You are preaching to the choir. The purpose of LSD is not to watch walls melt or watch red/green tracers follow your hands, but to go inside onself and expand the doors of perception, to shatter the ego and exist in a borderless universe where you and it are one and there is no self.
Which is exactly what I said gobear did: he insulted hippies, and when called on it, redefined hippies only to include the people he was insulting. Your definition is bullshit, and is largely recognized by nobody I’ve met. Especially items number 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. I’ll give you 5.
Daniel
Bullshit and mendacity. Cite, please.
Well, you’re in Ashland.
Ashville. Sorry. Although probably equivalent to Ashland, Oregon.
Hmm? Are you agreeing with me that his definition is bullshit, or are you calling my claim that his definition is bullshit bullshit?
Pullet the fact that I live around folks who describe themselves as hippies, am more familiar with them, is reason to give my opinion more weight, not less.
Someone might define goths as:
- People who haven’t outgrown adolescent angst.
- People who think that they’re vampires.
- People who think that Ann Rice is the bestest writer ever.
- People who think that wearing all black, just like all their friends, is the ultimate expression of nonconformity.
- People who think that being happy is a sign of weakness.
- People who think there’s nothing sexier than tuberculosis.
That someone would be full of shit. The fact that I hang out with goths pretty often gives me a pretty good perspective from which to disagree with them.
Who do you hang out with? Yuppies? Rednecks? Suits? Geeks? Gimme a shot, and I’ll talk some inaccurate shit about your friends.
Daniel
Hell, can’t tell if its irony or not, got his tongue in cheek? Only way to know is punch him in the chin and see if he bites off his tongue. Which would severely limit his, ah, self-expression, and I’d end up having to apologize either way.
Shit. I hate dilemmas.
(Note to LeftyDork: Goth thing= 
)
Heh. It may help that I was introduced to the ubercool San Francisco goth scene by a (tres goth) friend who taught me the Goth positive feedback loop:
-Go to a goth club and look for the ones who take themselves too seriously.
-Laugh at their pomposity.
-Your laughter makes them indignant.
-Their indignity is even funnier, so you laugh more.
-Eventually, they swell up and pop.
The goths I’ve known (at least, the ones that I hang out with) have a great sense of humor about themselves. Just like the hippies that I’ve hung out with. And neither group is very much like the stupid stereotypes that other folks attach to them.
But I do look forward to attacking Pullet’s friends, as soon as he pigeonholes them for me.
Daniel
Left Hand of Dorkness:
1st: I’m a “she.” “Pullet” is a term used to describe a young hen.
2nd: this is useless. Of course generalizations do not fit every single member of a group. The fact that someone tried to group them together at all means that they left out some people because
<fanfare>
people are different
so even if similar, no two people are going to have the exact same ideology, feelings, attitudes, or expression. There can be no attempt to draw similarities between them unless the differences are also left out. So, some people are left out.
I’d say your list of Goth characteristics is accurate in its way. There are Goths out there who match it exactly, Goths who only match part, people who have one side of their personallity that matches but another side that doesn’t. That concept is one that I have recognized from the fucking beginning, that not every one in a group behaves in a given way. What I’m sick of is people unite themselves fully with a particular group without adequately researching the ideals, proposals, methods, etc common to that group. Now, does that mean that the group itself will have defined ideals and methods? No! People are freaking complicated! The social systems we invent are even more complicated! I appreciate that!
What I don’t appreciate is your attitude. I’ve been arguing that I dislike idiots. When I started this post, it was a kind of idiot that had pissed me off. Since you joined, you’ve been upset simply by my use of a particular word to describe habits I have observed to be common to a particular group of people. I never presumed everyone had experience with this particular groupd of people. You don’t like the term hippie. It’s not PC. What name would you like to use now? I’m sure it will be just as insulting in a few years. As you so neatly pointed out, words can have more than one definition. And one definition can come to be prefered over time.
I’m well aware of the generalizations people draw about my friends. My friends are well aware of it. So long as others leave us alone, what do we care? Of course people are going to talk innacurate shit about your friends because no possible generalization could be completely accurate. What do you care? Am I hurting you with these pixels? Am I insinuating riot against them? No. And once more, because apparently I haven’t been clear: I JUST DON’T WANT PEOPLE TO BE IDIOTS.
