFol obviously could become another silo (in addition to the already existing one of the Mastodon run network). But I don't think that the split of the #Fediverse into mutually excluding sub-diverses can be halted anyway. Virtue blocking of instances is already too advanced and widespread, and with that the attitudes regarding what instances are and what they should do.
#counterculture #federation #fediverse !gnusocial #Ufol #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten -
Embed this notice
simsa04 (simsa04@gnusocial.net)'s status on Monday, 14-Nov-2022 22:44:38 JST
simsa04
Over in the Mastodon-network (a silo of its own), people keep doing the self-introduction thing. I find this idea rather befuddling, esp. when it comes to sharing personal info which we learnt we shouldn't do on the web.
I think you can learn more about a person when you listen to her tone of voice, her manners, and only to some extent via her interests. With regard to the latter, an annotated list of my tags may suffice.
#batteries (although in the context of infrastructure, energy, climate, less as hardware or essential building blocks but as objects on which people put their misguided hopes on)
#counterculture (I went along with it for many years, now I primarily think about its negative impacts; historical interest)
#drought (is more than "heat" a concern to me)
#ecocolonialism (from the perspective of how Greens and Progressives offset environmental costs on poor nations when trying to jump-start their green economies)
#energy (broad category, includes "renewables", "nuclear", often "infrasturcture")
#federation (how its technical aspects create the conversations-based foundation of the Fediverse)
#fediverse (history as well as present and future developments of something that is more than the Mastodon-network)
#goodread (a corollary to "sources")
#heat (rarely)
#identica (history)
1/2
[in case you can't see the sequel, click on "In conversation" below]
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the