The Hipness of Hippie-ness

I am not a sociologist, anthropologist, historian, psychologist, or any other kind of academic ologist. At best, I’m a pretty good mixologist at cocktail parties and quite a cunning linguist. So, I have no actual expertise concerning the answers I’m going to give to these questions asked by university students during my teaching years. At best, I’m a been-there-done-that kind of guy with regard to drugs, music, war, antiwar, and civil rights activism. Take my opinion with a grain of salt, don’t take it at all, or consider that I have a writer’s powers of memory, reflection, and observation. Here are my opinions regarding some questions such as what has caused the proliferation of vintage clothing stores selling beads, fluffy blouses, boots, bandanas, velvet vests, tie-dyed tee shirts and buckskin jackets to little faux love children of the 21^st century? Why do you think the 60s mentality keeps coming around in the collective consciousness and latching onto people like me? Do you consider the hippie-ness of the 70s to be the first recurrence of 60s-ism, or just a 60’s holdover? Were there 60s-ists in the 80s? What did the hippie movement really accomplish? Was it a failure? Was it more than Day-Glo colors and bad fashion?

Beyond these questions, I have noticed the resurgence of Hendrix, the Dead, the Beatles, the Doors, the continued influence of Dylan, Clapton, and Santana, and the constant presence of the Rolling Stones, among many other less luminary rock & rollers from the 60’s and 70’s even on the playlists in corporate mediocrity. Consider Clear Channel classic stations. If you pay attention to the world we live in, you have noticed another phenomenon reborn.

People are taking to the streets again. I don’t mean in the fashion of the whiny, dumb ass, self-serving Tea Party and Cancel Culture Idiots. Neither am I referring to the gun-totin’ posse comitatus assholes who bring their assault rifles to town hall meetings and threaten to battle the government. We all know that a Tomahawk missile would wipe them out just as an Army tank will roll over a shotgun wielding good ole boy and leave a greasy spot along with a crumpled copy of the second amendment—if that’s what this immense government armada chooses to do. No, I’m referring to honest, hard-working blue-collar men and women and students of every race protesting non-violently and by the tens of thousands the way their civil rights and survival have been threatened by corporate greed and evangelical perverts and white fanatics. I am lumping in some of us older people as well. Remember, well over eighty million people stormed the polls in 2020 to rid this country of a horrible man who was a terrible president. This is all activism.

Therefore, I think those students’ questions may be answered in this manner. First, it’s highly possible that the 60’s mentality keeps resurfacing because it is the culture most in tune with what and who we should be as a generally flawed species of reasoning and feeling animals. Yes, there were tremendous excesses of sex, drugs, etc. and, most of us have suffered some residual difficulties because of that. But those things were symptomatic of larger issues. What characterized our ‘movement’ most of all was the spirit of freedom and the courage to ask hard questions. We had reached an existential void and were staring into the abyss, although we didn’t recognize it as such at the time. The traditional ideals that produced the material prosperity and security for the white elite reached its apex in the emotional sterility and close-mindedness of the 50’s. It was not possible to send your child to college—Baby Boomers comprised the largest number of people ever enrolled in American universities—which all good middle-class people felt they had to do, and not have that child learn anything about the ideals, successful or not, upon which this country was founded.

In the 1960’s critical thinking and liberal arts such as humanities, philosophy, literature, political science, and history were taught openly and freely debated. The university system was modeled on the ancient Greek university system and a type of dialectic teaching made popular by Socrates. If someone was “triggered” by having to think, it probably meant they were being educated. The right to not ever be made uncomfortable was considered an anathema to learning.

When we began to realize that our government had committed genocide against its only indigenous people just for the sake of acquiring property, that our corporations were continuing to exploit blacks and women for tremendous profits, that racism and sexism were inherent principles in our society, that our military-industrial complex was using the so-called “communist threat” as a mere justification for its own imperialistic agenda, that our parents condemned sex as dirty outside of marriage while conducting adultery on the side, that marijuana didn’t make you become a serial killer, that “speed” didn’t really kill you, and finally, that we were being indoctrinated to perpetuate these fallacies, we rebelled. And, it wasn’t a small thing. It involved huge segments of my generation in differing ways and at different times during the decade. It was a wave of freedom that many people eventually took some sort of ride on.

