Earlier quoted context omitted.
yeah it's post-left
liberal != left
yes, that was the commentary i was making.
Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
661–670 of 1001 posts
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#662Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the entire establishment is seeking to ally itself with your movement/culture/etc then that’s a strong indicator that your movement isn’t counter-culture or otherwise subversive. They don’t have to become True Believers IMHO. And FWIW, lots of big companies have DEI departments that preach this stuff internally and market it externally (my wife is a marketing consultant with these big companies and they eat this s…
When Coca-Cola embraced the flower children with its ads in the late 1960s / early 1970s, did that mean that the US counterculture of that time had become "the culture"? Of course it did not. The flower children, the back-to-the-landers, the bikers, the free love communers all remained a tiny slice of the population (and a shrinking one by that time). What the late 60s/early 70s US counterculture had going for it was…
I want to add that my final paragraph above really describes the fundamental flaw with countercultures if you believe they are a vehicle for political change. They are really premised on the idea that it is possible to make a set of personal, individual choices and that if enough other people make similar choices you can build a sort of parallel society to mainstream culture. If you believe in them as a mechanism of political change, you tend to imagine that parallel society serving as an example/lesson to mainstream culture and being adopted by it.
As Coyote's observations note, this can work for "culture" issues, which do indeed tend to be the result of individual choices about consumption, but it rarely works for issues rooted in the distribution of political and economic power. These require political movements demanding change from the mainstream.
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#663Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way you know 4chan is the counterculture is every time someone releases a new generative art tool, 4chan figures out a way to do stuff with it that makes the creators have to restrict and/or shut it down. Like in the 1960s how the mainstream culture would whisper under their breath and point in shock and horror at hippies and try to get them banned from various public venues, and send mobs to beat them up, we hav…
The hippies were shit on during the sixties because of politics and the Vietnam war. The hippies were a big part of the anti war movement. The simplest and quickest way to shutting the movement down was to criminalize its constituents, like hippies, or civil rights activists, through tactics like draconian drug laws and a drug war. The hippies were rooted in things that were objectively good: peace, love, self discov…
> The hippies were rooted in things that were objectively good: peace, love, self discovery, acceptance, mutual aid, egalitarianism, free thought.
History is written by the winners.
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#664Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was going to remark that people like myself that avoid (most) social media and avoid tracking via vpns and so forth are counter cultural right now. I'm still having to explain to people why I'm not on Facebook all the time.
I routinely get eyerolls for asking people to ask me first before putting pictures of me up on the internet.
I have cut contact with, and purposely avoid extended family functions for this reason alone. It is beyond me why people can't seem to respect you and your privacy.
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#665Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't have non-standard opinions anymore. All opinions are now politics. If I say I like guns people instantly categorize me as Right-Wing-Nut or Alt-Right-Nut. If you express any kind of differing opinion publicly you will be associated with everything and anything the person hates. There are differing opinions, but those need to be kept private for fear of retaliation.
Thank god that I live in a country with more than two political parties. And where gun control isn't part of a culture war. Gun ownership is no different to car ownership and isn't tied to any political opinions.
Car ownership is very much a political issue for some people who are very into bicycles
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#666Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way you know 4chan is the counterculture is every time someone releases a new generative art tool, 4chan figures out a way to do stuff with it that makes the creators have to restrict and/or shut it down. Like in the 1960s how the mainstream culture would whisper under their breath and point in shock and horror at hippies and try to get them banned from various public venues, and send mobs to beat them up, we hav…
The hippies were shit on during the sixties because of politics and the Vietnam war. The hippies were a big part of the anti war movement. The simplest and quickest way to shutting the movement down was to criminalize its constituents, like hippies, or civil rights activists, through tactics like draconian drug laws and a drug war. The hippies were rooted in things that were objectively good: peace, love, self discov…
This is really a minor point and has no bearing on the larger argument being made here, but the hippies had all sorts of terrible traits. Some “rediscovered” lost diseases such as trench foot due to a need to eschew any modern practices such as bathing. And some raised their children in broken, drug-addled homes, in search of “enlightenment.”
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#667Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of that, in turn, is the slow death of the American working class. This is a much harsher society economically. That is why you step over bodies in San Francisco's Tenderloin. It wasn't like that when I moved here (early 80's). But why are you surprised? The hippies pushed free love and drug use. The inevitable end result was more children without stable families and drug addiction. When you step over those bodi…
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That's quite an uninformed leap.
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#668The medium is the message dudes. At this point in history, what will qualify a true counterculture is NOT BEING ONLINE. Whatever the true counterculture will be, it won’t be subject to the Internet and its all-seeing eye. It won’t be made out of memes and flame wars. No matter what the political bent, we’re all very much a captive audience online. “Master’s house/master’s tools” and all that.
Or as a great person once said, "The Revolution will not be televised."
gil scott heron (such a good song)
𝄞 "you will not be able to stay home, brother... you will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out"
as u/neonnoodle said " At this point in history, what will qualify a true counterculture is NOT BEING ONLINE. "
I've been lucky enough to spend long periods in such hehe (forest monasteries)
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#669Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not childish anymore. It's just angry and cynical. It looks less like the shit-talking edgy teenagers having fun being idiots like it was in 2007, and more like unhinged, hateful, contrarian paranoid schizophrenia. I wish the people on 4chan had the stupid childish fun that I did 15 years ago.
> the stupid childish fun that I did 15 years ago. You realize you've just confessed you've grown old (and likely cranky)?
It happens to the best of us. Personally, I don't think 30 is all that old, but I am cranky.
I also don't think there's a "getting out of touch" aspect of holding the opinion that silly stupidity is not the same thing as angry paranoia.
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#670Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because no one needs to change the way they act around you. Christianity and Catholicism are strongly majority groups in the US. You were already treated as a Christian because that's what the majority of our society is based on.
Catholic teaching is that men cannot become women and women cannot become men. Catholic teaching is that lying is sinful. Practicing the Catholic faith by saying "I'm sorry, but I can't 'use your pronouns' because that would be a lie by falsely saying you're a woman when you can't be" will get you reprimanded or fired at most any major US company.
I know several Catholics who have no problem using a transgender person's pronouns. Trying to use a religion as a cover for bigotry is disrespectful to both the transgender person and other members of the religion.