Posted on 06/17/2007 12:07:44 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Much of today’s social ills can be traced directly to the 60’s. Most of the 60’s Flower Children were raised in traditional middle class homes and still had some sense of middle class values despite their rebellion. 40 years and a dependent Great Society later we have social chaos in too many quarters.
ALSO, it’s not as if brutal crime/gangs, etc. didn’t exist in the 50s and 60’s, but in those days there wasn’t 24/7 news, either.
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Nice try skippy.
I was born in '48, so I was 20 in '68 and not really a child ... almost 3 yrs (early out) of Army and sex, drugs, rock n' roll with mini (or less) skirts attacking my senses.
There was a serious barrage of anti-Americanism going on and it was easy for a curious and quasi-educated mind to think, "Yeah ... that sounds about right."
Travel was free, interesting and the nation opened up to anyone who wanted to hitch .. (twice from Boston to the west coast in two years)
Work was everywhere so money was no problem and the whole idea of being phoney or 'plastic' was anathema. A great sense of wanting to be honest and sincere was everywhere.
I don't think I would have had a better education than my real-life experiences from '65 to around the late '70's.
We are always looking through a glass darkly from our present position and only later can we parse the rights and wrongs of who and what we are or did.
Street people smell(ed), not 'hippies' ... we were waaayyy too into ourselves to be dirty.
We talked ... a lot .... to more people about more things face to face in a month than most people do today on the keyboard in a year today. Our minds were flooded by choice with everything imaginable and there was a reality of power, realizing most 'straights' had no clue.
I was not an actor on the stage ... I was the choreographer, and really enjoyed flitting from society to society with others that had no fear and bothered to know and care.
Sex was a tool, drugs were a tool and freedom too was a tool to acquire knowledge of real, live people and what they thought and did.
Nothing is forever and in the end .. it's all rather entropic, isn't it?
So now I'm pushin' sixty and I look back at my youth with envy and nostalgia, realizing I had been part of an amazing generation ...
and I'm thankful.
And thank you for that, soldier.
Hell, I've been laid off 4 times as old hippies cut defense budgets. I may be laid off again when Elaine Tauscher and the other old hippies on the House Armed Services Comittee cut my program.
For me at 39, the boomers just look to me like a bunch of dopes who traded their American Birthright for a handful of magic mushrooms.
You can’t go back. I’ll watch the video set.
Xer Ping
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That’s really good...
I had a lot of choices besides working for someone else and putting their kids through college.
Perhaps your anger might be more properly positioned if turned inward
Hippies may HAVE smelled but way too many of the young women like the ones you have up there in your post reflect that song lyric,”She has a body by Fischer-and a mind by Mattel.
I’m with you,dragnet!
The hippie movement had a LOT of faults which is why I was never a true believer.I saw through the hypocrisy,poseurs and scene makers.
Yet the music was a lot better,the crime rate was MUCH lower and there was hope in the air.It was a special time to be alive and I was glad I was there in the midst of it,warts and all.
Nah: I'm not a self-obsessed old hippy.
And they must have been terrible parents considering the generation that came after them.
I will give you ONE reason why I was attracted to the hippie counterculture:
In 1966.our community had dances at the local National Guard Armory.Some nights you would literally have to walk OVER dazed,drunk and bleeding bodies recovering from fights,alcohol poisoning and God knows what else.Groups of white punks would harass and intimidate you.The music was old school R and B and pop covers but the ambiance was brutal.
Later that year I started going to the hippie flavored shows at The Fillmore and Winterland.Mellow vibes and very friendly folk.Never a fight,at least till the speed freaks came onto the scene around 1968.You could dance the way you wanted and no one laughed at you.Conversations were free and without animosity.I loved it at its height.Best times of my life.
Sure,I look back now wondering what seeds the counterculture sowed and I am NOT happy about the Hillarys,The Kerrys and their ilk.But I sure dug The Jefferson Airplane belting out High Flying Bird as the crowd swayed and undulated to the “groovy”vibe!
Knarf-I feel ya,boy!
That's nice for you, but don't forget: for those of us too young to enjoy the "groovy vibe", all we got from the 60s was the Hillarys, The Kerrys and their ilk....
Well - you’ll find plenty of information at sites like FR that will delve into the “other side”, as Mr. Morrison enjoined us to do so eloquently.
I recognize that,Sith.You were left with the flotsam and jetsom after the love wave crested and we all came back down to Earth.
By the time the Summer of Love arrived,the hippie thing had pretty much peaked.It became a parody of itself.I moved on but many stayed around hoping to revive memories that were gone with the wind.
OMGosh. My 26 year old son went to that event. He’s driving home today.
I can’t wait to ask him if it was an old-hippie-fest! LOL
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