Sadly, The Times Have Stopped A-Changin'...

The BBQ Pit
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And started a-suckin’.

I live my sad little latent-hippie life wrapped in an upper class white boy life, and you know what? It just stops mattering after a while.

When Bob Dylan sang “The Times They Are A-Changin’” every word was true. There was revolution in the air, people everywhere were beginning to examine their assumptions, and America was becoming a new place. The Peace Sign stood for something, young people all over this country were making a difference, and being listened to. There was of course a conservative reaction to this movement, but it was crushed.

What happened boomers? You were the last generation who had a chance to really change the world… in the late 60’s it seems like it was inevitable that this country would rise above the stagnation that had been there before, and that maybe we could have a society about love and community.

When people gathered in the thousands in 1969 in Woodstock to live freely, they left a mark on the world that we still feel today, and it’s still talked about in reverent tones. People loved each other, and it was largely genuine, I have to believe it was. Bob Dylan’s words sound so silly when applied to the country right now, but when he wrote them they were dead on. It was “clear” that the world was gonna be different, so help or get out of the way, right? Hell, at this point we’re in a country where the religious right has so much push we have a redneck frat-boy dumbass in the white house. The times have come to where the only rebellion is pointless little things, conterculture. We live in a time of “Zero Tolerance” in schools, where anyone who speaks any differently from the pack is accused of being potentially violent and is ostracized and faces disciplinary action

I know that it wasn’t like we see it throught the glass of time, but you know that there was a chance to make a lasting and wonderful change. Instead we got the decadent, burned-out, uncaring 70’s. And now, it seems like all the real freedom and beauty in the world has to hide from the rest. Fuck it all! Where did this come from, and where did it go back to? We need another time of national cleansing so badly. We need to return to an innocent time where it’s all about love and experience. We need to stop this. I can’t even describe it all, but I think you know what I’m talking about. It’s what Cameron Crowe called the “silly machinery”. I don’t know what I expect in the way of response, this might really belong in MPSIMS, but dammit people, what went wrong? Why are we here? Why is there no hope left, at least not like there was? Where has the optimism gone?

Lucky Charms (Formerly MarxBoy)

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Vietnam. Kent State. Police beating protestors. AIDS. Watergate. Recession. Ronald fucking Reagan. John Lennon being shot. Altamont.
Lots of things.

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Meet the new boss… Same as the old boss.
There’s nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the party on the left
Is now the party on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
I guess we just got fooled again.

Seriously, there is a new revolution. There always is. The one that will be remembered, for this decade, is the fight against corporations, not against government. About freedom of information, against restricted distribution. The RIAA and the MPAA and Microsoft is the man, brother, and they’re trying, in the dinosaur-like brain that the corporations have evolved, to crush freedom, so that all we see is the pablum that they dish out in their generosity for us to consume.

Well, support your local bands.
Fight against zero-tolerance, and against anything that takes a human being and inhumanizes it, whether into a “discipline problem” or into a consumer.
Hey, at least this time, we’ve got IBM on our side. And when IBM’s the good guys… you know there’s evil out there.
Cites on request, though a brief search of /. should give you everything you need.

Course, there’s real evil out there, and people are getting hurt. But the government’s good at that sort of thing. Draw their nose to it, and if it involves saving people, hey, it’ll get fixed.
Problem is, when it involves fighting against someone who’s paying the PAC that feeds the congresscritters… well, we got a problem. But it’s okay. Sooner or later, if they don’t adapt, they’ll become irrelevant.
Peace, Love, and Linux.

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Lucky, the times are getting ready to change. Your generation, my generation, is starting it’s slow rise to power. We’ve been oppressed depressed and repressed since day one, and we’re getting tired of it. The next battle, yes, is against business. It’s a fight for freedom of information, freedom from the choking hold of greed and corporate corruption. It’s a fight to prove that every man, EVERY man, is made equal and will, nay, MUST be treated as such. The next war is against stereotypes, it’s against judgement, and it’s against preconceptions. Youth no longer means ignorance, nor does it mean innocence. Youth must be recognized as a force to be reckoned with, both intellectually and socially.

Our fight, friend, is just beginning. You feel there’s nothing there for us, but that’s because we haven’t grabbed the reigns yet and demanded respect. We must NOT allow our freedoms to be taken away. I sit and watch as the last generation, and the one before it, remove the last bits of freedom that our predecessors fought and died for, I sit and watch as they take away everything that’s meaningful. I sit and watch as ignorant, ineffectual buffoons control the means of education, destroying the hope of the youth. I watch as our potential is squashed before it has a chance to bloom. I won’t sit and watch any longer. Will you? Join me, join your brothers, your sisters, your friends, join up and say NO MORE! You will NOT keep us silent any longer as you take our sweat, our money, and our potential and translate it into a twisted money-pump. The greed of generations past must be stripped away so we, as a nation, can begin anew in this new age, this age of information, prosperity, and PROMISE.

