Peace And Love… And Saturn (Reality) And Pluto (The Shadow)

peace and love“Hippies? Well I like their drugs,” my husband said, causing me to snort. “Yeah, I like their drugs and I think hippies are nice… when they are young,” he qualified.

“Yeah?”

“They had these ideas when they were 23.. peace and love and while it’s a nice idea to have will you’re eating acid, the idea has no basis. There is no reality involved, it doesn’t work. I don’t disagree that their ideas are nice. Everyone lay down their gun. I’d love to see that but all it takes to ruin something like that is one _________,” he said, naming a psychopath we know. “One guy like that’ll ruin everything”.

I nodded. “Yep, he’ll come in there and take over immediately.”

“Of course.”

And there will always be someone like that.”

“Yep. And a hammer to the head will stop him,” he said. “It will stop him and I will be the one to swing that hammer but when I do, I don’t want to hear about how I am a rotten son of a bitch.”

Discuss.

 

74 thoughts on “Peace And Love… And Saturn (Reality) And Pluto (The Shadow)”

  1. I know someone whose parents were “hippies” and they fed her acid when she was a child. You know, to “open her mind” and stupid shit like that. Feed, clothe, and bathe your fucking kids and let them decide if they want to be at your stupid parties all night.

  2. Well, everyone is peaceful and loving and then here comes Charles Manson. Think he is interested in being peaceful and loving? Who is going to deal with him?

    Hopefully not me but somebody better.

  3. My friends tell me all the time what a hippie I am. If being eco-conscious and incredibly open minded about relationships makes me a hippie …. OK sure. 🙂 I say it tongue in cheek most of the time.

    But I’m the most conservative, realistic, grounded hippie I know. *shrug* I think at some point we need to grow up (hello Saturn) and realize how the world works. My sense about hippies (not having been there the first go ’round) is that they had a lot of ideas, but not a lot of real action around those ideas? I mean, music festivals are awesome but what do they accomplish? How are you making this ideal happen? And I’ve never seen it.

    I have this overwhelming need to Make Things Go. (Je suis un travesti executif! Un travesi d’action!*) I’m happy to sit around with ideas til a great one pops up, and then I wanna start building shit.

    *apologies to all the folks who aren’t Eddie Izzard fans.

  4. Charles Manson is a Scorpio Sun trine Pluto… Doesn’t look to peaceful to me considering his past!! I also have sun trine pluto but I learned not to abuse of your power. All psychopaths abuse of their power in one form or another and I believe that the peace and love movement is a blind faith in the good in people. I agree with chrispito! Rules and regulations to children are what they need! They can open their minds on their own and it shouldn’t be forced on them!

  5. “My sense about hippies (not having been there the first go ’round) is that they had a lot of ideas, but not a lot of real action around those ideas? I mean, music festivals are awesome but what do they accomplish? How are you making this ideal happen? And I’ve never seen it.”

    You’ve maybe never seen it, but if you think about it… How they ‘acted’ on their ideas (beliefs), ignited epic social change this country.

  6. ha ha ha funny . I live in England I know lots old hippies they would be horrified at the thought children would be given acid. Most of them very grounded.

  7. In fact I live on the Isle of Wight , we have very strong hippy culture. Famous for our festival in 1969. The last place Jimi Hendrix played before he died.

  8. I wrote this really long comment and it didn’t work when I posted it so here it is. If it gets put up twice I apologize. After having read these I will expound.
    Chrispito: Yes I grew up too during that time and had many neighbors kids experimenting with LSD. One or two never were the same again. And I have been to houses in the Haight during that time that would make crack houses look like fine hotels. I used to wander around the Haight occassionally as a kid when my neighbors brought their son to get his haircut down there. I went up and down the streets and wandered into places (they should have been watching me but it was very free back then). I saw kids lining the streets in dirty and ripped clothes nodding out, smoking pot and just generally looking destitute. I saw people in the park dancing in circles high as a kite and just not giving two shits about much. I saw the war on T.V. and our President shot and killed, like many of my generation and a lot of this was a reaction to this. It was a very heavy time and not all love and peace. That was all most a front as I see it for the lack of respect and apathy that had become the norm of most of the hippies I knew. But there was anger too. About our government and the way it was doing things. Off came the white gloves and on went the army jackets and daisies in the hair. And now, all those people are more intersted in the stock market than stopping the war or doing anything for society. My two cents.

  9. I lived in a very old-hippie/new-hippie community for about three years. I liked some of the ways the newer-hippie community (in conjunction with the local university) was implementing new technologies like sustainable energy and sanitation systems. However, the “peace, bro” vibe drove me up the wall… it was like all the will to live was being sucked out of me.

    I remember something you wrote a long time ago Elsa, about people who live the Scorpio energy for the rest of the collective. Well, the soldier lives the positive manifestation of what many consider “the dark side,” right? His reality is that he goes and fights the craziest of the worst so that the hippie-types can go on with their own realities… and both types of people belong in the world.

