Striving to create a kinder, gentler world should be the goal…..

I know I rail on about what life was like back in the old days and some folks might get a little tired of it. But, you know, I really do wish there was some way to convey to today’s young people – or younger people – what things seemed to be like back in, say 1969, and where some of us thought the world was headed. Some of us really believed that a kinder and gentler world would somehow be shaped by a generation of young people who talked about stuff like peace, love and harmony. Certainly didn’t turn out that way. In fact, the potential problems on Planet Earth that were identified by folks sometimes called “hippies” not only weren’t fixed by that generation, but have gotten mostly worse – what were potential problems back in 1969 are now our reality in 2021.

But one thing I think the generation of so-called hippies did do was raise some pretty great kids. There’s a joke going around these days. It goes like this….”Kids today are ‘way too soft. Why I died once when I was five and my Mom told me to walk it off.” And it’s a really common topic of conversation among folks my age that today’s kids are indeed “too soft”….and I’ve been guilty of accusing them of the same thing countless times. But lately I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s better that they’re “too soft”. Maybe the younger generation will indeed be able to create the so far mythical kinder and gentler world that the hippies were after. Maybe the younger folks are headed in totally the right direction and it’s somehow up to the rest of the world to get with the program.

Something we used to call “the Establishment” certainly ate the hippie movement – or however it could be described – for breakfast. As mentioned earlier, most of the problems that were identified back in the 1960’s – like the environment and over population and climate change – have mostly gotten catastrophically worse since that period in history. The Establishment may have seemed to have won the “war”, but they seem to have had no long range plan for the safety and security of the planet or its inhabitants. In fact, the plan seems to be to rape and gouge and loot and pillage as much as possible for as long as possible before the whole damned thing comes crashing down. And I’m thinking the rich folks, or those who make up the Establishment, must have some secret plan to save themselves when everything does come crashing down. Surely, they’re not both rich and dumb.

The really curious thing about the place we find ourselves in as we struggle away with the problems on the planet is that most ordinary folk – like you and me – seem to understand that there are serious problems on the planet and it is fairly common to talk about how government, our leadership, seems totally and absolutely unresponsive and out of touch. Everybody can see the grotesqueness of the ultrawealthy on the planet. It’s everywhere in the media, while at the same time so are the images of starving children and people living in misery. If there happens to be a god and a heaven and hell, we should all be headed downward because we’re allowing these huge, monstrous injustices to happen on our watch. What in the world are we thinking?

I found out this past week that I am afflicted by something being called “existential depression” and its major symptom is worrying obsessively about the condition of society and the world and humankind and feeling hopelessness at my inability to change things for the better. Or to make this the kinder and gentler place I had hoped for when I was a young man trying to be a hippie – or at least to follow some of the ideals they espoused and seemed to believe in.

Anyway, I continue to believe and have hope in our young people and feel they may be the generation that can change our wildly dysfunctional world for the better. Maybe, just maybe, the hippie generation will have the last laugh on the thing we called “the Establishment”. Maybe they have borne future generations who will simply not buy into all the bullshit and mass corruption. And maybe the fact the kids seem “too soft” is because they just don’t buy into the ultracompetitive, frenzied, dog-eat-dog world of their parents. That’s what I’m hoping. But it’s too bad their music sucks. LOL.