Flappers, Beats, Greasers, Hippies, Punks? Who comes next? Do we have a name for the next generation of visionaries and artists? Decentralists, the Intellectual Dark Webbers, Bitcoiners, Blockchain community...?
As the pluralistic world of global-centric thinking of those advocating for equal opportunity and saving the planet began to take shape and the mid-1960s. We could clearly see who was on board that train by their eccentricities. The flower children and the hippies with flowers in their hair, possibly wearing face paint and making statements such as “Make Love Not War”, made their grandparents cringe. The then novel idea of saving the planet and the ending of irresponsible capitalist practices is now mainstream and although there is still somewhat of a hippie subculture the mindset is now widespread. Before the hippies were there capitalist grandparents who, at the turn of the century, developed the Industrial Revolution before the current Green one. Today we are still evolving and perhaps more rapidly than ever. Before the hippies we had the Beats. The mystic poets, artists, misfits, and visionaries of the capitalist age who carried the torch for the coming hippie generation. As the story goes, the hippie era began to dissolve after the Altamont Speedway incident in 1969. Many people left protesting in the streets for back-to-the-earth life in a commune. The age of Aquarius was temporarily put on hold as most communes failed financially and punk rock, heavy metal, and disco arose in sub-culture. Ten years later we see the gender bending of New Wave pop and hard metal music, along with boy bands and finally the Grunge era laden with heroin addiction and suicidal tendencies. In Obama's age of Aloha we seemed to have witnessed the rising popularity of many of the cultural idiosyncrasies that arose in the 60s. Things such as organic food stores, yoga, microdosing with psychedelic drugs, the legalization of marijuana, and festival culture and so on. More recently, beginning with the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, we have seen a huge uprising within the women's movement. So where to next?
Subculture icons through the decades; Timothy Leary, Debbie Harry, Josephine Baker, Kurt Kobain, Cindy Lauper, William Burroughs
In the Trump era we have had a new culture arise. Moving forward we probably won't call it post punk, post hippie, or postpostbeat. Those of us on board with this new culture don't always dress eccentrically or have any particular mantra or symbol like the infamous Peace Sign. So what do we call these round pegs in square holes? We are still misfits and mystics, artists and iconoclasts, vigilantes and visionaries. We still aim at creating a better world and solving environmental problems. we generally agree with the highest values of any of those who came before. Are we post-modern? Post-pluralistic? pre-integral or integral? To call them Bitcoiners seems too cliche and sounds like we are no different than the capitalists of their great-grandparents generation who are now the dominant cultural paradigm. And Bitcoin is only one example representational of the ethos of distributed immutability. Could we call them Decentralists? What distinguishes them from the hippie mentality that today is becoming mainstream? What distinguishes them from all of the eras on the shoulders of which we now stand?
Early systems thinkers; Norbert Weiner, Barbera Marx-Hubbard, Joanna Macy, Gregory Bateson, David Bohm, and Donnella Meadows
First of all, it seems we aim at immutability. Some things are just true. For example, we can all agree, as Confucius said, "change is the only constant." We realize that what is true now, might not be true tomorrow, and taking that into account, we design for timelessness. It is immutably true that the universe conspired to create itself for all of itself and not for any small group of individuals on some tiny planet floating in the outer spiral arm of the milky way galaxy. It is also immutably true that people who claim ownership of parcels of land don't fully realize that, and consequently find it acceptable to charge the labor class a rental fee as a prerequisite to have a place to exist. So when solving problems, all of the immutable must be taken into account, whether relative or absolute. The future visionaries can think 100 or 1000 years into the future. It is immutable that an industrial economy demanding infinite growth is not sustainable on a finite planet, albeit, in a decentralized information economy, infinite growth appears inevitable. These thinkers of new thoughts are able to hold multiple perspectives. We know that their perspective is only one perspective, not necessarily the correct perspective. We know that to meet their own needs we must meet the needs of all perspectives. We are solution-focused, and largely optimistic. We enjoy observing complex systems and social organisms. We are fascinated with complexity theories and the application of them in practical ways. We tend to take responsibility for creating solutions rather than dwelling on problems and placing blame on any president or social pathology. We rarely react from a place of fear. We look at the all parts of a scenario and also see the big picture. Are we simply the system’s thinkers? Perhaps the Integral, Spiral Dynamics, and Human Potential communities are the original sub-groups of this arising paradigm, whatever this paradigm might be called. The mindset of David Bohm, Heisenberg, Gregory Bateson, Don Beck, Donella Meadows, Joanna Macy, Barbra Marx Hubbard, Ken Wilber, Jean Huston and others have laid our sub-cultural foundation. But we have not really given us a name. Terence McKenna points out that Timothy Leary had more than one slogan in the 60s, and that in addition to the one that we've all heard the most, there is a another, which is, "find the others, there are others like you, find the others…". It is an immutable truth that the others in this case, although they do not yet have a name, have arrived. We occasionally find ourselves in like-minded company at blockchain conferences, symposiums on the future, and other events focused at disruptive technologies and "second-tier" thinking such as Ethereal Summit, Startup Societies Summit, Voice and Exit, Integral Conferences, and others. Culture is on the rise! Find the others!
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