Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Roch]

[quote="Satori"]

[Satori]

Well. I dont see a response either way yet from Mr Conservative. Im not going to do a big post with no opponent. But the synopsis would contain a couple of points.

Reducing the hippy movement to "Turn on, tune in, and drop out" is such simplistic thinking that it`s positively mind numbing to contemplate an adult saying this seriously. This phrase was picked up by the media and used to simplify things, as the media likes to do. The hippy movement was very large, and not unified. It contained everything from the very surface hippys who simply wore the clothes, listened to the music, smoked the pot ( or not ), and basically carried on as usual. For them it was a fashion. And at the other end you had very sincere and often highly intellectual revolutionaries who wanted to change society. I respect these people because they were not just all talk. They didnt like capitalism so instead of complaining about it, they started communes. The goal was called "self sufficient living". They grew their own fruit and vegetables, and raised thier own cattle and sheep and chickens. It was hardly a big drug orgy, it was in fact very hard work. Some of these communes are still going today, and some have been sucessful in thier goal to live truly and completely without money and personal possessions, in a co-operative communal environment. I personally DONT think the commune is the solution. But you have to admire the effort and sincerity and resoursefulness and innovative boldness of these people. And of course you have every single subtle shade of hippiness inbetween these two extremes. I was raised on a commune. My family quit when I was 5 and went straight because it was simply TOO HARD. That`s why I have a lot of respect for the people who stuck it out and made it work.

Saying "They were obviously activists, not hippys" is also bizarrely reductionist. You really think people can`t be in two boxes at once? In your world if they do something that makes them an activist they cease to be a hippy? The fact is that a reasonable amount of hippys were activists, and a reasonable amount of activists were hippys.

The hippys also put the issue of the environment firmly on the political table. You have to respect that. Unfortunately it has been sidelined and there has not been a lot of real progress. There is more awareness now in the population, and recycling has happened to a certain degree. But the governments have not taken the steps needed to get really tough with big business about the environment. When the US refuses to sign the Kyoto protocol you know that thier priorities lie elsewhere.

The hippys may have been naive and idealistic, and thier mission was not fully sucessful. But they left the political and social landscape permanantly changed, mostly for the better. They didnt get rid of capitalism, but they strongly put on the table the idea that rampant materialism is not the only way to happiness. Today, largely due to thier efforts, a lot of people hope and expect for more out of life than a wife, kids, car, and picket fence. We want satisfaction and fulfillment. We realise that there is more to life than the accumulation of "stuff". We now value the inner world more, whether you call it spiritual, emotional, psychological. A large group of people now realise they can set thier own values and conduct thier own inner life, and not have that whole side of life simply handed over to a preist and handle by proxy.

Overall the impact of the hippys, well let me rephrase that, the 60s in general, was monumental, and laregely positive. It will probably always be impossible to actually guage how much affect they had, and how much the world today is somehow a result of that turbulent time.

Looks like I did the essay anyway, against my intentions. I dont know why I bother to talk to a person who reduces the hippy movement to "people who take drugs and waste thier lives". It`s mind boggling to contemplate an educated person saying this. But I guess it takes all types, and I now know more about this person, and like him less than before, and that is really saying something...

[TheUrbanMyth]

[gyopogirlfromtexas]

Lol, I'm prepared to talk back a lot when I come to Korea. Unless of course, if it's family elders, but just because you're older than me doesn't make you God. Like, if I hear stuff about why do you speak English? Read the signs, you're in Korea. Speak Korean. Even when I'm with foreign ppl. Uhm, how are they going to understand me, hmmm? I wouldn't talk back only if those elders effected my life. Like if I see them at work , but otherwise I think it's funny to look forward to talking back.

[tfunk]

From what I read of the post, extremely limited context, I don't think 'hitting' the girl was as bad as its being made out to be. I don't think you can imply that his act of hitting the girl with a few pieces of paper is equivalent to some of the other horrific incidents of abuse against women.

It might be symptomatic of a more problematic attitude towards women...

Sometimes men seem quite aggressive here towards their girlfriends and the girlfriends in turn can be quite physical.

Korean society seems to be organised, in terms of its hierarchies and positions of authority, much like a family in the west was a 100 years ago. The father and mother had pecking order and it was all right for grandpa to give his granddaughter a slap across the head now and again.

[mateomiguel]

Wow, this is definitely bringing a thread back from the dead.

If any of you care, I can tell the rest of the story. The girl's sister came back from Singapore on her way to New York to continue working for her international jewelry company. She was lucky enough to score a student visa quickly and went to join her sister in New York, where she is studying to be a nurse practitioner. No more paper-to-the-face for her! Now the worst thing she has to deal with is her sister bugging her to go to church every Sunday.

We also had fun on our date, but there was no special spark.

For all of you who argued that it wasn't such a big deal what happened and nobody should sweat it, I'd like to meet you in Hongdae, exit 5, where the Cafe Pascucci is. Then I'll get into a heated argument with you and hit you in the face with a rolled up newspaper. Deal?

[pkang0202]

[mateomiguel]

... here we go again.

Dude, I didn't step in and fight him. SOME OTHER KOREAN GUY stepped in and separated them. Then they were both called into the office of my boss and chewed out thoroughly for acting in a stupid, childish manner. I was so shocked, if you can reference the OP, that all I managed to say was "hey, what's going on?" Everybody in the office (who was and still is Korean) was talking like they just saw the craziest thing of the year.

Later I told him to never, ever do that again, and didn't even put a threat on the end of it. I just told him never do that again. And you know what? He never has.

I got a good friend of mine hired here some months later, who is also a young cute Korean girl, and he tried to be all domineering and verbally abusive to her like some sort of dog, and I was able to yell at him and cause a scene and make him permanently shut up about that too. And then yet another young Korean girl (my old woman Korean boss seems to have a thing for hiring young cute Korean girls) has come to the office and told him to shut up herself, and he went back to his desk and hunched over his computer and never bothered her either!

This wasn't a post about how I'm a crazy-a$$ foreigner laying down the western law when I have no business doing so, this was a post about how there's this crazy-a$$ washed-up useless Korean man-boy who did something outrageous in the office workplace and shocked everybody, Korean and foreigner alike. And it made me angry. Lay off the morality policing already, geez!

(Oh, I still don't like him, you might not have noticed.)