Its a long time since hair, was really relevant. But there was a time, back in the 1960s and 70's, when long hair, hair that wasn't by the standards of what it was "supposed to be", could get you beat down. You received prejudice, pain, taunting, beatings by police, by those who's entire purpose was to protect us, who forgot, who lost the meaning, of just who "Us" really was.
Now its decades later and the "Us" is we, all of us. What happened was a travesty, it was social commentary, it was a grass roots uproar against war, killing, trauma and terrorism. Because war, is terrorism; State sponsored and sanctioned terrorism, and therefore...its not.
Yet...it is. Isn't it.
Someone on a documentary called "Hair, Let the Sun shine in" said, "We were born to love" and that isn't true. We were most likely born to kill. But we have evolved, to be able to love. We have evolved, to have the luxury, the time to play, to think, theorize, philosophize, relax, and even, to do nothing.
All you had to do at one time, was grow your hair out and it WAS a statement; against the war, the "establishment" and therefore the status quo. Many times, even if that wasn't why you did it, you could still get beat up by rednecks, police, radical conservatives (no we haven't forgotten about you radical conservatives from back then).
My brother had drawn on a piece of floor in our mother's basement, where he was staying back in '67 for a while, where he had written in some black bold letters:
"Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many have you killed in Nam today?"
That may have been the awakening of my social consciousness. I was 13.
Many of us in the 60s and 70's wore our hair long in order to protest the mainstream being against our freedom to grow hair long, to be ourselves. We fought against their fear of us, of our being different, looking different.
We just wanted people to think. Not to judge a book by its cover. To accept differences. Even though he or she looked weird to me, what they had to say, may very well have a bearing on things that are important to me, or perhaps they should be important to me. Maybe they have a different way of looking at things, wherein I should be paying attention. That, perhaps, it was okay to think outside of that box.
It used to be dangerous to pick someone up in your car, with long hair. But usually, it wasn't. Then at some point, it because safer to pick up someone with long hair, than with short. When did that happen? Now, its just not that safe to pick up a human being. What happened?
Where are we? We no longer have something as simple as hair to show a protest. On the other hand, anyone now can wear the clothes they want, and for the most part, have their hair however they like.
One of the Directors of a large Health care insurance company, recently had a Mohawk, with tinted hair. No one paid much attention to it. Why? Because, he is one sharp guy. There was a time though, when he wouldn't even have gotten a job interview, or he would have been fired had he changed like that.
Things, have changed.
Yet here we are again at war. Maybe we need to be there. Perhaps there will always be the downtrodden, the bullies, power hungry regimes. Maybe some things will never change. This time we just picked a completely different part of the world for the killing. Perhaps we're bored with fighting in East Asia. Then again, the way Korea has been acting, we may yet get back to the Asian continent.
How will a new generation protest when they see the unacceptable? Especially now that they don't have so much to fight against, to push against, to change. Perhaps now we're dealing with things on a higher level of being. Still, during the Bush years, I saw protest and a push back from the government that was unsettling. And more accepted by the population at large. Have things changed? Are things getting better?
How will the younger generations think to change things. Will they even try?
I guess only time will tell.
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