Warp wrote:
> Stephen <mcavoysATaolDOTcom@> wrote:
>> Reading one of the current threads started me thinking about my attitudes when I
>> started working. In my twenties (the 70's) I had waist length hair, wore
>> cheesecloth shirts, an afghan coat, flares with inserts, smoked dope and thought
>> that we were on the way to eradicating poverty and war. I must have been "hell
>> on wheels" as an employee. 
> 
>   The problem I see with the hippie ideology is that it's a kind of
> "wouldn't it be nice if" ideology without any real solutions which work
> in the real world.
> 
>   It would indeed be very nice if everyone could just co-exist in peace,
> if everyone loved everyone else, if everyone made love, not war, if nobody
> was greedy and malevolent.
> 
>   However, unfortunately, the world just doesn't work that way. Wishing it
> did doesn't make it so. Crime won't stop by wishful thinking, the need for
> a police force (in all senses of the term, including at international level)
> doesn't go away by simply wishing so. Major problems aren't solved by
> protest marches (not in the long run anyways). Unfortunately even world
> hunger will not be solved by simply blindly throwing money to the problem.
> 
>   The basic problem I see with the hippie ideology is that it wishes the
> world was simple, while it isn't. The world is very complicated.
> 

Wishing to make things better might not work, but if it gets you to at
least try then it's better then nothing. Wishing alone might just be as
good as not doing anything. That still doesn't make the ideology wrong.

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