Email me.

–Tim

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Lucky Charms, I do know what you’re talking about. We all have ideas about what is wrong with the world, and what should be done to fix it, but the world is a big, complex place. I think in this situation you really need to pick your battles. For me personally, I believe that the love of money, and money as the motivator for everything we do as individuals, corporations, and governments is very wrong, and should be re-examined. I believe that people should learn more about sustainable growth for their country and for themselves (that is, progress that is slow, steady, and creates a stable system, rather than a system where there is no concept of enough, but is based on more instead).

I believe that nobody can have it all, and that people need to make decisions for themselves, and take more responsibility for themselves and their actions. People need to examine their lives and make decisions based on what is right for them, not what corporations, advertising executives, governments, or their parents have decided that they should want. I believe that people should start thinking for themselves; I believe that saying people are stupid masses is a cop-out; people can think for themselves; I think they need to learn how (and corporate America is not interested in teaching them).

These are the battles that I’ve chosen to fight. I don’t have solutions to all the problems I see, but I fight these battles when the opportunity arises.

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LC, please email me.

I believe it’s coming. Slowly but surely, it’s coming. With every footprint on the streets, every placard raised in anger and hope, every vote for a party that cannot possibly win, every person who looks within himself or herself and decides to act on principle rather than accept the easy drift of individual prosperity and pre-mapped simplicity.

There was hope in Vancouver, Seattle, Washington, Prague, Windsor, Melbourne, Montreal, and Quebec. The latter was 50 000 people come to protest in a city of 200 000. Every one of those things is a blazing manifestation of hope.

As much as things must change, nonetheless they are better than they were. Police brutality in my city and country is still a deplorable fact, but they can no longer get away with driving motorcycles through crowds and randomly clubbing them. Despite that people of colour, women, gays and lesbians still have so much of a row to hoe, nonetheless it is true that they enjoy freedoms unthinkable 200, 100, 50 years ago. And despite that corporate rule and the dictatorship of the stockholder is on the rise, at least it has been curtailed from where it was in the industrial revolution.

When I get depressed about the fate of my country and my planet, and I do, I remember a few important things. That something is urgent does not make it hopeless. That something must progress doesn’t mean it hasn’t already. And that I am one person doesn’t mean I am nobody. 1These sound like platitudes, I know, but they’ve been hammered out within my political and ethical soul in many a bleak hour.

Optimism is not necessary for hope. Hang on to your principles in your darkest hour, for true despair is not in depression, but only in acquiescence.

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What’s so wrong with what we have now? Liberal democracies cover the globe. Free trade, free exchange of ideas, free thought are everywhere. People recognize the creative and liberating force of capitalism. Capitalism is one of the levers that has created our free society, and you people want to destroy it? Of course you do…anything that threatens the status quo is frightening to you, and capitalism eats away the status quo like a cancer.

Look around you, look at what’s happening. You people are trying to STOP the changes for the better the world is going through. Wake UP!

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Damn straight!

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**

What happened? The boomers grew up and got an introduction to the real world. I’d like to know what stagnation in particular that you’re talking about though. From everything I can remember reading about there were quite a few changes in the US during the 40’s and 50’s so I don’t know where you get stagnation from. I don’t think the 50’s get enough credit for the introduction of positive changes like the civil rights movement.

**

They got together to listen to listen to rock music. While there’s nothing particularly wrong with that I fail to see why anyone would be reverant about that. In fact it wasn’t even suppose to be a free concert but due to various events it ended up being one. Well, for those who tore down what little of the fences were put up in time.

**

HA HA HA HA HA! Sure people loved each other. They loved each other so much there were riots and discontent across the land. I think maybe you’re looking at the 60’s through rose colored glasses.

**

So do most other songs that are era specific. That’s ok though.

**

And our last president was a draft dodger commie lover so there’s how much power the right has.

**

When people have time to bitch about small things it really shows you how well they’re doing.

**

Were there no positives? Civil rights for blacks and women made some great progress in the 1960’s. And for the most part I think Americans are better off today then they were in the 60’s.

**

Things seem pretty good to me right now. Most Americans have real freedom. Although I do admit sometimes I do get upset.

**

Well you really haven’t described anything.

Marc

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And thats bad compared to a Big Oil puppet redneck Dunce?

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It certainly shows that the “religious” right doesn’t have a strangle hold on this country.

Marc

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Unless, of course, “The Religious Right” and “Big Oil” are really the same group…

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LC, the 60’s fantasy you’ve described in your OP has little to do with history. Woodstock, for example, was set up by two New York City investment bankers to make a profit. The grossly incompetent promoters they hired to organize the show didn’t set up adequate security or facilities, and they had to declare it a free concert because with the hippies trampling fences, they didn’t have a whole lot of choice. You can read about it in Young Men With Unlimited Capital: The Story of Woodstock by Joel Rosenman and John Roberts.

