141–150 of 210 posts
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How did you connect with that crowd? I've noticed a very high overlap between techies and hippies, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to stumble into a group of discordians short of randomly wandering the streets shouting "hail eris!".
"I've noticed a very high overlap between techies and hippies..." Have you seen The Net? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doQAwLb-DEE
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I'm a pragmatist. I find the philosophical 'discussion' on the metaphysical "purpose" of private property to be uninteresting and mostly worthless. I am, however, perfectly willing to entertain many possible critiques, if they are shown to be practical and better than the alternatives. Feudal property law, for example, I don't find to be nearly as flexible or efficient (which was around for quite a while, as well). I…
Graham's critique is remarkably like the one Karl Marx had of "metaphysical" philosophy, in favor of praxis-oriented philosophy. ;-) From the end of his Theses on Feuerbach : "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it".
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Let's get real, most homemakers are simply indulging their bourgeois fantasies. Not that I blame them, I'd do the same thing if I thought I could get away with it, but I'd probably get served divorce papers.
...or they are providing their own childcare and managing their household.
Like another commenter on this thread, I've lived in the Haight for the past nine years. And while the article is interesting and informative, it doesn't quite paint a full picture (literally—the pictures aren't representative, that girl is not a typical street kid by a long shot, she hasn't slept a day outside in her life. Think camo and combat boots and pit bulls, not peace signs and hacky sacks) of the underside o…
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Here's a justification for private property. How will there ever be an orchard otherwise ? Orchards don't just burst spontaneously into existence. Imagine that no one 'fought the natives for it'. Instead the land was a vacant waste with no one living there and nothing growing there. Over the years through hard work, dedication and sacrifice the land was amended and the trees grew creating the orchard. The only thing…
A nice turnaround, but in the story, the land wasn't a vacant waste, it was acquired by force. The story isn't "Oh, you moved into emptiness and created something, so I'll fight you", it was "you fought the people here before, so I'll continue with your method of ownership". Similarly, the wobbly wasn't demanding an apple, but enjoying the shade. Was the farmer selling shade? Lowering the cost of shade to all? The id…
Either way, you disprove your own point. The farmer has a more legitimate claim because he worked for it, he didn't attack someone for it like the guy who showed up wants to.
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Really, such as? The article doesn't present many of those and I doubt there are. All I am saying is it sounds boring as hell, stoned or not.
Busking, meeting people, concerts, parties, urban exploring. We get it, you like learning and being super-productive, but you don't have to put other people down just to get that point across.
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Really, such as? The article doesn't present many of those and I doubt there are. All I am saying is it sounds boring as hell, stoned or not.
Busking, meeting people, concerts, parties, urban exploring. We get it, you like learning and being super-productive, but you don't have to put other people down just to get that point across.
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And judging from the other comments, people who have no first-hand exposure to this enviroment are simply eating the article up, believing they have the full story. I'd invite anyone who is prepared to generalize about street kid culture based on this one article alone to spend just one /evening/ walking around Haight and Stanyan. Head into the park a ways. You don't have to go more than 50 yards. I guarantee you tak…
Reading the article, I pretty much had the exact same thoughts. It really seemed like the writer had a particular feel-good story in mind ("hippies still live in the Haight!") and went out there trying to find it. The error in the article is casting the entire scene as the same slice of peace-n-love that is espoused in the story, leaving aside -- as you say -- the things that happen after dark. Serious mental illness…
I propose that there is a much more important reading:
Youth unemployment is extraordinarily high (effecting minorities even worse than these mostly-white kids, of course). Youth incarceration rate / engagement with the justice system is very high.
The numbers of people "dropping out" of legitimate society altogether look to be high and growing.
People's personal feelings about all this aside, it pays to notice when society starts to fray so badly as this.
The one question that I always ask (and instantly makes me unpopular) of the hippie/transient/counter-culture types, is, "Do you realize you would all likely be dead of hunger withing two to three weeks without a massively efficient capitalist system supporting you?" They are able to exist because of people who are willing to work to support them. Even the communes rely on fertilizer, fuels, metals, foodstuffs from 2…
Where I live, the answer might run as follows. For fifty thousand years, the local hippies avoided starvation with a one-hour workday. Now that the place is full to bursting point with slaves of some massively efficient system, they have to work a bit harder. And, unless you can photosynthesize, you're a parasite too.