Much shorter answer: sin.
You cannot recreate Eden, and you cannot make Heaven on Earth. When God installs the New Jerusalem, then and only then will the ideal life be found here.
Hippie chicks, yum yum. I was in the Haight Ashbury at the time but it was only when I got a weekend pass from Ft. Ord. Lots of interesting things going on there.
And yet, many people seem to imagine that the free-fornication, yay-drugs, “live on the kindness of strangers” experiment is working out wonderfully on the national scale. Opioid-abuse epidemic? “Disability” crisis? Broken families? Means nowt.
But if the individuals who comprise that collective are themselves responsible, honorable, decent people, then their collective aggregates their strengths and amplifies them.
So how do the individuals remain responsible, honorable, and decent? By being accountable. By stepping outside themselves into a bigger world that existed long before them and will exist long after they're gone. By admitting their own insignificance instead of elevating it to narcissism.
And the best way to do that is by religion: the recognition that you are a mere speck in time, a mote in the eye of the Creator, to whom you owe your very (transient) existence. Do away with religion and you do away with the drive to be moral. And the structure in which to do it.
God doesn't fail His people. His people fail Him. And themselves in the bargain.
The bottom line, is People will be People, and take what they want, when they want to, if they decide to. The trick is to make them not want it, or make it too risky to take.
It wasn’t just the love that was free. lodging, drugs, food, clothes, medical care and the people kept pouring in. Even the originators bailed out of this social experiment. you can’t sustain a system of free stuff. Someone has to pay. We are seeing this again nationwide with Obama giving EBT cards, phones, and medical care and education to every and anyone including illegals. That to me is the lesson of the summer of love.
“Who Needs The Peace Corps?” - The Mothers of Invention
What’s there to live for?
Who needs the peace corps?
Think I’ll just DROP OUT
I’ll go to Frisco
Buy a wig & sleep
On Owsley’s floor
Walked past the wig store
Danced at the Fillmore
I’m completely stoned
I’m hippy & I’m trippy
I’m a gypsy on my own
I’ll stay a week & get the crabs &
Take a bus back home
I’m really just a phony
But forgive me
‘Cause I’m stoned
Every town must have a place
Where phony hippies meet
Psychedelic dungeons
Popping up on every street
GO TO SAN FRANCISCO . . .
How I love ya, How I love ya
How I love ya, How I love ya Frisco!
How I love ya, How I love ya
How I love ya, How I love ya
Oh, my hair is getting good in the back!
Every town must have a place
Where phony hippies meet
Psychedelic dungeons
Popping up on every street
GO TO SAN FRANCISCO . . .
Hotcha!
First I’ll buy some beads
And then perhaps a leather band
To go around my head
Some feathers and bells
And a book of Indian lore
I will ask the Chamber Of Commerce
How to get to Haight Street
And smoke an awful lot of dope
I will wander around barefoot
I will have a psychedelic gleam in my eye at all times
I will love everyone
I will love the police as they kick the shit out of me on the street
I will sleep . . .
I will, I will go to a house
That’s, that’s what I will do
I will go to a house
Where there’s a rock & roll band
‘Cause the groups all live together
And I will join a rock & roll band
I will be their road manager
And I will stay there with them
And I will get the crabs
But I won’t care
Because . . .
Summer of Love marked the beginning of the end of the State of Kalifornia.
I've always heard that the "summer of love" attracted biker gangs, who brought amphetamines into the mix.
tl;dr
The SOL was unsustainable, but so what? It was not a disaster.
“monogamy, moderation, good manners, self-denial, self-control, the sanctity of private property, personal accountability to higher authorities, both material and spiritual” ... proper personal hygiene ...
It is simple:
They celebrated libertinism, not liberty. Liberty requires moral and ethical responsibility.
Moral degradation is really the only freedom that communists promote, since it leads to societal decay, which they exploit to take control.
I grew up in a rich boy’s wanna-be Berkeley (Palo Alto; Stanford). There were fairly tame sit-ins every Friday; a store window was occasionally broken.
I was a conservative even as a naive boy, surrounded by hippies. I got along with them because I was sincere and courteous. Those hippies were somewhat more tolerant than their modern counterparts.
I was not eager to go to war, but I would have done my duty if I had been drafted.