  10. I agree with a lot of what Dawn has said. The decade of the sixties we experienced the birth of the Civil Rights movement, the assassination of our President, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in an 8 year period. Our generation was getting drafted to Vietnam and losing their lives, limbs and their minds. The Vietnam Vets were coming home to a lot of hostility and virtually no social support system. A lot of these veterans became lost members of society, drifters, homeless.

    Woodstock took place in August 1969 and was billed as a music and art festival and turned out to be one of the most successful social experiments in that 400,000 people gathered there without violent incident. Six months later the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont with Hell’s Angels hired as “security” resulted in two deaths.

    It was a chaotic time. Some of the best music came out of this era: The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. A lot of great musicians died. Drug experimentation was rampant: marijuana, hallucinogenics.

    We were pushing the limits with everything. We were fed up with the way things were and we wanted to make things new. We failed miserably at some things and we succeeded admirably with others.

    I was (am) a hippie. So is my husband. We still try to live a life of authenticity. We try to eat healthy food. We avoid pre-packaged foods. We recycle. We shop yard sales and consignment shops and Goodwill stores. We garden. We’ve tried to bring our children up to have respect for themselves, others and the earth. We’ve striven for peace in our lives and in our communities and we pray for peace in our world, in our time.

    Peace, PA

  11. I agree, there is no reality involved. Peace and love are great ideas, and that’s just it… those are ideas and IDEALS. There is no reality involved. Reality being involved, there would be methods and strategies to execute a bringing about of peace and love. Not sure if that’s possible, but I don’t mind working towards it, somehow, in the meantime to try and find out.

  12. CArRiE, I see your point, I’ve just never quite been able to put the pieces together. (I do, in fact, realize how ludicrous that sounds out loud.)

    PA – your post helped, thank you. And those last two paragraphs sound a lot like me 🙂

  13. PallasAthena, thanks for saying so well what I was thinking. So much of what is taken for granted today we had to stick our necks on the line for. Each generation does what it can, some fail and some make strides. Have mercy!

  14. Just to clarify: when I put hippies in quotes, it wasn’t because I don’t believe that there were good people trying to do good things. It just so happens that someone I am close to HAS the psychopaths for the parents and within that community they (the parents) flourished.

    I lived in squats for a few years and this post reminds me of that. Everyone was welcome and some of the people welcome were bat shit crazy.

    This isn’t to call down anyone or their life style–in fact I get called a hippie all the time and it doesn’t bother me one whit–it’s a word that had/has power in it’s historical context but now, who knows? What does someone MEAN when they call me a hippie? Fucked if I know. One thing is consistant–everything, every movement–has it’s shadow side.

  15. LOL I meant “weren’t” up there, oops! I DO believe there were people trying to do good things–accomplished good things, etc.

  16. Avatar
    Scorp in a Suit

    I agree with the soldier, and would add that how you deal with the psycho is also important. I.e., maybe neither the hammer nor love is the right tool…

  17. Scorp, just for the record, the soldier’s comment was made in regards to a psychopath we both know and yes, you would have to kill him to stop him and people like this exist. Matter of fact, they show up in schools like Columbine and shoot children right up until someone is ready, willing and able to take them out.

  18. BRAVO PallasAthena! Well said/written.

    seadaughter… I also took for granted some of my freedoms/lifestyle choices (born 1962), but being married to someone 10 years older, and listening to his stories, I’ve been able to gain a better perspective… and seeing the difference

    Shannon… you don’t sound ludicrous, I couldn’t put the pieces together either until I had something to compare it too (earlier comment about my hubby).

    It’s all about LOVE! 🙂

  19. @PA well I commend you if you are living the dream. Some of that has filtered through into our society with the Green movement. So maybe it is morphing into more of an environmental rather than social movement.

  20. Avatar
    Le Ciel du Scorpion

    I have been thinking a lot about this kind of “utopian” ideal lately, as a friend of mine has really dropped out of society, sinking heavily into religious yoga practice. It’s one thing to learn how to transcend. It’s another to live in a constant state of transcendence (this is the same argument I used to bust out with my clergy when I was 11…once you’ve separated yourself from the masses, you can’t claim brotherhood with the masses…)

    Anyway, the majority of me feels like it’s total bullshit to say you’re somehow solving anything by dropping out–whether it be thru drugs, yoga, sex, etc. I learned that part of being “you” is accepting the “you” that exists in its reality. It’s painful. But that pain is transformative.

    I once read this article that said a true yoga practitioner should be able to practice in Times Square, using the energy there, not escaping it. I loved this. And it’s such a metaphor for how I feel now.

    (As an aside, I dated a hippy once, another Scorp! The sex was amazing. Even the drugs were amazing. Everything else, not so much.)

  21. I agree & believe that LOVE is always the answer.

    In reality, not so easy to do…but something to strive for nonetheless.

    With Love, PA

  22. This post brought the south park hippie music festival episode to my head. Cartman is the perfect psychopath. The whole episode is funny.

