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Flower Children 2.0: This Time It’s ‘Tune Out, and Turn Off’


“This disintegration of values opens up a positive void in which free experimentation is possible. But if experimentation does not consciously oppose itself to all the mechanisms of power, then at the critical moment, when all values are sucked into the vortex, new illusions fill the void; power abhors a vacuum.”

From the essay, ‘The Poverty of Hip Life’, part of ‘CONTRADICTION’
(unpublished draft, April 1972)


Randy Johnson
21st Century Wire

Is the real world a little too Real? Need to decompress? Could we all use a little more “peace and love” without highlighting ourselves against the system like in the 1960s? As Rodney King once eloquently asked during tough times, “Can’t we all just get along?”

Wouldn’t it have been great if youth and authority got along – unlike in the rough and ready 1960’s?

If only they could rebrand, and dumb-down the Flower Power, ‘Peace’ and the Hippie movements? After all, who could be against a good time?

Enter the dazzling new high tech Mickey Mouse Club. In its 18th year, the spectacle just keeps growing too. Electronic Daisy Carnival (EDC) has just left Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. and is headed to the United Kingdom.

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Pixies put cops in a spell at the EDC.

What is it really? Is it addressing a primary need for millennials? A chance to extend one’s seemingly lost childhood?

Whatever it is, it’s all part of the new “consumer counter culture”. The CONTRADICTION continues:

“The hippie’s dissatisfaction, his dissociation from the old stereotypes, has resulted in his fabrication and adoption of new ones. Hip life creates and consumes new roles — guru, craftsman, rock star; new abstract values — universal love, naturalness, openness; and new mystifications for consolation — pacifism, Buddhism, astrology, the cultural debris of the past put back on the counter for consumption. The fragmentary innovations that the hippie did make — and lived as if they were total — have only given new life to the spectacle. Instead of fighting for a real life, the hippie takes on an abstract representation, an image of life, and advertises his change of appearance as real change. The moral seriousness which he attaches to his lifestyle measures his dependence on the new image. Since the proliferation of lifestyles develops parallel to the decay of values, valuation in turn decomposes in the direction of choosing an entire pseudolife from among the styles on the market.”

At the EDC, you are told that you are part of the exhibition and show. This is your chance to let go and interact outside of social media, and still take your selfie too. It looks like a great time and probably is. From the Electronic Daisy Carnival website and in their own worlds:

This is the place where our spirits run free—a boundless playground filled with music, adventure, art, excitement and love. As the vivid colors of the afternoon give way to the night’s neon dreamscapes, our collective imaginations come alive as we all gather together as one. Journey with us through a world of super blooming beats and funkdafied freaks. This is the Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC). This is home.”

If you are a person who truly longs for this type of world, then this is your home.

At a quick glance, EDC appears to be nothing more than a big party with a carnival and club-like atmosphere that is simply a way to have a good time with others in your perceived social peer group. Is the way we “get down and party” or rave going corporate and monolithic, or are we simply seeing Flower Power freedom “re-imagined” and conformed into a Technocratic Flower Child?

The Millennial Honey Pot

The EDC looks like a great time and probably is. Is it addressing a primary need for millennials as “Flower Children Without a Cause?” At a quick glance, EDC appears to be a big party with a carnival and club-like atmosphere that is simply a way to have a good time.

EDC also allows anyone, youth in particular, to dress up and make a Disneyland-to-erotica journey that might be literally personified in Miley Cyrus. Their new marketing concept appears to be based on the emerging selfie culture and mass desire for digital exhibitionism. “You’re the headliner” is part of the concept as well on their website – an event where “you can celebrate life, love, art and music, and be the truest version of yourself.”


FLAGS & FLOWERS: While one of the masses, you too can be a star—for the price of admission. EDC 2015 bombards the senses and mixes a Disney-like celebration with a sexually suggestive, patriotism, dress-up, and fantasy atmosphere. (Image Source: Tumblr)

It has the look of a sexually suggestive, Disney-like celebration, with good intentions for an uptight, regulated world. However, is Electronic Daisy Carnival harmless fun or merely the newest invention to distract the masses and make some money while you’re at it?

If you want to govern masses and make bold strokes to shape the world, then maintaining a populace that is comfortable and complacent seems to be a requirement.

As you might have guessed, comfortable, well fed, people with idle time and the means “to party” (non stop) will never resist the Orwellian State, and some might even argue that they are submissive towards the technocracy, so long as the technocracy allows them to have their fun inside festival walls. It’s a pretty safe bet that no one in attendance really knows, much less cares, exactly what their elected rulers are up to.

As things are with parents and kids, so they are with central government and its citizens. If “life is good” then kids (citizens) will allow government (parents) to handle the ‘difficult’ adult issues; like good parents who might also be functional alcoholics with their own problems, government will shelter their children from most things in the real world.


Individual freedom and conformity has never been so much fun. (Image Source: Tumblr)

There are striking similarities between Electronic Daisy Carnival and the Flower Power movement beyond the obvious flower connections. In an article from RENSE.com, there is mention of the famous phrase attributed to flower children of the 1960s known as “Tune in, turn on, and Drop out.”

The article goes on to say that “too many have given up on protest and social change. They feel that “fighting the darkness” just “brings me down.”

In the 1960s, flower power was against the system. Perhaps the system, in order to maintain its working class and order, is aware of a need to keep the masses droned out at work and spaced out away from it.