What we tend to forget and need to remember is what the younger generation takes for granted today, things like civil rights, gay pride, funky and provocative music, recreational sex and drug use, the right to vote, freedom from obligatory military service, a college education regardless of race or religion or economic standards, were all non-existent in my adolescence. We said enough is enough. We translated and exposed the myth that American ideals were also American actions. If you’re going to teach people freedom is for everybody and then manipulate that concept for your own gain, some people will no longer play your game. You are “The Establishment” and you no longer have credibility because of your own hypocrisy. Fuck you. The socially liberal ideas we proffered in opposition continue to latch onto some young people today because those people are sensitive, intelligent, and not satisfied with the status quo and because they are the right ideas for a relative, humanist society. Unfortunately, there needs to be a lot more of our population active in living up to those ideals we cherished. Media frenzy and the ignorance of millions of people is allowing a white fear of losing white control of America to gin up a backlash leading to a reincarnation of 1950’s style repression.

Second, the utopia we wanted never materialized. The hippie-ness of the 70’s was a dying ember of a would-be revolutionary flame. It became a dystopian mess, a caricature of what we were intending, a parody in long hair that considered swallowing Quaaludes, and engaging in oral sex a substitute for real social action. When Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in the summer of 1968 shortly after the murder of Martin Luther King, the Baby Boomer rebels went from a generation of could-be’s to might-have-been’s. When his life force leaked out all over that hotel floor, the energy of the decade was deflated. We expelled a giant sigh of exhaustion. Because we are flawed humans, what followed the sixties was the decade of the 70’s ensnaring us in the limbo of an existential dread brought on by the merging of success with failure. “Tune in, Turn On, Drop Out.” The war had ended, Civil Rights legislation was passed, women had been given a measure of control over their bodies and their careers by law, the Stonewall riots occurred, and eighteen-year-olds could vote without fear of being drafted. All that was left to do was take drugs and enjoy the open sexual behavior till it killed us. That’s what happened with the 70’s. That decade was not a continuation of the social and political consciousness raising of the 60’s. It was the denouement of that movement.

As history proves, societies are fluid and flow from one end of the spectrum back to the other. The 80’s brought a huge evangelical conservative backlash to the freedom of the 60’s and the dissipation of the 70’s. A misunderstanding of Jesus and his message was used to crush progressive ideals, and tax breaks for the wealthy began to destroy the actual working class on which democracy was built. Only those already rich deserved to be richer. This became the conservative white Christian mantra through prosperity theology and a reaffirmation of the Protestant ethic. Some of this conservative backlash we old hippies brought on ourselves. Many of us gave in and devolved into what we abhorred. Much of this reactionary backlash has expanded exponentially with time and through hateful propaganda perpetuated by 24/7 cable faux news. Remember what the 2016 election brought to us. Fear of change and race hatred were systematically normalized while education and empathy became demonized. Society is approaching what Conrad’s character Kurtz spoke as he died in The Heart of Darkness, “The horror, the horror.”

I will not apologize for the unforeseeable and uncontrollable act of being born a member of the Baby Boomer generation. I will not apologize for making people uncomfortable then or now for asking hard questions. I will not apologize for demanding we all do better as a society and as individuals regarding compassion, empathy, and self-sacrifice. I am happy to apologize for my own misogynistic attitude and self-entitled behavior, which was prolific in those early days after the Vietnam War. I am happy to apologize for believing in the old McDonald’s corporate selling slogan “You Deserve a Break Today” and for passing that belief onto younger generations as if it were a sacred mantra. Very few people who have had all the breaks I received in my life as a white, educated, middle-class male deserved them. Too many of us in my demographic have passed that promise onto our children without the understanding that freedom and privilege is not a right that exists somehow without responsibility.

We are reaching another turning point in our evolution as a society—maybe have reached. The greed and self-indulgence of free market capitalism and conservative “trickle down” (a euphemism for CEO’s and Wall Street bankers pissing on poor people) economics may be reaching its saturation point. If I’m right, you should hope to see the 60’s mentality awakened once again in the minds and hearts of the young and strong in new generations. It’s a long shot since corporate technology and economics have thrust the young into a servile situation much like the old coal miners in our history were forced to work for the company store and since many of my Baby Boomer brethren have become simpering, gutless, apologists for the fascist Republican party. But if that happens, I will gladly put on my bell bottom jeans, oil up the wheels on my walker, and head for the nearest group of “marching, charging feet, boy. ‘Cause summer’s here and the time is right for fightin’ in the street, boy.”