When we heard about the hippies, the barely more than boys and girls who decided to try something different ... we laughed at them. We condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives
Interpretation
This quote reflects societal criticism of youth movements that challenge traditional values and norms.
June Jordan's quote expresses a profound disapproval by the older generation towards the youth, particularly the hippies, who sought to break free from conventional societal norms. It highlights the paradox of laughter and condemnation directed at a longing for love, peace, and a more authentic existence, contrasting it with the fears and compromises that characterized adult life. The quote suggests that this disdain comes from a fear of change and a rejection of the beautiful idealism embodied by the younger generation.
In practice
In a speech about youth activism, this quote can highlight the generational divide in perspectives on societal change.
I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.
Anytime you see white men suppose to fight each other an you not white, well you know you got trouble, because they blah-blah loud about Democrat or Republican an they huffing an puff about democracy someplace else but relentless, see, the deal come down evil on somebody don have no shirt an tie, somebody don live in no whiteman house no whiteman country.
In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage; none of these is normal.
Good poetry and successful revolution change our lives. And you cannot compose a good poem or wage a revolution without changing consciousness unless you attack the language that you share with your enemies and invent a language that you share with your allies.
As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. I love the infinite evidence and change and requirements and possibilities of language; every human use of words that is joyful, or honest or new, because experience is new... But as a Black poet and writer, I hate words that cancel my name and my history and the freedom of my future: I hate the words that condemn and refuse the language of my people in America.
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
Everything changes but change itself. Everything flows and nothing remains the same... You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go flowing ever on.
The question, I've come to think, is not what inspires one to change, but what inspires one to remain changed.
We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the math(s)
Thus, the forces and value systems that are most threatened by this shift are becoming the most coherent and are rising to the top as minority or plurality powers. But they do not represent either the shift, the change, or the future.
It happens over and over again—a group of people come together, fired up with passion to create change. They begin with huge inspiration and enthusiasm—and a year later, it’s all foundered in the mire of conflict. We could have changed the world ten times over—if we didn’t have to do it together with other people, those irritating, self-righteous, controlling, fluff-brained, clueless idiots who are our friends and allies.
I think the fossil fuel industry is genuinely freaked out by the combination of the price collapse, the divestment movement, and that fact that renewable energy is getting so cheap so fast.
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