It doesn’t seem like much to ask.
Sorry; the loads of poppycock threw me.
Yep, that would be a problem with stereotypes; yep, they are useless. Still in agreement.
That’s not a problem. What isa problem is your stereotyping of hippies, as in your six-point post above.
What are on you about now? I got no problem with the word “hippie.” What I got a problem with is attaching ignorant stereotypes to it.
No. What do you care what I say? I am always befuddled by people who imply, in posts interspersed with all-caps, that I’m taking the Internet too seriously. Et tu, Pullet?
It’s a freakin’ discussion. I think you’re furthering ignorance, not fighting it, through your posts about hippies.
As for wanting people not to be idiots: I wholeheartedly agree. And there are idiot hippies out there; believe me, as a resident of Asheville, I’m all too aware of this, like a resident of Tokyo is going to be aware of idiot Buddhists.
At the same time, a post about what “Idiot Buddhists” do is gonna strike me wrong.
Daniel
Idiot Buddhists:
- Wants to be at two with the Universe
- Thinks “Nirvana” would make a great name for a rock band.
- Master Po would kick the living snot out of them, and they still wouldn’t get it.
- Wonders what color the Void is.
I read the first four and thought of my university’s anime club. 
Didn’t I just argue that my “definition” of a hippie is bullshit along with all generalizations of behavioral similarities? I know my definition is bullshit. I recognize that. I embrace it.
This is the pit. If I wanted to debate about the goods and evils of stereotyping I’d have gone to GD.
When I started this thread, some idiots had pissed me off and I wanted to vent. I wasn’t looking to denegrate all people everywhere. I used a term which, as I said, has a duality of accuracy and inaccuracy, because the term loosly fit the side of their personallity that I had experienced. Lay off.
I’m not generalizing that all hippies are idiots in what they do. I’ve said that from the start. If you can agree with me that sometimes, some members of a loosely and poorly defined group are irritating, then I don’t know what we are arguing about. I didn’t start this thread to smash the ideals of hippiedom in their entirety.
I think that’s the third or fourth time I’ve said as much. Since I can’t use all caps to make it clear, if you don’t get it this time I’m giving up.
regards.
dre2xl, I thought the same thing Most of my guidelines could fit for a bunch of groups, so I had to add the bit about crystals and smudge.
<prepares for attact from the** Left**>
What am I doing wrong? Scribble was able to recognize from page 1 exactly where I was coming from. And I chimed right in when people started making cracks playing off of other overused stereotypes. Doesn’t that show that I recognize the flaws with stereotypes? WTF?
[QUOTE=elucidator]
Hell, can’t tell if its irony or not, got his tongue in cheek? Only way to know is punch him in the chin and see if he bites off his tongue. Which would severely limit his, ah, self-expression, and I’d end up having to apologize either way.
Shit. I hate dilemmas.
[/quote
Dead serious.
Ah, Davis. Where angsty high school goths wear Birkenstocks. Where the Blue Mango Restaurant once made all decisions by consensus among the staff. (It’s now a Hungarian Restaurant - with an owner.) Where the Food Co-op was accused of selling out when it moved to bigger digs with flourescent lighting. (There was much discussion on whether they should sell meat - they do - you can get your ostrich meat there.)
Davis is like nowhere else in California. It’s not hippie so much as it’s superior middle class, with the superior provided by various alternatives that have been added to the life style. A lot of people put a great deal of thought into improving their lives and their community with thoughtful alternatives. But some just have to have an alternative because everyone else in town does.
They’d be a different kind of idiot somewhere else. Damned Davis Doofuses.
I love you, Yllaria.
Chicken Kisses
I want to take this moment to commend you all for restraining the impulse to make “pecker” jokes. This shows commendable maturity.
Bah, LSD is a chemical, a bunch of atoms interconnected, it has no ‘purpose’.
But lo, there is Murder Burger, it’s very existance keeping Davis Doofuses as bay for at least 100ft. Did they manage to keep Borders from driving the poor local book retailers into bankrupcy?