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I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about a conversation I had at the end of this summer. I was talking to my parents after dinner one night, wondering somewhat naively, "where had all the hippies gone?" Back in the day, my parents had indeed been hippies, if rather mild ones. My dad had been involved in some Vietnam War protests in Iowa and apparently my mother used to insist that my grandmother not buy pink toilet paper because the dyes were bad for the environment. My perception of my parents' generation, people who were in high school and college in the 1960's and 70's was that they were a generation with a high proportion of informed, impassioned, activist-minded young people. So what happened to them?
I look back at my childhood and recognized, that while it did not seem unusual to me when I was young; I was raised differently than many of my friends. My parents were frugal. We were a one-car family for the first ten years of my life, driving a small four-door, manual-shift Mazda that was older than I was, somewhat of an anomaly in a suburban Chicago community. We listened to public radio for our news and until I was eight or nine I was only allowed to watch public television, if I was allowed to watch TV at all. We recycled and reused everything, walked and biked as much as possible, waited until the last bearable minute to turn on the heat each year and did not have air-conditioning. My parents taught us not to take more than we needed and to use everything we took.
I have noticed that this sort of upbringing is not the norm in American society. Most people in my generation show a disregard for the environment. They do not always mean harm, but they do not have a perception of their connectedness to the earth and to other people. We have every resource at our fingertips and no one, apparently, has taught us the principles of moderation and conservation. But why not? Look at who are parents were! Where are those people? I was somewhat frustrated at the state of complacency I had noticed setting in around my parents over the last five or so years. So I asked them what had happened. I asked them why their peers had not taught their children the values of love and peace and activism that seemingly abounded in the 60's. I asked my parents why their peers had not taught their children that the earth was sacred. My dad said it was because they had all grown up and had worked hard at their jobs. He said they felt that because they had worked so hard, they deserved their 5-bedroom, 5-bathroom upscale houses, enormous SUV's and extravagant vacations. So the hippies sold out and embraced consumerism with open arms.
What does this mean for the earth? What does this mean for the rest of the world? If Americans (a meager proportion of the world's population) continue to use two-thirds or more for the world's resources what will happen? What will happen if the environmentalists and the activists of my generation grow up and forget just like their parents did? What if we all keep growing up and falling into a state of moronic complacency? We must not be complacent. We must not buy SUV's because they're cool. We must relearn to take only what we need and use everything we take. We must learn that while the beginning of the possible demise of our planet was not our fault, it is our responsibility to protect and preserve it.
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Lindsay Sumner
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Trevor Kellogg | Aug 6th, 2004
Very interesting, I can relate to some of this story.
I am still relatively young, 17, and there are a multitude of things in government/society that I think should be changed.
I spend time doing what I believe is right, and older people make comments about how, "You're going through an idealist phase" or, " I just to be like you when I was young." Then they basically imply that they "became smarter" and are inactive where they are now. Completely conforming with society, and abandoning the ideals they once had.
And the way I feel is that, we shouldn't accept anything, it all can be changed. Turning a blind eye won't make the world any better. Hopefully more of us won't come to the same realization that many of the generation above us did.
Good job
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