Peace and Love: Time to Recycle the Flower Power Era

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By Roland Michel Tremblay (about the author) Page 1 of 4 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Roland Michel Tremblay - Writer

The Peace and Love era of the 60's and early 70's, with its flower power gimmick, was such a ridiculous idea, I would not have been caught dead being associated with it. It was not my generation you see, so instead I hated anything related to it, including The Beatles and Donovan. I think back now and I wonder, perhaps we need to recycle that era. Let me explain... perhaps because there is only hate left in this world right now?

I watched a documentary about Donovan recently and he said something that truly caught my ear, about how everyone in the 60's felt some sort of euphoria as if paradise and utopia were within reach of the whole humanity, and they were about to rebuilt this world based on something we had never thought of before: love!

It was such an easy time for artists, you could make a record within a week, you could write a book within a month, production companies and publishers alike we're ready to kill to give you a contract, and it went on to make millions. At a time where marketing and sales and big industries were in their infancy. Today it takes at least three years before anything is overproduced, at least 100 persons will work on any product to be released, and in the end it does not even see the light of day. With an overpopulated market with so many authors, so many artists, with stringent conditions and obligations to be commercial in nature, it has just about killed art as a whole.

But this is not what I wanted to talk about. After all today we no longer need those large corporations to be heard, we can put everything online on the Internet as long as money and fame is of no importance to us. And so as artists we can still be idealistic in nature and write whatever we want. Something is missing though, this euphoria that we were going to change the world on a massive scale, that love would change everything. Love?

Unfortunately it was too easy a period, it was the baby boomers era as well. Money was falling from the sky, the children kept coming, powerful executive jobs were landing on every doorstep, and very quickly the flower power generation was replaced with the normal and usual gasoline power, and with it the wars in the Middle-East resumed, more virulent than ever. Except this time no one has been talking against it for over 35 years.

The result is astonishing, we have lost all our civil rights, there is no more privacy, in the UK we have even witnessed the Big Brother State/Police State becoming a reality and going even further than what George Orwell ever foresaw. Every time you send an email or a text message on your phone, you have to wonder: will this get some lights to beep on some government spying agency, will I get arrested, even though I'm just talking about the children's play at school?

Genocides have become the daily news and no one really cares, World War Three is just about to become a reality and that too leaves us indifferent. There has been no love in this world since the early 70's and no hope for a better world. No one is going to change anything, we're just going to die unhappy, frustrated, powerless. But not me baby! As I will change this world one way or another, even if I have to die trying!

We nearly reached the same euphoria with Barack Obama. For a second there we felt it, what they must have felt in the 60's. This feeling of love and that overnight everything would change in the world. But just as we calculated it would be, it has been very much business as usual since Obama entered office. After he won the elections, everyone went back to their normal existence and forgot all about it. None of our rights have come back, we are still at war, there are still genocides everywhere, and worse, we are entering an economic depression that could potentially be worst than the one of 1929. If for some reason we could still find any comfort or hope in a better world, from the great world of international politics, we were utterly wrong.

This is why I feel that such elation, such hope, such actualisation, can only come from artists, from culture. It has to come from singers, authors, painters, film makers, actors, poets, anyone who can reach out to the world. We have to change our attitude, we need to bring some positivism in this world, we need to bring back this same euphoria of the 60's and early 70's, where artists thought they would change the world on a massive scale! It does not matter that they could not, and that they have not, at the very least they all felt something great, and so we can!

So perhaps it is not exactly the flower power or the peace and love movement that I feel we should resuscitate, but something similar, something that will bring us the same hope and drive to take control of this world and bring it to a better place, where we could all find happiness, where finally it will be peace the world over, and why not, love.

Love not only of "stinky-foreigners" and our so-called enemies, or love for the world, but love in our daily life at work, our colleagues, more relaxed management rules, less greed but happiness in our life, and love at home. Before it becomes that all we will ever feel is hate and destruction, and make the Armageddon a reality through the Biblical meaning of the end of humanity.

After all, with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Tony Blair, we really felt it. We all thought this was it. The fascist era was back, Hitler had just changed name and face, but he was back. We thought we might actually witness the end of the world within our lifetime, especially when you added on top of it Global Warming that the Republicans worked so hard at denying its existence, going as far as censoring American scientists. Such a blast this was!

And then, we find that Barack Obama does not appear to be changing course, neither Gordon Brown in the UK, and Canada still has Stephen Harper for many years to come. If Barack Obama cannot change anything, whilst he was such an idealistic candidate, it can only mean one thing. It is not the lack of wishing which is at fault here, it is that no President or Prime Minister is in fact in control of the destiny of our countries. It must be true that they are but puppets to more powerful groups like rich corporations and banks.

And with this ends all hope for us to change this world, because democracy is meaningless at any rate. Don't blame Obama, just like we now understand that we cannot blame Bush and Cheney, none of them have ever been in control of our destiny, they were just obeying orders coming from above. Poor souls, I forgive them such evil they have brought upon in this world.

Any change in this world now can only come from mass public opinion, until the people in power can feel threatened by such a movement, until we are all on the FBI blacklist, just like in the 60's and the 70's. When such a desire to change the world and bring peace and love to the world was felt at every level by everyone, once the silence and corruption of the mass media was finally broken and became insignificant. Reaching out, convincing people, bringing back this hope and euphoria like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Donovan, Bob Dylan, The Moody Blues, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The Doors, Pink Floyd, The Who, T. Rex, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were only too capable in achieving. If only for a moment in time.

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