Jonathan Livingston Seagull

[Woebot]

is there anyone old enough to have experienced this as a child in the seventies?

Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

i remember it making a massive impression on my impressionable mind.

as i'm fully aware now it was extremely zeitgeisty - the corruption of children with ideas of oobe, emanationism and reincarnation.

orthodox christians must have been fuming! except this was the seventies and the era of sandals and acoustic guitar in church...

my wild uncle gave me a jonathon LIVINGROOM seagull plastic pendant light for christmas.

 

[Woebot]

 

[Woebot]

wow the internet has everything

 

[john eden]

I vaguely remember this at the time, @Matthew I think we were read bits of it at school in fact?

but mainly associate it with a former boss who was well into NLP, “where’s my cheese” and transactional analysis...

sort of filed away with Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance in my brain

 

[DannyL]

I'm aware of it but a bit like Jon - for me it was definitely not contemporary, but it's a text I've heard of in relation to a gestalt of impressions of mass market hippiedom. Bookshops that smell of incense, pass-agg guys in sandals.

 

[woops]

i'm not old enough to remember the seventies but i read this at an impressionable age anyway and even back then i could tell it was hippy nonsense. or was it illusions that i read? zen motorcycle maintenance was kind of the same but more macho

 

[subvert47]

is there anyone old enough to have experienced this as a child in the seventies?

Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Yes, and I still have that book

 

[jenks]

Yes - although I mainly got into it in the mid 80s when it was a remnant of the hippie movement which I revered as much as post-punk (a bizarre hybrid, I know) - footage of it being read at festivals to calm down riotous fans and I saw it very much of a piece with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The other Bach book was Illusions: The Adventures of a reluctant Messiah. (I know, I groan just typing it. But I loved that book at 15 yrs of age.)

 

[sufi]

goes with the little prince for me - a really out there one off kids tale
also ferdinand the bull, recently fucked over by disney...

although is there something a little happy-clappy christian kumbaya about JLS?

 

[Woebot]

I vaguely remember this at the time, @Matthew I think we were read bits of it at school in fact?

yes we were read it at school but indoctrinating teachers

 

[Woebot]

Yes - although I mainly got into it in the mid 80s when it was a remnant of the hippie movement which I revered as much as post-punk (a bizarre hybrid, I know) - footage of it being read at festivals to calm down riotous fans and I saw it very much of a piece with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The other Bach book was Illusions: The Adventures of a reluctant Messiah. (I know, I groan just typing it. But I loved that book at 15 yrs of age.)

"Adventures of a reluctant Messiah" i didn't know about this thanks @jenks

i think he went stratospheric Bach - how many millions of copies JLS must have sold- so no doubt shades of inflation to this title! i've come across him again recently in my research on the post-Retreat strands that tailed off into the seventies and eighties - he gave a big grant to the SRI (the Stanford Research institute who were "researching" ESP after they gave him a knockout demonstration ) and he gives a glowing blurbwhore review for Raymond Moody's "Life After Life"

Ive really got to get round to reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. although lots of people say it's incredibly boring (boring - often shorthand for i didn't have the intellectual fibre to read and understand IMHO - )

 

[john eden]

One thing I did enjoy was The Tao of Pooh, which was published in the mid eighties iirc. There is a line from that to the uncarved.org domain name in fact.

 

[IdleRich]

goes with the little prince for me - a really out there one off kids tale
also ferdinand the bull, recently fucked over by disney...

although is there something a little happy-clappy christian kumbaya about JLS?

Was gonna mention the Little Prince here..

 

[Woebot]

freely available online