So this happened – I get up at around 7-a.m. and head to the coffee maker while the hubs turns on MSNBC to see what trump atrocity is headline news.
In two rounds of commercial breaks, I heard Let’s Groove by Earth Wind & Fire, playing in the background of a spot for a Type-2 diabetes drug. The Beat Goes On by Sonny & Cher in a spot for a COPD medication. And – the one that irked me the most – Summer In The City by The Lovin’ Spoonful, for a BMW ad. [BMW? One of Hitler’s wartime suppliers who used Jewish death camp prisoners as slave labor in their factories? Really?]
Aggravated by the transparent attempt to sell stuff to us old farts using 60s and 70s music, I poured myself a cup of coffee and went Googling around to see how many mega-corps are using “our” tunes to pimp their wares.
Thanks to Google’s algorithms working magic on my search terms, I found this excellent article: Why Millennials Will Miss Boomers When They're Gone, by Keith A. Spencer.
I immediately shifted mental gears and clicked the link. “Ah-ha” moments ensued.
I was glad to see Mr. Spencer make the distinction between us counter-culture Hippies and conservative Greed is Good boomers – because it bugs me when we’re all thrown into the same “Boomers destroyed the world” round file:
Not all Boomers were, of course, hippies or leftists; a great deal hewed to their parents’ conservatism, and formed part of the “Silent Majority,” as President Nixon called his supporters. Still, the subset of activist Baby Boomers — the ones who self-identified as hippies and radicals, who rallied under anti-war banners and perhaps even participated in violent action against the government or corporations — are withering away and dying, while our generation reduces their existence to a punchline.
… It denies the radical political lessons that Boomers left for our generation, and which we and Zoomers have yet to learn. Specifically, there is a kind of anti-market, anti-capitalist mode of thought that hippies were particularly good at cultivating that could provide the key to a progressive future — and which my cynical generation has lost the ability to comprehend, largely because of the economic circumstances in which we were reared.
I had to smile at the line I bolded above – because it was my anti-capitalist Hippie soul, pissed at hearing Summer In The City used to sell a freaking BMW, that had me Googling at 7:30 am this morning.
Referencing another must-read article, How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation, by Anne Helen Petersen, Spencer laid out an argument that enabled me to better understand the static between our generations.
We millennials were taught that our ultimate purpose on Earth was to find what Petersen calls “The Job” — a dream job, the job that defines who you are as a person. “[Students] were convinced that their first job out of college would not only determine their career trajectory, but also their intrinsic value for the rest of their lives,” Petersen writes, observing how the culture of college campuses has changed: ... “They were, in a word, scared.”
Having graduated college in 1975, in “liberal” New York City, I should have been more aware of the fallout from universities moving the focus away from the humanities toward what Spencer sums up succinctly here:
“That our society has become increasingly supremacist about STEM skills, while mocking the humanities, seems to relate to our lack of free time, our obsession with work and with monetization.”
Though I was well aware of the shift away from the humanities, which started in the 1980s, even in K-12 public schools, I utterly failed to give deep thought to the impact it would have on an entire generation.
I now understand why the hippie refrain, Peace & Love, tends to get eyerolls from Millennials who see it as quaint, dated, 60s-flashback-induced bullshit.
When, for us old Hippies, it’s deeply rooted to an education that valued humanistic areas of study — as summed up here in another article:
“… our schools seem focused on individual educational outcomes like employment rather than a collective pursuit of a civil society. … The humanities teach us about the human experience—our thoughts, our emotions, our interactions.”
Spencer expands on this further:
There is a certain humanism at play here that millennials have forgotten — an empathy for other humans and animals, and the expectation of mutual goodwill. The hippies would probably have called it "love."
For me, the greatest lesson in my own study of the humanities was internalizing the vital importance of compassion – even when faced with the darkest of human acts.
This dovetails with another passage in Spencer’s piece that addresses a question I have not been able to answer for myself, until I read this:
My greatest fear for my generation is that in the process of forgetting how the hippies thought, we will forget that love is crucial to any actual progressive-left movement. You can see the seeds of this in how online discourse around politics happens: those on the opposing side are castigated as irredeemable.
The ultimate Ah-Ha! Frankly, I’ve been confounded by the tone and tenor of current political discussion.
I can’t count how many times I’ve been accused, here on Daily Kos among allies, and elsewhere, of being a “hater” simply because I’ve supported certain Democratic candidates over other Democratic candidates. Or, being told I am “hated” by my natural allies for [fill in the blank reason].
I am deeply rattled when I see the word “hate” and terms like “despise” and “vile” in the discussion of politics: not simply in response to trump-loving republicans but verbal bombs used to demonize fellow Democratic voters.
If you’re an old hippie like me, around now, you may be nodding and muttering, “Right on.” Please don’t.
Please don’t wander down memory lane congratulating ourselves on how absolutely groovy we are.
There’s no shortage of progressives our age who “hate on” their natural allies far too easily. Plenty of old fart “liberals” demean, demoralize and demonize others for simply disagreeing on, for example, the pros/cons of Medicare-For-All verses Medicare-For-All-Who-Want-It.
When you take a step back, it’s patently ridiculous yet it happens far too often with progressives of all ages taking turns shooting each other down with demoralizing rhetoric that doesn’t even remotely resemble real political debate.
For me, hate and anger are emotions too difficult to maintain beyond a few fleeting moments. I’m completely unable to truly hate anyone because – as the humanities have taught me – I understand no infant was born into this world with the intention of destroying it.
Like many of my fellow hippies, I’ve studied a range of world religions and native cultures. Though I personally don’t practice any organized faith, I’ve internalized a truth that runs through all of them: love.
Not romantic love. Not let-them-walk-all-over-you love. But rather the inherent power of loving those who stand against you.
Gandhi understood this truth. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. understood this truth. The Dalai Lama continues to teach this truth.
In his article, Spencer warns Millennials about the dangers of forgetting the lesson of the Hippies – that a lack of love will likely doom the left-progressive movement.
Frankly, I think Spencer lets us old-fart progressives off too easily.
I think far too many of us have forgotten the power of love, a truth we better understood in our youth, and we all need a refresher course.
When we hate any individual, no matter how justified it may seem, it destroys us from within. And when we allow those who oppose us to move us into a state of hate, they have already scored a victory in their fight against us.
Hate takes up far too much space on our mental hard drives – it’s exactly like a computer virus that corrupts the functioning of the human mind. It robs us of the ability to experience even a fleeting moment of joy. Eventually, it paralyzes us.
And now I’m going to suggest something radical to my fellow progressives of all ages:
Stop hating trump, stop hating MAGA-hat people, stop hating republican politicians and republican voters. It has absolutely no effect on them.
Yes, I know, with their racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia, they expend a lot of energy hating on us. But we are foolish to respond to them with more hate, or even allow ourselves to silently hate them, because it accomplishes the opposite of what we want for this country, for this world.
If the suggestion to stop hating on trump and company is too much of an ask, at the very least, let’s put a stop to using hateful, demeaning, “othering” rhetoric when disagreeing with those in our own camp.
Deal?
In 1957, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a sermon on “Loving Your Enemies.” It’s not as well known as his “I Have A Dream” speech yet it’s equally important in my opinion. This one line crystallizes the point I’m striving to make:
“… that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe.”
With that I wish you all Peace & Love.