Can the world afford any more hippie/hipster individualism?

I am vegetarian, I live on a tiny income and consume very little. I occupy a space small enough that I can touch all four walls standing with outstretched arms, to minimize the heat necessary in my cold winter climate. I’m an activist, have sat on several volunteer boards, founded several organizations, and am currently the spokesperson for one of those organizations. I have no pets, no children, no car, and I take the bus only when walking simply isn’t feasible.

In short, I have done everything possible to stop what Thoreau refered to as the “machinery of injustice,” while trying to reduce my footprint on the already overburdened Earth.

I am not alone. A lot of the people I work with in my various activist communities are much younger than I am, and they, like me, have arranged their lives to apply the most possible weight against the machinery of injustice while creating as little of it by their mode of life as possible. This stands in stark contrast with the older “activists” I see from the Boomer generation. These aging hippies seem to feel that they have a God-given right to drive cars, eat meat, live in grossly unsustainable suburban bungalows, and generally act like the most incredible assholes—all the while acting like they’ve saved the planet by separating their recyclables.

My question is, can the world afford any more of these milquetoast liberal hypocrites? The children today have grown up with the grim knowledge that they will have less—probably much less—than their parents, thanks to the relentless greed, arrogance, and “do yer own thang” hippie individualism which has infected every corner of our culture, and threatens to turn the ecosphere so toxic that nothing larger than a nematode is likely to survive.

In his song “Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” Phil Ochs defines a liberal as being ten degrees to the left of centre at the best of times, and ten degrees to the right of centre when it affects them personally. As the West slides into its own navel and the last faint trappings of democracy give way to reveal the bars of the totalitarian cage into which we have willingly strolled, I must ask people whether they believe we can afford to allow these pantywaist liberal democrats to waste time and resources which must be used to stop the juggernaut of capitalist armageddon before it’s too late.