The very title Easy Rider (1969) suggests a Taoist theme, for the movie wasnt titled, Struggling Rider, but Easy Rider. Rather than struggling against Nature and the world, the motorcyclists were flowing with the Tao, the Way of Nature. This concept of ease and effortless action by going with the flow of Nature was called by Taoists, wu-wei. Certainly Easy Rider was a post-modern critique of commercialized, commoditized, sloganized America. Yes, it was a road-trip film, a buddy film, a motorcycle film, a gang film, as Roger Ebert points out in his review. It was all of those. But all true Journey myths --- from Homers Odyssey to Tolkiens Lord of the Rings Trilogy --- achieve a timeless quality by making the journey not merely a journey across space but a journey into Self. The motorcycles of Billy (Dennis Hopper) and Captain America (Peter Fonda) were not merely taking them on a journey to discover America, as is suggested by our textbook, but were taking them on the journey from the level of the ego to the level of the id and ultimately the collective unconscious.
Easy Rider tapped into an Aquarian Age zeitgeist that revolted against the artificiality and rampant commercialism of modern society. As Laurence Boldt explains in The Tao of Abundance, the Wests concept of nature as being separate from Man keeps him constantly in the mode of ego consciousness. Because we view ourselves as engaged in a willful struggle against nature --- which we view as separate from ourselves --- we therefore create an artificial society as a means to insulate ourselves from contact with nature. Mass production, advertising, and mass consumption conspire to keep modern man in a constant lack consciousness which Taoists and Buddhists would call ego-attachments. Taoists, however, had a concept of being in harmony with nature because they considered themselves as part of the same cosmic river, the Tao. Whereas the western concept of wealth centered on hoarding things, the eastern or Taoist concept of wealth centers on having an abundance of leisure time time to enjoy nature. By throwing off his wristwatch at the start of his journey, Captain America symbolizes his attunement with the Taoist concept of abundance --- free time.
The Hippie movement was in large part a back-to-nature zeitgeist --- fueled by a Taoist spirit. Captain America had definitely tapped into that zeitgeist when he said to the rancher: Its not every man who can live off the land, you know. You should be proud. It was also why he admired the Hippie commune. Easy Rider essentially makes the argument that when we lost our connection with the land we lost Thomas Jeffersons concept of the American Dream. This is reflected in the ACLU-attorney (Nicholson) George Hansons fireside critique of superficial people whose very lives are nothing more than a commodity bought and sold in the marketplace. To be freed from the metallic breast-milk of an artificial society is to return to the life-giving bosom of Mother Nature. The theme song of Steppenwolfs Born to Be Wild echoes this: Like a true natures child, we were born, born to be wild. The highway that returns the traveler to Nature is the same highway that leads to Natures most primal drives, buried within our unconsciousness.
Lacking any guru (for Yogi Bhajan would only arrive in L.A. in 1969), the bikers turned to drugs as their psychopomp to guide their souls into the underworld of the psyche. The progression of their choice of drugs represents the layers of the psyche. Cocaine, with its wiry energy, merely amplified their ego-consciousness, tying them to the physical world, the basis of the ego and its obligations of money and the endless rat-race. Marijuana, their favorite drug, however, opened them up to some of the layers of the id, the unconscious. It freed their minds from the limitations of the left-brained, rational, separative ego-consciousness and brought them to the right-brained, non-rational, whole-istic shores of the id. As a result of reminding them of their personal unconscious, the bikers were reawakened to their forgotten drives, the primal instincts of the libido, the sexual/creative life force. The unconscious material surfacing also allowed them to transcend the Herd Instinct and sublimate the fears associated with conformity. In The Psychedelic Experience, Dr. Timothy Leary advocated using LSD according to the method outlined in the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a means of exploring and mapping the far reaches of the inner world. In Easy Rider, the graveyard LSD trip opened up the other two primal instincts of the unconscious: the Survival Instinct and the Religious Instinct, along with the previously awakened Sexual Instinct.
Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Corey_Wicks
Easy Rider tapped into an Aquarian Age zeitgeist that revolted against the artificiality and rampant commercialism of modern society. As Laurence Boldt explains in The Tao of Abundance, the Wests concept of nature as being separate from Man keeps him constantly in the mode of ego consciousness. Because we view ourselves as engaged in a willful struggle against nature --- which we view as separate from ourselves --- we therefore create an artificial society as a means to insulate ourselves from contact with nature. Mass production, advertising, and mass consumption conspire to keep modern man in a constant lack consciousness which Taoists and Buddhists would call ego-attachments. Taoists, however, had a concept of being in harmony with nature because they considered themselves as part of the same cosmic river, the Tao. Whereas the western concept of wealth centered on hoarding things, the eastern or Taoist concept of wealth centers on having an abundance of leisure time time to enjoy nature. By throwing off his wristwatch at the start of his journey, Captain America symbolizes his attunement with the Taoist concept of abundance --- free time.
The Hippie movement was in large part a back-to-nature zeitgeist --- fueled by a Taoist spirit. Captain America had definitely tapped into that zeitgeist when he said to the rancher: Its not every man who can live off the land, you know. You should be proud. It was also why he admired the Hippie commune. Easy Rider essentially makes the argument that when we lost our connection with the land we lost Thomas Jeffersons concept of the American Dream. This is reflected in the ACLU-attorney (Nicholson) George Hansons fireside critique of superficial people whose very lives are nothing more than a commodity bought and sold in the marketplace. To be freed from the metallic breast-milk of an artificial society is to return to the life-giving bosom of Mother Nature. The theme song of Steppenwolfs Born to Be Wild echoes this: Like a true natures child, we were born, born to be wild. The highway that returns the traveler to Nature is the same highway that leads to Natures most primal drives, buried within our unconsciousness.
Lacking any guru (for Yogi Bhajan would only arrive in L.A. in 1969), the bikers turned to drugs as their psychopomp to guide their souls into the underworld of the psyche. The progression of their choice of drugs represents the layers of the psyche. Cocaine, with its wiry energy, merely amplified their ego-consciousness, tying them to the physical world, the basis of the ego and its obligations of money and the endless rat-race. Marijuana, their favorite drug, however, opened them up to some of the layers of the id, the unconscious. It freed their minds from the limitations of the left-brained, rational, separative ego-consciousness and brought them to the right-brained, non-rational, whole-istic shores of the id. As a result of reminding them of their personal unconscious, the bikers were reawakened to their forgotten drives, the primal instincts of the libido, the sexual/creative life force. The unconscious material surfacing also allowed them to transcend the Herd Instinct and sublimate the fears associated with conformity. In The Psychedelic Experience, Dr. Timothy Leary advocated using LSD according to the method outlined in the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a means of exploring and mapping the far reaches of the inner world. In Easy Rider, the graveyard LSD trip opened up the other two primal instincts of the unconscious: the Survival Instinct and the Religious Instinct, along with the previously awakened Sexual Instinct.
Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Corey_Wicks
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