Where's Peace, Love and Happiness

Peace, man. Make love not war. Flower Power. Give peace a chance. Flower child. I am betting some of you will remember these sayings and more of you will not. These were language idioms spoken in the late sixties and early seventies. The gripe back then was about the Vietnam war and culture in general. Huge swaths of young people protesting their parents way of life and ideals. They were peace loving and passive. They wanted to get along with everyone and wanted everyone to get along. No longer.

That peaceful, passive, loving generation are this generation’s haters. These are the people you see on television making a stink about everything. They are the same people who now hate everyone that doesn’t think or do as they do. What on earth happened to the lovers?

I am not sure how a person changes their persona to the exact opposite of what they once espoused. Our culture today is full of hate and not love. Our country, has never stopped warring. And we are all now more divided than ever. Those who protested hate and war, who had sit ins with passivity, gave voice to wrongs, have become the haters. They are ones you see daily griping about one thing or another on the 24/7 new commentary channels. I’d call them news, but we all know they give more opinion than actual news. I don’t think anyone misses the fact that, more times than not, the news doesn't give the straight facts. They only offer facts that suit the rhetoric their station of channel wants promoted. I have no use for that.

I have done the dive into the differing sides of the cultural and political spectrum. Neither is any good. Both sides are out for themselves. They have little regard for differing opinions. And they want to control everyone else’s opinions. Each side postulates that they are the most tolerant. They espouse they are more freedom seeking and empowering, but those are all lies. You will be tolerated and free, as long as you do, believe, and accept their way and ultimate rule of law and culture. It’s pretty disgusting.

It is so vile to force humanity to conform to one ideal one ideal, one faith or lack of faith. People are not a herd, or cloned copies of each other. We are individuals with minds and thoughts of our own. We all have strong wills and tastes. That is a beautiful thing. We are perfect in our imperfection.

We have seen what happens when individual and diverse beliefs are restricted . We saw what happens when one faction forces another to be as they are, do what they say, and think what they think. Hitler, Stalin, Tomas de Torquemada, Mao Zedong, wanted a complaint race of people. The thing is, they wanted those people to be like them alone. The ones that benefit from that ideology, are the bureaucrats or people in power. I am certain, they themselves will have caveats to their own dictates. (remember Hitler was neither aryan nor German) Look where that took the world.

They, by no means, are the only examples. You should consult a history book if you have forgotten. Looking at society today, we have forgotten or dismissed our actions, as the same. We say it's not the same as those tyrants, but in fact they are the same.

When I was young, there was a saying people used. Now it seems, it was a pithy phrase. It is clear to me now, that none of these free loving flower children, ever actually lived by it. At least not once the drugs wore off.

I want to take an example and pose it to you for thought. Sit for a moment and imagine you are you, and Bismal overtakes the world. They mandate, you not worship anything but their ruler, no god, not even science, if that is what you worship. They go door to door and make sure you have no religious books, artifacts or symbols in your home. If you do, you are arrested. There is a very real possibility, that you will be tortured into compliance. Think about that entire idea for a minute.

Now, think about the what ifs. What if then they mandate each marriage or union, have only one child. No allowance more than your allotment permitted. You cannot have any children with non Bismali partners. Their goal is for everyone to be like them alone. People, who have existing partners, have to give them up and married someone Bismali. They will then issue you a new Bismali partner. Let’s add to that.

After compliance, they will force assimilation in accordance to their policies. No individuality will be tolerated, under penalty of exile or death.

Poetry, music all banned, books removed, if the topic or story do not feed into their dogma. Television is programmed and you have no choice in what you watch. Life is and must be lived under their linear thinking.

Now, because you are you, and a human, you have your own mind, and your way of handling everything. You complain, you begin protests, they call insurrection, you look for ways to do things your way. Now you are in direct violation of the state. You are wrong and you will be dealt with.

Your friends, who may have complied or even embraced the new normal, start to tell you are wrong in your thinking. The taunt you, vilify you at every turn. They ostracize you and push you to the fringe of society. Your children call you a seditionist. The regime controls the way he or she is educated and every detail of what they have been permitted to learn.

You don’t understand what has happened. They said you’d be free. They said their way was the best way, but then they took your life and dismantled it. Your fellow man hates you and makes sure you know it. You are no longer welcome anywhere along with anyone else who thinks or behaves like you. You have become the enemy. Sit there and ponder that.

You have the sensation of being alone. You are angry that your thoughts and feelings are under someone elses control. You only want something different or better for yourself and your family. Wanting to be different has caused you to be hated. Do you feel, it possible to be yourself?

You questioned and disagreed with control, and thought something different would be better. You didn’t mind some aspects of the new regime, but other parts were offensive to you or challenged your own ideals. The new dogma was in opposition o your own, in the same manner. Do you feel that?

That lack of fairness, injustice, that restraint, is what you are feeling. You have no voice, no options, no power, no hope. It will always be the way it is now. That feeling, is exactly how you and everyone else in today’s culture is feeling. Why on earth would you want to make someone else feel that way.

Did you not have some valid points to your arguments? Did you not deserve to be heard?

Then why are any of you doing that to others? Why are you trying to make everyone else conform to your ideology. Why are you the hater in the room?

These peace loving men and women who are now mature adults are acting like children. They have forgotten their mantras. They have fed the beast of hate and assimilated into the culture. More evil than that, they have made sure to make their offspring just as intolerant as themselves. If any one of them do not act, believe, think like you do, you excommunicate them from your life.

This is what we are doing. This is what is blaring on the tv everyday. One side against another. Assimilate or be hated and vilified. Keep quiet or lose your livelihood, your fiends, your respect.

This is what we as a nation are doing around the world to others. We manipulate and force conformity and compliance. Nothing other than what we dictate is permissible. We will change it from the cell level on up to force that compliance.

Is that what peace meant to the love generation? Is that what is meant by freedom, as long as it’s within certain parameters? Is that what it means to have world peace, as long as it’s our way?

Peace, love and happiness, has become anything but. Free love has become free and abundant hate. Compromise has become an only if situation. That is not compromise, freedom or peace. It’s manipulation, tyrannical dictatorship, and control and that my dears, is wrong. There is no right to that.

Every one of us whether they believe or live like we do, has valid reasons for their ways. They have things we can agree on, and things that are a no go for some of us. Their reasons are valid, their point of view is valid, their voices are valid. Have you even stopped to hear them. not listen, but actually hear?

Stop hating, stop the arrogance that makes one person devalue another’s. This is more than enough. Learn to love people for them, not their ideology or the similarities to your own.

I am tired. I am tired of the misery and tired of the hate culture. Live and let live. Love.