The hippie types have been accused of being irresponsible. In fact it’s not the hippies but the fundamentalists who practice reckless overconsumption and reckless reproduction, and they are leaving the world a worse place than they have found it.

Whereas I have electric bill of $30 a month, take public transportation, and have one child whom I love and who loves me.

Responsibility is not about having a huge house and a Hummer. Responsibility is about leaving the world a better place than you have found it. And what fundamentalists have done is make the world a worse place than they have found it, which means that they have no business speaking for responsibility.

Baby boomers started out seeing what was wrong with the world and wanting to improve it; then they became short-sighted and careless. The change that they underwent was not an improvement, it was a degradation. They started out caring; they became careless and short-sighted. They think that what they have done was growth. It was nothing of the sort. It was not an improvement, it was a degradation.

To see how far this carelessness and short-sightedness has gone, a guru once asked me, when I was talking about the poisoning of the planet, ‘Why does this matter to you?” Why does it matter to me? Why does it matter to me? What kind of a ridiculous question is that? These things better matter to you. If they don’t matter to you, then you are a scumbag. It matters to me because I am a human being, and I live on earth, and I refuse to let the place go to hell while I am here.

The ”tend to your own garden” mentality is precisely the wrong thing at this time. We are facing major problems. They will not be solved by people practicing reckless consumption and reproduction. They will be solved by people working to solve them. And that means a better definition of responsibility: One that does not have you spend your life procuring what you don’t want or need, and instead works to address such problems as climate change.

And yes, I have done my part toward that outcome. I have my name on a patent of a clean energy technology, and I put a lot of effort into promoting that invention.

Is technology or business the problem? Not at all. Both technology and business can be done right. Vast number of jobs stand to be created, and vast prosperity stands to be actualized, by converting the world to run on better energy technologies. There is no contradiction between environmental interest and financial interest. Intelligence makes it possible to achieve both.

I want to see these people regain their original ideals. They were right about many things, but they were misrepresented and wrongfully described. Then they went bad – real bad. I have seen encouraging things in the young people these days, such as Malala and Greta Thornburg. They may very well equate and improve on the hippies. And I hope that they never “grow out” of these ideals or believe that “living in the real world” means doing the same.

Ilya Shambat
https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought