Luminous Flowers: Hippies Were Wildly Creative, Ethnography of Contact Improv?, Methodological Articulation Betw Anthropology & Primatology, & Creatio

The 1960s and early 1970s were wildly creative, and often outlandishly so. Those times give me hope for cultural processes and innovation again ahead.

People, then, were very proactive and innovative in so many ways. How to re-write racism? Organize, do civil disobedience, and re-examine academic and societal 'literatures.' And Barack is president. How to stop war? Protest, develop nonviolence techniques, and engage the media. And wars, since, have had far fewer casualities. How to envision society anew? They just did it, and worked for change for the better.

And hippies were - way - 'all over the map.' They created and explored in so many ways imaginable, and in all facets of life. There's an aspect of the 1960s which is intensely libertarian, individualistic, and anarchistic, and counterculture included these, adapting these strands of American (and European ... ) life from earlier decades. {India seems to give form to great aspects of counterculture through Hinduism's fundamental tolerance and spiritual 'practices' which facilitate this and colorful creativity}. Counterculture and New Age thinking drew a lot from India, but also from all over, ~ way.


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In what ways is the ethnography of contact improv roly-poly participant observation? How might one develop this methodologically?

And does contact improv, originating in 1972, represent an interesting expression of the ongoing inventiveness which counterculture represents, where every moment of dance might be seen as innovative in the 'now?'


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I'm curious to explore further the relatively unexplored methodological articulations between anthropology and primatology. Both have very long histories of fieldwork, as method. I think both disciplines have a lot to learn from each other, let alone re-articulate and redefine understandings of higher primates. !


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I like to connect {bond} with people, not information, and yet these information technologies are compelling and fascinating, and I spend a fair amount of time with them. {The internet is amazing}.

I suspect that homo sapiens, for millions of years, were more troopbonding-oriented (viz. John Money 1988: 117) than Orangutans, for example, whom I've read are quite solitary, as well as intelligent.



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I'd love to live in a Flax Seed World of Omega-3s where Everyone Has Omega Bodyminds.


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As a metaphor, is Harbin Hot Springs a life boat, culturally?


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So Harbin's experience of gravity is rewritten a little in the warm pool, - an example of conceiving anew, counterculturally.

And the Harbin pools are a wonderful complement to the experiences of creativity in life {in California} that contact improv, for example, make possible.


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How to cultivate the creative aspects of hippie ways toward new forms of beauty, and a better society today, when countercultural processes appear less evident 'in the air?'


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And 'writing counterculture' allows for an ongoing exploration of creativity vis-a-vis the 1960s and early 70s, in remarkably open-ended ways ...


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MMmmm ... writing, ~ and the relaxation response in the Harbin pools in a few days, but contact improv this evening ... :)