What is the solution to this? — Ilya B Shambat

You said it:

eviscerate — Ilya B Shambat

But seriously, you don’t need to respect different people to try understanding and cooperating with them. That seems disingenuous and perhaps condescending.

"Redneck" and "Hippie" became important cultural terms at about the same time -- the 1960s.

"Redneck" has been used and misused into oblivion. The classic redneck is a southern white farmer whose neck is red because he works in the fields. The classic term may have been coined after the Civil War ended. But there are cultural traits of the "redneck" that have nothing to do with farming.

Southern whites came from 17th century northern England and Southern Scotland, for the most part. They brought with them an honor code culture, meaning you wear your sensitivities on your sleeve where they can most easily be offended (there is a note of sarcasm in my definition). The southerner prefers minimal government, and especially any activity of government which might inconvenience him. They generally practiced do-it-yourself justice where they could get away with it. They tend to apply the "shoot first and ask questions later" approach.

The southern redneck culture resides in southern whites and blacks, though it might be located as far north as Duluth. It is primarily a working class culture.

Farmers and working class people across the northern tier of states are not rednecks for the most part. The social culture in this part of the country is much like that of Puritan New England and Scandinavia. In this system the state is a central institution, and values are more communitarian rather than individualistic.

Hippies: In fact, there never were very many genuine, registered hippies. There were, however, a lot of college aged people and college students or grads not otherwise employed in the U.S. Army or Corporate establishments who wished to be hippie-ish. People like me and my friends, for instance.

We found jobs that allowed for flexibility--some days working very hard, some days not--and spent a lot of time discussing the war, the riots, famous communists (Trotsky, Mao, etc.) and enjoying urban life (this was in Boston). It was all pretty much good.

Soon enough, though, we shelved our sandals and bell bottoms, got some standard threads, applied for real jobs, and took jobs with the assumption we would be inside agitators and continue the revolution from within. We were not very successful, of course. The corporation and the republic for which it stands are all doing fine.

As for the real hippies, the hippest hippies were beatniks (beat was a shortening of "beatitude"). The beats were hard core to the hippie soft core. What the hippies wished to do had been already been done by the Beats and other decadents.

All this was not my view at the time. (I was buried in the darkest corner of the upper midwest at the time, and the hippies seemed like avatars of the New Age.) It's only recently that it has become clearer to me that hippies were just strung out beatniks. Or visa versa -- hard to tell at this distance.

At any rate few hippies founded anything or caused any sort of boom. Real beatniks and real hippies were alienated people, and alienated people usually aren't on the cutting edge -- why would they be?

As for rednecks, they too were, are alienated. They find an acceptable society among themselves (in their millions), but by preference, I think, they prefer to be outsiders to the larger community. Outsidership is the cost of rigid individualism.

But neither do I want to see these people force wrongful and abusive attitudes on the civilization. — Ilya B Shambat

Oh, don't worry about that, dear. The American Ruling Class has more wrongful and abusive actions up its sleeve than you can shake a stick at.

BTW, you seem to be big on physical fitness. You mention physical fitness or athleticism quite often.

Ilya, you seem to just love stereotypes, just like with the "Jews and Europeans" thread.

Well, Americans have a long tradition in being bigots to each other. I was surprised that terms like "White trash" are from the early 19th Century and the term "redneck" comes also from the 19th Century. A condescending attitude toward rural people, especially the rural poor, among the urban people might be universal, but seldom is it done with similar ferocity and passion as in the US.

Hard work. Why, I wonder? Why not vegetate and introspect, slow things down a shade in a culture going into warp speed? Or WASP speed. What is up with those old Protestant values still resonating? Archonic influence from computerized mantis men? I weigh in as closer to a rustic beatnik who sees most of the conflict of our species coming from a paucity of self-reflection and self-regulation. What's the value of hard work in a market society? Getting more points, more tokens? Does it really parallel a caper to the arcade? Then it might be time to stop and exit the system that we can see it from outside. Go to sleep on it, and wake up to inevitable deconditioning from conventional values. Though, admittedly, every generation would seem to throw its venal types, with minimal intrinsic values, who are conditioned to never take their eye of the ball, so to speak.

Work as needed not as an invention(mechanical clocks) which receives no feedbacks, has no setpoints, or living servomechanisms from living systems would dictate; when you have your own system to look after, it means you have to look for feedback all the time, even in the middle of the night; the concept of menial labor dissolves entirely. Low impact living without stirring things up and setting in motion more concatenations of recalcitrant, causal complexity than necessary must be a mark of the damned. Then I'll be damned... \

One other thing. Hippies and Rednecks get along quite well sometimes. Hippies were about Vietnam and realizing your life could have been essentially murdered through the draft, then feeling a rush of freedom and mind expansion you weren't conscripted. Isn't it unaccountable when people suddenly stop competing with each other, leave the market society norms behind, and get along each time disaster strikes (9/11 in US; Chelyabinsk bolide, eg). What's up with this? Is it a symptom of something wrong? Of living a life of pretense and falsity? Anyway, if you want to call people hippies still, I'm a hippy and have redneck friends. We laugh at each other sometimes.

Country folks are similar in most ways...some are far more sophisticated than others, though. Not all rednecks get into botany and horticulture (though almost all country folks have a garden), for example, like hippies always do. Usually country people are naturalists to a greater or lesser degree. Though, ironically, those who work hard in the ag business often know very little about plants. This is always a sign of stupidity, if you know very little about what you do everyday...and are merely a hard worker, you might be living a failed life. As it's clear you'd rather be living some other one.

At any rate few hippies founded anything or caused any sort of boom. — Bitter Crank

Agreed. :fear: We hippies had the right ideas. We knew about the importance of the environment, and all that jazz. We knew, as previous generations had not realised, that impending global collapse was down to us, and we had to make things better. But we didn't, and our period of rulership achieved almost nothing. We have betrayed our children and their children. We are a disgrace. :fear:

So rednecks are self sufficient and hard working and hippies shiftless, except the ones who aren't.

What about blacks, Jews, and Asians? What does everyone think about them? Admire them or hold the them in contempt?