Hi Dick, you must be back from fishing.  Hope you caught the "BIG ONE".  Thanks for sending all this info. I will be speaking to the Hasting Garden Club Monday night and I'll be using some of the material , especially Marla Spivek's info.
 See you Tuesday.
Margarete

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From: Jon Anderson <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2013 7:13 AM
Subject: [The-Burnsville-Socrates-Cafe] 10/9/13 questions and discussion

10/9/13 questions and discussion

Mike: as one who's older than all else here, I remember being shown junior high school those movies about sex, venereal disease etc., emphasizing conformity, nice manners, ideals of behavior. I've read a bit on this subject as it led to the sixties. People had had enough of the US getting into things(war, The Cold War, etc). I was educated in parochial school -- a true center of conformity. I wanted to be an advertiser, in college the cultural revolution hit the Midwest. I became familiar with manipulation/advertising. Par excellence was cigarette advertising. I knew a woman then -- who even though she was less formally educated -- thought my friend's family business in the cigarette business was the most immoral of all. They got married! The rest of us "educated" folk were oblivious to what she intuited. There was a great desire in the 50s to breed conformity. Even non-conformists had to conform to the non-conformist lifestyle.

Rachel: when the alternative norms were being created, was that a shift in the established norms, or another alternative altogether?

Mike: the new ideas became tempting, wicked, titillating. It looked like those in counter cultures were getting away with something, and that sounded good. Once that door was opened,  that there is something better, my life changed, and stayed that way. It has been for me a net positive. I then felt entitled to take up new pursuits, willing to forestall marriage, chase youth, not make up my mind. Before then, by age 20 we were supposed to know our vocation and get married.

Rachel: could non-conformity be a kind of rite of passage? When in college I lived in a house with roommates like that. I watched some of them forestall those things but nonetheless they eventually became "normal."

Mike: I liked rubbing shoulders with deviants

Jon: WWII vets supposedly changed our culture. What they'd gone through in war somehow fundamentally changed their outlook, perspective on American life. They seemed less interested in conformity.

Mike: so going from conformity to "anything goes" was immensely rewarding.

Jamie: I heard on MPR that millennials don't commit to single brands. Could things become too diverse? So, how do we form consensus? Maybe the conformity was trying to attach, to connect us. My mother was a small town person who as a teen had successfully resisted her school's requirement that girls not be allowed to wear pants. She probably had no conscious idea of what was happening nationally, yet she pushed against some conformity then.

Rachel: it has to happen organically so even your mom was a part of the zeitgeist. When differences are acknowledged.

Jon: my mom was 26 when she lit out from her Illinois farm home, ending up in California. She'd grown tired of the "Old Maid" talk that she heard. I doubt she thinks she was part of some larger cultural, non-conformist movement, but clearly she was.

Mike: parents are no longer free of their kids now, kids can come back home as adults, even live there.

Jamie: multi-generational homes were once more common, grandparents caring for grandkids. This would be beneficial today.

Mike: it seems so bleak out there, job-wise. It's no wonder some adult children need to move back home.

Jamie: China has a law that adult children are to visit their parents. Children aren't visiting because they can't because they're working long hours with low pay.

Rachel: now 40 hours a week won't pay enough.

Jon: Best Buy was my first job out of college. Back then the job was pure commission sales. I worked hard but never earned enough to pay my meager expenses. So, I sent a letter to the CEO! The first sentence read: Best Buy lied to me. Were there the "working poor" in the 50s?

Mike: Americans aren't hard workers.

Jon: an argument for conformity is that traditions and habits that we can predict must be useful for survival reasons. This is why I appreciate conservative political philosophies. It's also true that I value liberal ideals, because they typically are the source of good changes. Too much of either is bad for us. Perhaps the 60s counter-cultural stuff was in response to too much tradition, too much predictability.

Mike: I feel fortunate i got to see the non-conformity.

Rachel: I'm mor optimistic. I agree about the balance between conformity and non-conformity. We have many more options for training and employment now.

Jon: Steve Jobs is perhaps an example of a healthy combination of the two. Clearly he was creative/progressive, but his successes had to happen alongside lots of business conformity.


Jon

============================

If there is a problem and you can't do anything about it, why be upset? If there is a problem and you can do something about it, why be upset?


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