It was good to reminisce about the time that music was evolving, flower power, peace, love and ideals. Yes, we protested against the war, Joan Baez’s husband was in jail at that time for draft dodging and Country Joe McDonald sang his “Fixing to Die Rag”: give me an F, give me a U, …. (you can fill in the rest). One of my favorite tunes from that era is “I’d Love to Change the World” by Ten Years After, although I do not think they played that at Woodstock. They did play one of the best rock and roll tunes that weekend (I’m Going Home).
I wonder what has happened to all this idealism of those days. It seemed to all have gone out of the window with the election of Ronald Regan. We probably should not blame Regan; however, the hippies, the idealist, flower people of those days; grew up, got married and started raising families. They became middle-class. I have a friend or two who never changed; more power to them!
Thinking back on my last post, where I mentioned existentialism, another friend asked during that same meeting where we discussed the spider what existentialism really meant. One of my answer was that the hippies of those days, the flower children, were considered the ultimate existentialists. In essence, it seems that most religions and philosophies have this belief that human life as some higher or deeper meaning (heaven, hell and other things). Existentialists do not agree, they say that there is no meaning to human life, unless we give meaning to it ourselves. Jean Paul Sartre, one of the fathers of modern existentialism wrote: “We are condemned to be free.” That was what the folks at Woodstock did, they were free and decided to adopt peace, love and happiness.
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| The classic existentialist dilemma! |
It seems that the hippie culture was a reaction the consumerism of the 50s and 60s and the pursuit of the “American Dream.” But, people started rebelling against it and they echoed Jean-Paul Sartre who said “You might think that there’s some authority you could look to for answers, but all of the authorities you can think of are fake.”
Fifty years later here we are again; we are living in a country which is going to hell. This country has a fake president who was elected by a minority of the population, who mismanaged his own fortune and was bailed out by his daddy and now explodes this country’s deficit and his daddy cannot bail him out any longer. He is a president who cuddles up to dictators wanting to be one himself, definitely not someone to look to for answers; he lies when it suits him. It seems that we really are condemned to be free and to repeat the same mistakes. When Sartre mentioned that, he meant that you could not complain about getting lung cancer when you smoke, since you it was you free decision, choice or will to do so. Little did he know at the time that the tobacco companies stacked the deck against the smokers, but so be it. However, what Sartre is saying that if we just sit on our hands and do not do anything about what is going on around us, that is our choice; we should not complain.
The old hippies tried to do something about it and spread love, peace, and happiness; they fought against the war in Viet-Nam. I am not sure if it worked; however, we need to become existentialists again! We “new hippies” of today need to spread love, peace and happiness as well, but also spread tolerance of other cultures, other races, different sexual orientations, a woman's right to choose, fight against global warming, work for the environment and save this world for future generations.
I wrote part of this blog with the help of this web page: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Existentialism-Explained
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