Concerning My Previous Post

After writing my strange piece about states of consciousness I was helpfully reminded by youtube why I don't actually like that kind of psychedelic stuff. I was thinking of not publishing it, but warts and all, somebody might be interested in it.

So the main reason that I don't like drugs is because they are part of the hippie aesthetic. Whereas I am a punk, or at least I claim to be. I got a message from youtube recommending me some videos and two of these snapped me out of my introspective indulgences. The first is What If Punk Never Happened by The King Blues.



Punk was always a reaction to the hippies who took the psychedelic drugs and retreated into meditation. It was a negation of the outside world. Maybe it was revolutionary in some aspects at the start, but ultimately it became a delirious and irrelevant pursuit of pleasure. Punk was what was needed to confront the depressing reality head-on. Things have changed but the need for external awareness and action is still present. It's so easy to withdraw into personal worlds and forget that we're all in this together.



This one is Anger Management by Random Hand, another English punk band. It has a similar theme. It says something important about Anger. I've always been quite puzzled by this particular emotion. There are so many things which give me cause for anger, some more justifiably than others. Because expression of anger seems so unacceptable these days, I've resorted to a stoic approach of maintaining my composure in the face of adversity. But this song makes a good point that when anger is justifiable it should be focused and directed for change. I think it gives a idea of the punk attitude toward hippie;like spiritualism. It is good to be in control of ones emotions, but the expression of extreme emotions is what leads to real change. Withdrawing to a personal world which is unaffected by reality in turn means that you relinquish your power to change that reality.

All this is just a train of thought. One which happens to contradict with my previous post. But I'm a big man, I contain many contradictions. This particular contradiction is one I continue to struggle with. I think it was summed up best by George Bernard Shaw -

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”