One of the things I saw with the hippies was their amazing ability to tear things up.

Razing a building to replace it is a pretty good thing sometimes. You can take a useless building somewhere and replace it with something useful. A while ago I saw a strip mall and a couple of other buildings disappear and be replaced with a shopping center. It was amazing how fast the entire thing happened.

Still, before you raze something you really ought to have something to replace it with. Even the razing of an an eyesore and replacing it with a nice, grassy field is acceptable. You have to replace it with something.

The problem with the hippies was that after they tore something up they never seemed to have a workable plan to replace what they tore up with anything.

I remember the hippies I met at the Powder Ridge and Strawberry Fields rock festivals back in the summer of '70. Many of them were anti-capitalist and griped about rich old men running things.

(I won't get into the fact that they spent good money on the official hippie uniform of bell bottomed jeans and other things. Many of them also had hefty music album habits. Both of these were cheerfully supplied to them by capitalists.)

Anyway, they wanted to tear down what they considered and unfair system and replace it.

Asking them how we would manage generally got something about how we would live on 'good vibes' or something else that was pretty vague.

Unfortunately, 'good vibes' doesn't put chow in one's belly.

I watched a group of alternative lifestyle people called the 'Cosmic Labs' people organize feeding people at Powder Ridge. They set up the same type of system that business and the military have used since Day One. The good old fashioned chow line. It worked. They just fell into the tried and true old methods.

The truth is that the hippies were little more than vandals, tearing up all they saw and leaving nothing but ruins and calling it an improvement.

I have been in a number of 'crash pads' during those years and they, for the most part were filthy. Some of them were in terrible shape. I have been in a couple where the people in it decided that sheet rock was some kind of capitalist symbol so they tore it out and left bare studs.

It would have actually made sense if they had insulated it and repaneled the walls with something, anything, but they opted to leave the walls with the bare studs. 

I suppose that after the sheet rock was gone they celebrated their big victory over capitalism or some such crap. However, I didn't see anything even planned to replace the ugliness other than some crap sprayed on the walls with Day-Glo spray paint.

I was offered housing by a hippie type couple once while I was on the road that was actually owned by the people that put me up. It was well taken care of and I was expected to pitch in and help. The reason this place was different is because of pride of ownership.

The truth of the matter is that the hippies never seemed to have anything workable to replace what they tore down.

The other side that they seemed to alway want to tear down were always building things. They made food, clothing, shelter, cars, airplanes and just about everything under the sun. You name it, capitalists seemed to build it.

I suppose some of it didn't impress me. I never did acquire a taste for oversized gas guzzling Detriot iron but it was there for those that did. 

A lot of it did impress me. Even though I was only making about three bucks an hour I could afford a lot. It cost me about an hour a day, sometimes even less to feed myself because the American farmers and food manufacturers were efficient. I didn't have to bust my ass all day in a field growing my own food.

I had a car that cost me only about $50 and was reasonably reliable and got me to where I wanted to go. Life wasn't all that bad when you thought about it.

I looked at a commune in western Massachusetts and saw how the other half lived. Everyone there threw everything they owned into the common pot and it seemed to me like everyone who did wound up poorer than they were beforehand.

Of course, there was the big charismatic 'spiritual advisor' there who never seemed to want for much.

Needless to say a lot of the conversation there was about how much a mess the rest of the world outside the commune was. They offered me a meal during the visit and I couldn't help but notice all of the government food packages. I had a meal there consisting of government issue macaroni and government issue cheese, washed down with government issued Kool-Aid.

This was before Jonestown so the Kool-Aid then was safe to drink.

Yet these same people that wanted to tear down the system were relying on it for their daily bread.

One can criticize capitalism with its faults yet there is one thing you have to admit. It's actually the basis of it.

Capitalists are constantly building things.

The build buildings, planes, trains, automobiles, toys, shoes, widgets and frammuses to install the widgets on. They are constantly building better mousetraps and trying to get the world to beat themselves to their door.

Even when a capitalist has to tear things down to replace them they seem to do it more efficiently. Witness some of the building implosions in places like Las Vegas when they dropped one of the older casinos a while back. One boom and the trucks drove in to pick up the rubble.

With capitalists there is always another angle, another thing to build or try out in the never ending chase of the almighty dollar.

Nothing has changed the times like the products of capitalism. They built cars that made the horse retire as transportation. They created marketing empires that brought food, clothing and convenience to your neighborhood.

In time of war they figured out how to build a cargo ship in a week's time.

The biggest game changer in recent times is the computer. It created immense strides in math, science and communication. The internet has made the world shrink and what used to take days and weeks now takes a nanosecond.

The truth her to me is which side to choose. I can join the side of tearing stuff down or I can join the side of building stuff.

I think I'll build stuff.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY