Great Review for “Something’s Happening Here?”
“Something’s Happening Here” just received a wonderful review from Damien at Life of a Bastard blog
It’s great to know that Gen X resonates to my wild, raunchy tales of the 60s. You can too!
“Something’s Happening Here” just received a wonderful review from Damien at Life of a Bastard blog
It’s great to know that Gen X resonates to my wild, raunchy tales of the 60s. You can too!
February 23, 2020 @ 5:54 am
I’m about half way through Something’s Happening. I need this right now as the current world politics seems as uncertain as ever. Maybe I should remember that ever ‘time’ has been one with it’s uncertainties and doubts as for the future.
I felt a bit of an epiphany this morning reading the descriptions of sexual social & political & cultural revolution.
It suddenly dawned upon me that the future is an unknown country, waiting to be explored and remade and reinterpreted in ways that are yet to unfold before us. I still hope human beings can learn to settle down and get on with what needs to be done to stabilise our systems, modify them, change as a way of life to remedy the damage we are inflicting upon earth and upon each other. We’ll see, won’t we!
Thank you Dennis, really, sincerely, your thoughts are a help. I’m a 62 yr old Gay man in Sydney in the land we “hippies” called OZ (Aust.) I inherited the new left ideals from people like you as a teenager of the 70’s entering High School, and applied those ideals and need for freedoms, to help change the society here in the 80’s 90’s through reforms to laws, police, government institutions, and these social & cultural changes continue to evolve, perhaps also and why not a maturing of the political social constructions, as the current selfish, inward looking and insular, and xenophobia has run through that cycle again. It has all happened before and run it’s ugly destructive course, so I guess it will do so again. Then we can return to hopeful and future focused endeavours in all fields of humanity’s activities. I recognise a good fellow man, so again, a simple thank you. Bruce V
March 3, 2020 @ 4:17 am
Bruce,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments and I hope you got as much from the rest of my book.
Let’s hope, as you wrote, “the political social constructions” do mature.
The earth’s wellbeing hangs in the balance.
Best Wishes,
Dennis
March 3, 2020 @ 5:20 am
Hi Dennis, I finished Something’s Happening last night. Always feel satisfied after reading a book, and thinking about another person’s thoughts and experiences.
And playing a mix of my still favourite soul, rock, folk music from 1966 – 1970
You are of an age from the ‘start’ of the Baby Boom generations, with me being from the middle (born 1957) but I always think that I inherited the social and political viewpoint established by people such as yourself.
The New Left and as a teenager of the 1970s (literally 13 in 1970) I have always felt that the ideals and goals established in myself then, are of great hope to the world, as these carry on throughout society, and are hopefully taken up by the younger ones.
[Perhaps that is social and political change, by virtue of everyone over 30 (circa 1960) shuffling off. – that sounds a bit morbid]
I do find it is a great pity that almost everyone who I know under 35 yrs old, is currently negative about the future, as though there will not have a world of opportunity that we have had, but I tell them that things can change rather suddenly.
I think that as they mature, then their viewpoint and actions will come to take charge of the world, and demand of, and seek to implement the solutions to the problems that the world has always had – just more urgent now.
Then there is the rising middle class in previously third world countries to consider. They are wanting change and seem to be largely rejecting the sectarian and partisan politics of the past. Who knows what they might come up with as they seek to obtain freedoms and a better life.
I definitely believe that there are solutions.
I just try to get them to understand that an unchecked negativity can be a self-fulfilling and self-defeating way of thinking, and that the whole human civilisation is kind of revolutionary – in that there are things occurring that have never taken place before.
Like all the information into more people’s hands that ever before, and the gains being attained in science and technology. Just depends upon how it is implemented – right?
People everywhere do seem to have settled on some shared principles around fairness (except the extremist fascists and greedy, selfish ones amongst us) – but they are usually a minority.
So I guess I am still a believer in socialist and community based ideals, and a “dreamer of a beautiful peaceful world”.
I enjoyed your book as some of it parallels my own experiences of life.