If you watch all the film clips of the late 60's it's very easy to get the wrong idea about what America was like at the time. The clips all show hippies and protests and riots - plus that "age of Aquarius" stuff... Yeah - all that was happening - but people were for the most part still pretty darn conventional.
At least that was my experience. Even though all the polls reflected significant opposition to the war in Vietnam you wouldn't have known it if you were in high school back then. We were being taught the "domino theory" - if Vietnam falls to communism the rest of the world will follow - and most of my classmates sure seemed to buy it. Yeah - history argues otherwise :-)
We were the first generation to be raised by the boob tube - educated by Captain Kangaroo and Buffalo Bob... Oh - and you can't forget all those lovely "public service" clips instructing us in what to think and how to behave... We were own little insular society. We shared a common background and beliefs - and short attention spans :-)
By late 1968 I began to detect an undercurrent of fatalism among my peers. Our older friends were getting killed in Nam - and we were next... The people we admired most had been assassinated - there were fires and riots in the major cities... The "experts" were predicting that we would run of oil by 1980 - which was about the same time the environment would become uninhabitable...
So we listened to loud music, got drunk or stoned and drove high-powered cars way too fast with nary a thought about the potential consequences... But there's nothing radical - or even non-conformist - about that. It the same old stuff teenagers have always done - in one form or another...
BTW: I lost 3 acquaintances in separate high speed accidents between '68 and '70... How I managed to survive repeatedly going 130 MPH in my 66 Charger with bald tires and a loose steering box is beyond me... Yet - here I am... And I'm getting ahead of myself again :-)
Yeah - we were a generation of conformists. Especially the hippies. They all looked alike and sounded alike... Not an original thinker among them... They were the ultimate conformists..
BTW: I did have long hair during most of that time so the "straights" all called me a hippie... But the "real" hippies wouldn't accept me because I didn't dress and sound exactly like them... So they were no different than any other clique... And yes - it did piss me off :-)
Aside: A former Beatle wrote a song in which he describes a world where there is nothing to believe in and nothing to strive for. In other words - a life lacking anything to make it worthwhile... How utterly pointless... In my opinion he should have called it "Hell" because that's exactly what it describes... But I digress :-)
I have to acknowledge that a lot of cool stuff has it's origins in the late 1960's... The music (and cars) are still in vogue today... And a lot of worthwhile movements gained traction during that era - environmentalism, women's lib, civil rights - but that was mostly people grabbing existing ideas and running with them...
This is kind of a rambling post and I don't think it makes the point I'm trying to make:
I saw very little evidence of original thought amongst the baby boomers... To the contrary - it was impossible to grow up in the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960s without being heavy indoctrinated into the cult of conformity. Yes - people held differing beliefs - but those beliefs were (for the most part) "accepted" because of what the rest of the "group" believed rather than as a result of personal reflection...
Don't agree with me?? Just think about our current political and financial leaders... Yeah - those are the best and brightest of the boomers... The conclusion should be obvious :-)
About Me
- pdx70rt
- The title of my blog is "Screws fall out all the time". This, of course, is a line from "The Breakfast Club". What follows is "we live in an imperfect world" and that is the thing I found most interesting (and amusing) about life...
4 comments:
I agree in a way. I was never really a hippy. But there WAS a prevailing mood, I think. And in 1968 when Russian tanks rolled into Prague, the feeling of protest and solidarity among the young (and the workers) in ALL countries, at least in Europe, was wonderful.
We just had a family weekend in Vegas, chosen because we were celebrating DECADES (birthdays this year were 70, 40, 50 and 2x30--and the dog is 10!), and Vegas is DECADEnt. Anyway, we went to LOVE, the Cirque du Soleil's Beatles show. And it was just amazingly nostalgic. I felt that my life was there, somehow.
You are so right about people just conforming to non-conformity. It's always seemed so bizarre to me. In my generation it's mostly about using wacky outfits, hairstyles, and tattoos to express ones "individuality". But they all end up being variations of exactly the same thing. We are social creatures...I wish people would get over thinking that they need to be independent and unique. Almost all thoughts have been thought before and most of us don't really have what it takes to truly think outside the box. That's an act of rare genius...
Yeah - the things that are special when you are young seem to hold a special place for the rest of your life...
And I'm definitely overstating my point (I tend to do that - I have my reasons).
Although I'm quite proud of a lot of what my generation accomplished I'm still somewhat disappointed in what we've become.
Making short term sacrifices in exchange for long term benefits just doesn't seem to be in our generational DNA :-)
I agree with all you say (and that Nita says). We haven't turned out very well, on the whole. And maybe every generation feels its youth had a magic quality. But I was in Paris in 1968 (and yes, of course, there was a uniformity about all us young protesters--I couldn't disagree with that), and there was such "potential" in the air, it was exhilarating. But you are right. It evaporated somewhere along the line.
As to the "uniform" business, it's funny. My husband and I visited a child of ours some years ago in northern California. He and his friends were all into dreadlocks and stuff. I asked them all if it was a religious thing, or a fashion. And they pretty much all said it was to be "different." I looked around the table (we were treating about 10 of them to a meal in an Italian restaurant), and they were all virtually identical (except for Henry and me--WE were the standouts, in our regular old clothes, with our regular old haircuts!!!!). I laughed and laughed (but I don't think the kids ever knew why).
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