On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, richard sales wrote:
> Well... the hippies also used hard core civil disobedience to express our anger! It was a thrilling time.
> The free love and drugs was just a bonus for some of us. For some it was the core of the experience. They're the ones who went on to Wall Street and commerce. Truth is, they missed the most glorious boat of the time.
LOL, There
is a common joke that goes, "If you remember the 60's, then you weren't there."
Sadly, sometimes I think that if you weren't there you just don't get it.
It's like Dickens said, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times".
American children were probably the most dysfunctional in our National history. Many (and NOT the majority)
were angry but they also wanted to buy out of the materialistic culture that had emerged from all the wealth
and conformity that characterized our culture at the end of World War 2.
I always think it is dangerous to put too much emphasis on a time in one's life when one is first learning about the world and trying to come to terms with it's inequities (and it's delights) but there was some kind
of magic in that time, at least for me.
The one thing that I do miss about it was the , of course, intrinsically naive, notion that we could
somehow change
the world........we could eschew the dominant paradigm..........we could make a culture
that was less racist, less sexist, less ageist, less sizeist, etc., etc.
there was a feeling, artistically, that anything was possible and that, I believe is what led to the explosion
in creativity in music and fashion (as tacky as tie dye shirts are to me personally.....lol).
that part of it was wonderful where I lived (and at my tender age (I was 14 in '67 but had a sister 4 years older
who was taking me to concerts and parties and be-ins all the time----she took my brother and I to
the Monterey Pop Festival and to the Filmore Auditorium on my 16th birthday and turned me on, bless her heart)
Youth seem far more cynical these days (and I teach them a lot so I have some experience saying this).
I suppose we can't blame them after they had to watch George Bush stay in office for eight years and all it represents, psychically and
politically.
I always wish I could give them a little tiny bit of that naive idealism we had at that time........
.....that sense that anything is possible.
It was a good think even though some of my memory about that time is dim (lol).
rick walker