Western Buddhism
Watching Beatles videos from 1962 was probably the first time when I realized that the process of stirring up the dirt from the bottom of the Western Society has been essentially complete by 1960s. By this time, plebeians were the object of idolization in the Western Europe, not just in the Soviet Union. Then I thought that the plebeian nature of Beatles was not that evident to me before. Apparently, before I have been looking at the later pictures of John Lennon, with long hair and Yoko Ono, where his face looked sort of more gentile. So when plebs became the kings and the queens, they started looking for a new ideology, new religion. The religion of the 2000 years old hierarchy that their ancestors, who later became their nobles and aristocrats adopted when they were demolishing Rome had to be overthrown. Since the old West had nothing to offer, they naturally looked East - that’s where Yoko Ono, New Age, Buddhism and ideological basis for mescaline and LSD came from. I then noticed that even in America, a plebeian colony by nature, there is an evidence of plebs taking things more into their hands since the 60s. I am not going to talk about the New Age colonies in Mendocino, CA- even though their ideology is sifting through all layers of the American society, they are not running things. Just compare the photographs of Nixon or Obama with Woodrow Wilson or Calvin Coolidge.