16 Reply by impatiens

  • impatiens
  • Guest

Re: The Gospel According to Bill Hicks

Muchas gracias to Thoughtcrime for reviving this thread, and to Ayahuasca for starting it, cuz I missed it the first time around and will be looking for more Bill Hicks now.

  • From: Peru
  • Registered: 2004-08-06

Re: The Gospel According to Bill Hicks

lyra wrote:

Anyway, guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this.   !

Yeah, I think we will. I think you've completely misjudged the guy, but I can see why.

What you have to remember is that Bill Hicks was doing comedy since he was 13 years old. I think he did his first standup gig in a club when he was 14. So the material that you've read covers a span of 15-20 years. That's a huge amount of time in anyone's life and most people will change a lot in that period of time.

Bill's really angry period was in his 20's. Yes he suffered from depression, was an alcoholic and did way too many drugs etc. But he also gave pretty much all that up over 6 years before he died (apart from smoking).

I'm sure if someone judged you by what you did and said in your early twenties then it wouldn't be an accurate reflection on the person you are now.

I know from what I've read that even before he found out he was dying, he had become a much more mellow and happier person. He was now in his early 30's at this point.

I'm not trying to turn the guy into saint and I don't idolize him. He clearly had a lot of problems throughout his life. But I know he had a lot more spiritual awareness than you're giving him credit for. Perhaps it was only in his thirties when he finally started to integrate it more fully into his life because he was certainly a happier and more peaceful person at that point. So it would be wrong to judge his persona by his extremely angry rantings & lifestyle of his early 20's.

A bio here http://www.billhicks.com/bio.html gives a pretty good insight into the kind of person he was in my opinion.

Join me in Peru to celebrate December 21st 2012 - Visit: http://2012awakeningretreat.com/

Ayahuasca's Website

  • From: Montana
  • Registered: 2004-12-27

Re: The Gospel According to Bill Hicks

THanks, Aya and Lyra for the book suggestions on him.  Lyra had a couple good points, first of all my absolutely classic pattern of jumping to the conspiracy theory hehe.  I didn't know that much about his diet, etc, but I think the point still remains that someone that has potential for waking up mass numbers of people COULD be killed, whether or not it applied to Bill Hicks (which I'll concede, probably did not).  Another angle is that "they" know our weaknesses and are able to ply us with more drink, more drugs, more sex or whatever it takes to get us to self-destruct.  I think this happens with me, anyway.  Same notion really as the devil tempting man.

I think its also worth considering that while he may have profound points (reality as illusion, in a way the masses can understand, for example) perhaps he isn't all that profound.  It's an example of any or all of us, really.  I know I have a tendency to get egotistical, thinking I realize so much more than the people around me, which maybe I do on a purely intellectual or abstract level, but I'm actually at the same level as those people in a practical sense.  Not saying that Lyra is necessarily right about him Aya, but you know what I mean.  It's kind of a warning to search for truer meaning than outward appearances and the overall shine of outward spiritualism.

"Isolation, mis-education, and for the very clever there is looming liquidation."  -Catch Twenty-Two "Bad Party"