Altamont. The 60’s was not a caring, tranquil decade. We had assassinations (JFK, MLK, RFK, Medgar Evers), we had a citizenry divided over a war in a country we knew nothing about, we had race riots, antiwar riots, and the start of a major drug problem that remains with us.

Sez who? What are you doing to change the world? I know you’re not old enough to vote yet, but you can volunteer to help out for a candidate or issue that gets your blood up.
You can enroll as a literacy volunteer, you can deliver meals to AIDS patients, you can help out at a soup kitchen for the homeless.
Every generation has its crises and struggles and its up to you to make a difference. Oh, and stop criticizing President Bush; picking on the mentally challenged isn’t nice.

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Change that to, “Every generation has its crises and struggles and it’s up to you to make a difference.”

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To those of you who posted that things are great because we have the freedom to make as much money as we possibly can and damn the consequences:
Things are good (for most North Americans), I’ll give you that. For now. How long they will stay good, nobody knows. It’s a pretty sure thing that if your country policies include using up unreplaceable natural resources at astounding rates, you will run out of these resources some day, and if these resources are necessary to the standard of living we all enjoy, then it follows logically that the standard of living will change at some point in the future.

I’ll even agree that Capitalism has its place, and is not evil of itself. Unfortunately, Capitalism combined with human greed and self-servingness could prove to be a deadly combination for humans as a whole.

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I think someone has been believing the hype.

“FIGHT THE POWER” - Public Enemy

Lucky Charms, I salute your idealism. I may not share it now but I did have that brand of idealism at one time.

But I think the real error in your thinking is the assumption that some huge mass movement made a difference. It can’t, it didn’t exist. What movement actually occured consisted of millions of individuals making endless discrete decisions. Anyone who tells you that so many people agreed on so many issues really needs his ‘media filter’ adjusted.

You want change? The opportunities for it surround you. Be kind to strangers, volunteer, live a good life and set an example for the people around you. Those are FAR more effective long term means of change than any amount of marching and sign waving.

In my experience (media-wise) all having thousands of people group to march does is acheive a critical mass where SOMEone will become violent. And that isolated case of rioting will be what makes the lead on the evening news (thereby making the case that ALL the protestors were rioting, if you follow the way the media works).

50,000 people marching against globalization (something I don’t really feel that strongly against right now, I admit) won’t accomplish much. Take those same 50,000 people and have them all commit to never again purchasing a product from a large, self-aggrandizing corporation and you have power. If you want to communicate with corporations you have to speak their language.

I got stuck in the traffic a while back when the protests moved to Washington DC. While they weren’t as big as Seattle I can remember watching the kids as I drove along wearing Nikes and Birkenstocks, drinking Gatorade or water bottled by the Coca-Cola company and thinking, “These kids just don’t get it.”

So, I repeat, if you want to make a change, make a change. Don’t drive a car. Don’t buy from huge corporations. Dodge the genetically engineering foods if that’s what you care about. Whatever you do, don’t just complain or bemoan your fate, do something. If you set an example and encourage others to do so, eventually, if enough others join you, you have a real honest-to-God volkerwanderung.

And that’s real power for change.

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Bravo, JC!

I can’t think of a dang thing to add. You really might want to consider taking off those Rose-Colored glasses when reading your history books. History is made by people, not movements. All the wishing for things to change won’t change a dang thing. Things only change when you stand up and start working.

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That situation’s not unique to capitalism. Replace it with socialism, for example, in the above paragraph and it still holds true.

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Peace and love, my ass. These were violent and bloody times, my friend, not all of it caused by “The Man.” Much of the mayhem was simply sensless violence for the sake of violence. I, for one, wouldn’t care to repeat them.

Anyway, if you, Lucky Charms, are so hep on the flower-power generation, the Black Panthers are still looking for a few good radicals. http://www.bobbyseale.com/ And the Weather Underground is probably looking for some new bombmakers.

It’s probably more true for socialism and still more true of communism. The neat thing about capitalism is that the smooth operation of it actually depends on greed, one of the most reliable of human emotions. Where communism depends on the altruism of the baker to supply bread, capitalism need not; it relies on people acting in their own self-interest.

Or find replacements for them. This same argument was made about whale oil. Ya know what happened whe we ran out of whale oil? Not a damned thing. We found replacements. And prosperity continued. Have you no faith in the inventivess of man? Damn poor humanist you’d make.

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Yes and no. True enough within a non-corrupt institutional structure. But it is not clear how such a structure could come about or be maintained by self-interest alone. It’s the same problem, even if it is of a different magnitude.