Yes, of course there were "drug" casualities, but my perception is
that the bulk of today's problems don't stem from, let's say, free sex, a
thread that goes back to the Art Nouveau people (red The Yellow Book
magazine) from the turn of the last century, through the 20's and into the
60's, but from a general dis-ease that the human race is subject to
including the permitted, even exhalted, murders we call war (as in Vietnam,
Thermopolyae, the Crusades etc. etc.). There has always been a need for the
eternal creation of a large group of economically impoverished people,
peons, slaves, the underpaid, under employed to insure that the needs of
the feudal or agriculatural or capitalist systems can continue to enhance
the wealthy.
We have perpetually martyred or castigated those who point out
possible steps towards compassion. Socrates was killed for giving the
youth of Athens LSD (Kykeon) outside of the priestly ok; Jesus was killed
for agitating slaves and the poor and suggesting religious possibilities
outside of the priest-class; Timothy Leary was put in solitary confinement
for a long, long time for suggesting there were non-"establishment"
possibilities for re-union with god outside of the accepted religious and
temporal modalities.
We are currently living through a period that has its roots much
deeper than the 60's, which was in many ways a temporary rebellion against
those roots. Our own country is suffering the beginnings of economic
disaster brought on by changes that are inexorable in view of the "system",
and we are currently scapegoating single mothers, the homeless, the
immigrants, the poor. These changes did not start in the 60's but at the
dawn of history.
In Santa Cruz, where I live, the Deadhead kids are called "the
transients" and blamed for all sorts of immoral activities. BEWARE OF OF
GENERALIZATIONS WHETHER ABOUT PEOPLE OR ABOUT A PERIOD OF HISTORY. It
leads to injustices like Auschwitz.
I've got to go - I'm headed to San Francisco for a Leary Memorial
tonight. They say he woke up the morning of the evening that he died
saying, "Well, what are we going to do to make the world happier today?"
Wicked man, eh?
Love and good growing Elizabeth Gips
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"Delusion may last for infinitely long periods of time. Enlightenment
comes in an instant." Hui-neng - the 6th Chinese Patriarch
Elizabeth Gips http://www.icenine.com/changes/
Changes evolutionary audio, KKUP 91.5 FM, Tuesdays 2-6pm
Scrapbook of a Haight Ashbury Pilgrim -order from me- it has moments of
great beauty