I was thinking about...
...what I said earlier about Logan's Run. That movie, like so many books of the same time, was all about what happens to society when people become so dependent upon government...or anything at all that has as much power. During the early 60's, when government was creating The Great Society, a bunch of people tried to tell us how dangerous it was. Nobody listened.
Whatever the government gives you, it can take away from you. If you give it too much, it naturally has too much to take away. We may not have to Pledge allegiance to the flag any more but we don't have to pledge anything, we are naturally going to obey the entity that has such control over us.
In Logan's Run, like in so many works of that era, there is some faceless being or group of beings that has complete control over the citizens. The lives of the people are taken care of, they don't seem to work or do anything that isn't pleasing to the senses. They all fit into the mold of the perfect citizen and there's always some type of patrol that sees to it that none of them deviate too much from the norm. You never see the patrol coming and they are always arresting someone for some type of deviate behavior, deviate being defined by the entity in charge.
Organized religion did that as well. They defined normal behavior and then they ostracized people who didn't conform. So, like a sick combination of church and state, we have been controlled by a combination of political correctedness and the power to restrict freedoms.
The worst parts of religion is being mixed with the restrictive powers of government and as a result, we are obeying arbitrary laws and standards. That could be a necessary result of people living so close to each other and the need to govern large groups of people, but the same laws apply to people who live up in the mountains of North Dakota. There's no place in this country where we can exercise all of the freedoms that we were given inalienably without being considered deviant in some way, shape or form.
So, where are all of the hippies? I would think that they would want to protest something here. I guess arthritis prevents them from attending any decent sit-ins. The songs that inspired us are still being played. But no one is being inspired anymore so they can't be listening to the words. We're still sending men off to war and we still want free love. But no one wants to do the work to get at these rights, they just sure if they don't have them handed to them on a silver platter. That's too bad. Sit-in's were much more fun and rights gotten from them, or perceived to have been gotten from them, are much more difficult to give away.
Gotta go,
Meg
...what I said earlier about Logan's Run. That movie, like so many books of the same time, was all about what happens to society when people become so dependent upon government...or anything at all that has as much power. During the early 60's, when government was creating The Great Society, a bunch of people tried to tell us how dangerous it was. Nobody listened.
Whatever the government gives you, it can take away from you. If you give it too much, it naturally has too much to take away. We may not have to Pledge allegiance to the flag any more but we don't have to pledge anything, we are naturally going to obey the entity that has such control over us.
In Logan's Run, like in so many works of that era, there is some faceless being or group of beings that has complete control over the citizens. The lives of the people are taken care of, they don't seem to work or do anything that isn't pleasing to the senses. They all fit into the mold of the perfect citizen and there's always some type of patrol that sees to it that none of them deviate too much from the norm. You never see the patrol coming and they are always arresting someone for some type of deviate behavior, deviate being defined by the entity in charge.
Organized religion did that as well. They defined normal behavior and then they ostracized people who didn't conform. So, like a sick combination of church and state, we have been controlled by a combination of political correctedness and the power to restrict freedoms.
The worst parts of religion is being mixed with the restrictive powers of government and as a result, we are obeying arbitrary laws and standards. That could be a necessary result of people living so close to each other and the need to govern large groups of people, but the same laws apply to people who live up in the mountains of North Dakota. There's no place in this country where we can exercise all of the freedoms that we were given inalienably without being considered deviant in some way, shape or form.
So, where are all of the hippies? I would think that they would want to protest something here. I guess arthritis prevents them from attending any decent sit-ins. The songs that inspired us are still being played. But no one is being inspired anymore so they can't be listening to the words. We're still sending men off to war and we still want free love. But no one wants to do the work to get at these rights, they just sure if they don't have them handed to them on a silver platter. That's too bad. Sit-in's were much more fun and rights gotten from them, or perceived to have been gotten from them, are much more difficult to give away.
Gotta go,
Meg
posted by Meg Kelso | 8:36 AM
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