The revolution was successful, however indirectly.

Absolutely, point well taken!

The Ann Coulters, Rush Limbaughs and Bill O’Reillys out there are the right-wing’s versions of Rubin, Hoffman, Krassner, and company.

Thinking about that makes my head split open, but I think there’s a whole lot of truth to what you’re saying. That really gives me something to work on mentally. Thanks!

Groups like The Weathermen, Black Panthers and SDS may have “failed” but that’s because they tried to put a name and label on something that had no central instigator or figurehead. Unlike the Cuban revolution, there was no hippie Castro leading the way, setting the agenda, making the plans.

However, when you see the effect the ’60s had on the world, you realize that whatever was going on impacted everything FOREVER. The revolution was successful, however indirectly.

I think there’s some sort of perverse glee in knowing that the current crop of neo-cons who support Bush are totally winning right now because they took a long cold look at their Lefty counterparts’ tactics, figured out what the Right was doing wrong, and co-opted the tricks of the Yippies into a conservative ideology.

The Ann Coulters, Rush Limbaughs and Bill O’Reillys out there are the right-wing’s versions of Rubin, Hoffman, Krassner, and company. They are no different from their mentors, other than the manner of their dress and the bent of their politics.

Likewise, I must conclude that this neo-con revolution is doomed to fail, mostly because in this case there IS a figurehead at the helm, and his name is Karl Rove… and his chances of staying the head of this movement are looking worse and worse every day, thanks to the Plame investigation.

Plus, the old guard– Cheney, Rummy, and Poppa Bush –are getting older and closer to the grave. The minute these three guys bite the dust, you’ll see some incredible global upheaval, no doubt.

No matter how conservative America gets, it always swings the other way on the cultural pendulum. So although certain 60s movements failed, the spirit of the 60s will return and visit us again, hopefully in the year 2020.

And absurdism itself, at least in the strong forms of it, seems to be a kind of resignation, a betrayal of any hope that there is an underlying sense to the universe. And if there’s no sense to be made nonsense of, then there’s nothing to revolt against in the first place.

Damn, that is seriously some good stuff. Really encapsulates it well.

- on one level, yeah, I think I get the idea of absurdist art as politics: if you think the system itself is so broken that even participating in it would make your ideas unrecognisable, then the only alternative is to make your own space outside of politics.

But I agree that it doesn’t exactly seem like shock art in itself accomplishes anything. *Especially* if it is merely a startling spectacle. It becomes a commodifiable product even as it attempts to defy commoditisation. Novelty and distraction for its own sake is just entertainment by another name, not revolution. And absurdism itself, at least in the strong forms of it, seems to be a kind of resignation, a betrayal of any hope that there is an underlying sense to the universe. And if there’s no sense to be made nonsense of, then there’s nothing to revolt against in the first place.

I like what Anita Roddick has to say about “a revolution in kindness”. It seems to me that doing tangible creative generous practical things for one’s fellow human is the best way of creating an alternative trans-political space. How one goes about financing, resourcing, training, etc that, is the tricky bit.

(Case in point: a lot of community groups here in New Zealand at the moment are worried about the destructive social effects of gambling machines in pubs. But the way the system works, community groups currently get a lot of their funding from gambling charity foundations. How do you break free of a broken system that’s set up to make you need it?)

I guess that explains where the Seattle ‘99 WTO protest methodology came from, then.

Anyway, the Yippies were actually really into sort of surreal/dada-esque antics. They were really into the idea of protest as theatre, and did lots of really strange stuff - especially stuff that was totally non-verbal and only symbolic. They were pretty cool like that, but at the same time, taking your clothes off and walking around with a pigs head on a platter, well - where the hell does that get you at the end of the day?

There is an interesting diary at Daily Kos called Daily Kos the new counter culture?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/6/3/191045/3904

My favorite counter-culture folks were surrealists and dadaists-
Tapping the absurd muse or the whimsical imagination is a fun way to let go and rebell against taking things too seriously—- a trap people easily fall into.
I think it is a riot the government is possibly listening to my phone calls in which I talk about B grade horror movies or rejected children book ideas to my grand-mother. Listen all you want Big Brother mother forkers.