Vines: Consciousness Raising, Language, Flourishing Ideas

In the 1960s and 70s, the language of 'consciousness raising' was in the air, referring to shared, 'higher'-oriented common ways of thinking and goals, that were often very far-reaching, imaginative and creative in their implications. Consciousness-raising language has drifted away since that time, in many circles, perhaps in relation to consumerism and a kind of dwindling of those memes (cultural units), due to a kind of pendulum shift.


Widespread use of psychedelic drugs were avenues to raise consciousness at the time, and the effects of tripping affected a generation of people, hippies and thinkers. Significantly, that generation is still around, 40 years later - there are so many people who lived at that time and found freedom - and many are in their 60s and 70s, financially comfortable, and very familiar with the language of the 1960s and 1970s, consciousness raising, and psychedelics.

To interview and talk with people who generated the 1960s and early 1970s, and were transformed by them (by counterculture), and engage these ideas today, in an ongoing way, is a fascinating prospect. The time was so fertile, as well as symbolically rich, and people created so many books, and so much art and music, about it.


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Harbin Hot Springs' two churches may emerge out of this context of the 1960s, including explorations with psychedelics. For example, in 1968, on the Harbin property, there was a church, which focused on LSD explorations.


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While excesses, chaos and destructiveness (the Vietnam War, the assasinations MLK Jr and JFK, drug misuse) emerged in that time, as well, that which is positive about consciousness-raising, including active thinking about what can change society for the better, and far-reaching beneficial experimentation, is still 'in the air' ~ in people's minds. And people continue to choose to explore them. Perhaps these ideas will remain more under-the-radar than they were in the 1960s, in a kind of Lao Tzu-ian (the Taoist writer) sense, but perhaps people will find freedom in the beneficial ideas that emerged en masse then to help people, and develop them, leading to a kind of flourishing.

Here's one way:

'World University and School' - post or take a course :)

La langue . . .