[Shar_Lamagne]

Just saw that phrase tonight. Excuse me. The 70's were alive. We truly lived. That wasn't excess, that was the way we were intended to live.

Everything since has been a shadow. Mankind has embodied the pure lameness of everything since. Children of the Sun

[americandream]

Just saw that phrase tonight. Excuse me. The 70's were alive. We truly lived. That wasn't excess, that was the way we were intended to live.

Everything since has been a shadow.

Mankind has embodied the pure lameness of everything since.

Children of the Sun

There has never been a golden age in capitalism. Just different levels of maturity. I should imagine the 70's were the thirtysomething years to contemporary capitalism's middle aged vintage.

[Ibon]

That wasn't excess, that was the way we were intended to live.

Everything since has been a shadow.

Mankind has embodied the pure lameness of everything since.

Nostalgia is toxic. Your ability today to live the ideals you saw in that past is right at your door step. You do not need the external prop of an idealized generation to make that happen. It is within you. In fact this nostalgic mourning for this lost generation really provides you excuses for not pursuing your own life as you believe it was intended to be lived. That is why nostalgia can be so toxic. Don't despair the mediocrity around you. You can choose to see the sun rising and setting as a mystical act or the days mundane routine.

Sometimes the more I see mediocrity around me the more I feel I carry a precious secret.

[SeaGypsy]

The Glorious 70's hey?

Most places in the world you would get locked up for smoking a joint, let alone taking acid.

The decade the worlf sat back and let Pol Pot murder millions of Cambodians.

When we let a few million starve to death in Africa, but supported Appartied.

The decade heroin became common in Western cities.

When men started dressing like women and women started acting like men, en masse.

When politics were so unbelievably shallow the actors weren't even B grade.

When the world decided to ignore the many energy crisis mitigation scenarios which could have lead to an AGW free world, a population stabilised at 3 billion?

Yeah right, the glory years.

[americandream]

The Glorious 70's hey?

Most places in the world you would get locked up for smoking a joint, let alone taking acid.

The decade the worlf sat back and let Pol Pot murder millions of Cambodians.

When we let a few million starve to death in Africa, but supported Appartied.

The decade heroin became common in Western cities.

When men started dressing like women and women started acting like men, en masse.

When politics were so unbelievably shallow the actors weren't even B grade.

When the world decided to ignore the many energy crisis mitigation scenarios which could have lead to an AGW free world, a population stabilised at 3 billion?

Yeah right, the glory years.

The roots for todays unfolding crisis were establishing themselves in the past.

[Shar_Lamagne]

I guess you don't understand.

The phrase was intended to say we were out of control. We questioned too much. Challenged too much. Too many drugs. Too much fun. Too much education. Too much Freedom.

It was another slam. One intended to just be accepted. A rewrite of the past.

That we lived excessively. Not in terms of resources. The 70's were quite resource constrained with the Arab Oil Embargo, The early 70's depression they called a recession. The massive unemployment whose figures got manipulated downward.

We flipped off the system and lived our lives outside of it.

The right has been rewriting us ever since. Making us out to be excessive. Making us out to be screwed up from drugs, from outside influences like Eastern Philosophy.

We lived and we were happy despite everything they did to us.

The Right-Wing among our peers were extremely few and pitied. (Which is probably why they hate us so much now.)

They were up tight and rigid in personality. Stunted people. Conservative men never got laid except by the Ann Coulter type sluts, Ewwww! (And prostitutes, same difference.)(Most conservative women were only after marriage, in total darkness, and hurry up and get it over with!)

The 70's was a spiritual high point. (to risk sounding like vision-master.) We strived for enlightenment and transendence.

We hit a high point of civilization. At least in terms of the spiritual advancement of man. We were GOOD people. We took care of each other.
We actually cared what happened to each other. Even the stunted ones.

This song embodies it. The whole album does.
Fantasy - Earth, Wind and Fire

Yes I know I sacrificed a few spititual points for the conservative sex comments. (It's still Ewwwwww!)

[Shar_Lamagne]

really provides you excuses for not pursuing your own life as you believe it was intended to be lived.

Exscuse me? I have lived my entire life the way I believed it was intended to be lived.

Speak for yourself.

[Tyler_JC]

Too much Freedom.

Huh?

[Shar_Lamagne]

Yeah, you know. Not letting others dictate to you how to live you life, how to think about others or yourself.

Freedom from the incessant interference of those too scared to take the steps towards independence from the controlling masses and living truely free as you did so.

Being able to tell the world to stuff it up their a**, that this is your life and that you will live it as you see fit.

You know, Freedom.

[pup55]

Things I miss about the 70's:

1. Cheap beer. You could get a pitcher of beer for $1.50 at the time I hit drinking age, which at the time was 18. This was about 15 minutes of work at my grunt summer job scooping rock, which paid about $6 per hour. I think at the local watering hole, a $10 per hour laborer nowadays would take 3/4 of an hour to make the $7.50 it costs to get a pitcher of beer.

2. Tolerant cops, at least in the college towns. In that era, as long as you did not destroy anything big, they figured that the hangover you were going to get was punishment enough for 90 percent of the stupidity that occurred between 2AM and dawn. Nowadays, due to the abundant campus shootings, the hovering parents that insist on cracking down on binge drinking and a general change in attitude, they throw the book at anybody that steps out of line, at least as far as I can tell. This goes double for the consumption of weed which was very nearly out in the open most of the time, but nowadays would end up getting you on COPS.

3. Streaking. I never streaked myself, did not have the body for it, but this harmless activity, if properly done, was hilarious and brought people together Example: "Do you remember the night that guy streaked the bar".... Nowadays, streaking is considered a sex crime, punishable by getting you on the sex offender registry, and screwing up your ability to do a lot of jobs, with the exception of running for congress.

4. Being able to work on your own car. I tried to change the spark plugs on my modern car the other day, but because the motor is jammed into it, and there is so much crap on the engine to keep it from polluting (no, I do not miss the pollution) I goofed up my hand doing it. In my cars from that era, an old Mustang and an old Firebird, it was no problem changing the spark plugs or doing a lot of other pretty complicated maintenance, which you of course had to do because the cars were not as good either.....

5. Cruising in general. This activity died out in 1979 or so because the fuel prices finally got too high, and a lot of communities banned it because there were too many fights and wrecks on the streets, but this was a cheap, fun way to interact with your fellow young people that is completely unheard of now.

6. AIDS was not widespread and the bra was optional. You can see where I am going with this one.

I will think of some more later.