  23. I agree with the soldier. I used to be a hippie when I was in high school and college. I am no longer (but still love the Grateful Dead), mainly because I have come across some very mean people and love wasn’t ever going to work on them. I had to share a workspace for a year with someone I suspect was a sociopath. I tried being nicer and nicer and nicer (Mars in Libra) but then I just got pissed (square my moon) since I was being walked all over. As soon as I dealt with her she backed off.

  24. Okay…all this hostility against us hippies…who are you?

    “GENERATION X ERS” ??????

    Go ahead, name yourselves…

    “GEN-Y”?

    I’ve thrown down the gauntlet…

  25. @Le Ciel du Scorpio: I agree one hundred percent. and that was funny at the end!

    @Beth I saw the bumpersticker!

    @j I love South Park! : )

  26. So, CArRiE…I’d wager that we’d be the ‘ole farts’ around these parts, eh?

    Them ‘youngin’s ain’t even responded…

  27. I’m a youngin, I think, just shy of 30, so I’ll speak up. My generation definitely has a different view of hippies, but I know plenty of them who are around my age, based on their aesthetic choices like clothing, music and food, etc., they are the old school type.

    FWIW, I have noticed everyone gets teased these days! 🙂 There are so many different types of people, rebelling isn’t what it used to be.

  28. Old fart, maybe- but young at heart, always! This topic is really appealing to me, because I live in a very liberal, Old School Hippy community and since I was born in 1962, my parents were too young (and busy starting a family) to be hippies, and I was too young to experience it ‘first hand’. As I posted earlier, my husband has been a great ‘interpreter’ for me.

    I don’t know about you, but I’m ‘feeling’ a similar epic social change in our near future that is comparible to what happened in the 60’s, which is why this is so interesting to me.

  29. PallasAlthena- Old farts, but ‘forever young’ at heart! I am sort of caught in the middle. Born in 1962, my folks were too old/busy to be hippies, and I wasn’t old enough to participate personally.

    This topic is particularly interesting to me.. I don’t know about you… but, I definately ‘feel’ that we are on the brink of another ‘epic social shift/change’. This time around, I want to be knee deep in it!

  30. Dolce,
    Shit…rebellin’ ain’t what it used to be.. just become some
    f*ckin’ mainstream

    I agree..wholeheartedly!

    Back in ’72…you rarely saw a tattoo
    let alone many tattoos and
    on women?
    many, many, tattoos on everybody?
    piercings…and piercing to the extent that
    we see now?
    this is not rebellion.
    this is conformity.

    And conformity of what kind?

    That’s what I’m itchin’ to know…

  31. Togi- That’s funny…I used to have that shirt! I worked for a company that distributed them. At the time I was living in a very remote area and it just so happened that it was an area where many authentic hippies from the 60’s had relocated to. I would wear it around them from time to time…when I was feeling especially non-PC…just to make them laugh. They had pity on me as I was the only conservative, Catholic within 60 miles:))

    Anyway, I absolutely agree with The Soldier…this piece…

    http://www.mwkworks.com/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html

    …kind of captures it in my opinion.

  32. CArRiE – there is no limit… the filter acts on it’s own but please read this comment to dorchid because when you post multiple comments you wind up exacerbating your problem, not only on this blog but across the internet on any blog that uses the same filter I do and it is VERY popular (http://akismet.com/)

    https://elsaelsa.com/astrology/2012/04/26/meaning-planet-in-a-sign-in-a-house-with-aspects/

    I will write a(nother) post about this first chance I get. Until then, I beg you guy to quit posting comments over and over because I have to dig through then AND you are training the filter to recognize you as spam so worst case scenario here/..

  33. also on the spam filter – please be aware I cannot have this blog without it. This blog gets hundreds of spam comments a day and we would drown in them without the filter. This also means that when you leave another 100 comments (repetitive) that land in the filter / create a larger pile to sort through, it becomes incredibly oppressive.

    Please, if you comment does not show, please be patient and I WILL get to it and as soon as I can… and the filter will LEARN you are not spam because I will be marking you “not spam” to get you out of the filter!

  34. kvk – you’ll love this. My husband bought a “Give War a Chance” t-shirt at the SF / Ranger museum. It has a big smiley face on it.

    I didn’t say anything because he can wear what he wants and I have been with crazy people before… and related to them so you know. It’s nothing to me. My grandfather stood on his head in the grocery store for Godsakes. I was taught this was none of my business as he has rights, yes?

  35. PA, yeah I don’t know, I’ve got 2 tattoos 🙂 I am not sure how on earth anyone could be called rebellious these days. Although anyone can be contrary!

  36. Absolutely! That is awesome!:) And inspiring… truly where would the world be without people who were unapologetic about the value of their rights.

  37. I meant “related” by birth and this time related by marriage and hey. I have a 7th house Uranus so you know I have no problem with this.

    (Some) people come to this blog for relief from PC so I try to provide that.

    This is what happens when you’re raised by Aquarians never mind Italians.

  38. I’m a gen X’er and meant no disrespect to anyone. It was more like a statement of my understanding and the lack thereof.

Leave a Reply to Del Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 

Scroll to Top