Now days, as we all grind away for and within the system—we are allowed the freedom and individuality to purchase tickets and blow off some steam before getting back to work.

In the 21st Century, with global warfare, famine, and real issues being shoved to the side or glossed over within major mainstream media, you could say the millennials, with some Generation X and “why?” thrown in, are being conditioned to simply “Tune Out and Turn Off”?

History repeats itself and trends reemerge with an ironic twist with The Electronic Daisy Carnival. It comes across like a re-branding of Flower Power for the technocratic age.

What is the Electronic Daisy Carnival beyond the surface level? It appears like a way for the fragmented, isolated, and all-grown-up and sexualized Disney kids to be “all in this together” as heard in the video below. It is a lower base level and “base-thumpin” celebration, very appealing to short attention spans and feast for the senses. It is a glitzy way for techno-kids to “feel” in a carnival, inclusive club-like setting with innocent, altruistic-sounding, slogans like “love and care for each other.”

It is better seen than explained in the Electronic Daisy Chain Las Vegas 2015 trailer below. For people into symbolism, don’t let the Monarch butterflies, stuffed animals, glowing snake skeletons, Alice and Wonderland caterpillar and mushroom imagery (and that is only 1:30 into the trailer) pass you by. Later in the roughly 7 minute video, owl and octopus symbolism mix with the flowers. Watch:


The symbolism is sublime, and when you look closely, you will find it everywhere at these events. As with most things in mass media, most of the innocent attendees have little or no idea which type of Maypole they are happily circling around. 


Again, for those of you into imagery and symbolism, an occult image symbolizing a Moloch-like owl character, a god of the underworld – oversees things at the Electronic Daisy Chain 2015, Las Vegas, U.S.A. in this advertisement poster…

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More ‘Moloch chique.’


More than an advertisement or a cameo appearance, the angry owl is an integral piece of the carnival-like party.

…and the tentacles of the Octopus dazzle us with flames in all directions.

When it is all about fun, what level of non-conformist goofball would it take to argue against an oversized sexualized, individuality-starved, less connected (in real terms) multitude living it up and having a good time?

Am I merely an outdated dinosaur who would dare be critical about this commecial ‘culturalized’ phenomenon?

If you are critical of EDC, clearly you are “old” or a “hater” or some old person who “doesn’t get it.” In fact, parents and many other “squares” of the 1960’s surely heard a similar rebuke and initially thought their kids were just playing dress-up.

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The more things change, the more they stay the same: EDC attendees today and flower children of days gone by.

Flower Power to Dance Revolution

The youth in the 1960’s and early 1970’s wanted to do good things and show their uniqueness in a tough and deadly world. When Vietnam and racial protests came along, a common mantra reverberated; open your mind, fight the system and drop out. 

As the madness in the world seems to be spreading, racial tensions are returning to similar levels as the 1960’s. Instead of Vietnam, terror and fear are not only something happening “over there” but also has the ever-present threat of coming to the friendly confines of the homeland.

Once again: time to “turn off and tune out”.

If you have even more time, the Electronic Daisy Carnival’s Woodstock-like event is on full ‘Flower Power’ display in the following documentary. Watch in shock and awe:

There were local Fox News affiliates with reports of Electronic Daisy Carnival, Las Vegas 2015, having over 400,000 attendees

EDC is not alone in this cultural movement. There are others and, collectively, they all seem to be getting bigger by the year with more venues in what Forbes called the “EDM Boom” late in a 2014 article, EDM standing for (Electronic Dance Music) EDC is not alone in this cultural movement. 

The surreal plasticity of EDC and other events are becoming a global phenomenon…

There are others who are a part of the EDM Boom as well. Take for instance the film, Tomorrow Landwhere a gate at one of the events depicted in the film triumphantly reads “yesterday is history, today is a gift, tomorrow is a mystery”. Tomorrow Land had over 360,000 people at their weekend event in Belgium, earlier this year according to their website. At Tomorrow Land, everyone can “unite” and party hard before returning to the tiered pricing accommodations ranging from a one person tent to a “mansion” at the nearby ‘Dreamland’ (also found on their website).

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In addition, Tomorrow Land happens to have a butterfly as well as an “all seeing eye” image embedded in its logo (above).

Electronic Daisy Carnival is purported to evolved from the “warehouse” rave scene in Los Angeles in the 1990’s, although the hyper-commercial nature of it now bears no resemblance to the grassroots rave scene of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Similar to music genres that start “underground” but go mainstream, the EDC keeps its’ techno music roots, but has flowered (pun intended) into corporatization of a new “dress-up” part-time Flower Child who goes back to school or work. The otherwise technologically hooked rabble are now glued to cell phones and social media, connecting with others – but still remain effectively “turned off and tuned out.”

EDC events, or similar events such as Tomorrow Land, appear like they are Flower Power with a twist.


THE END OF HISTORY: Party like there’s no tomorrow! (Image Source: Flipkey)

Now you can be part of a totally tuned out society, fit in no matter who you are, and be part of something bigger as you conform within the “technocracy rising.” You can belong and feel pretty good about yourself in the process.

The EDC phenomena, and the EDM phenomena as a whole, has an ominous undertone that could appeal to anyone–party hard while you still can.

Perhaps the EDC just wants to get you to dance and zone out to the trance-like beats of the DJ—while the planet continues to burn.

READ MORE MIND CONTROL NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Mind Control Files

 

 

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Get Your Copy of New Dawn Magazine #203 - Mar-Apr Issue