The Sixties, like all periods of our history, cannot be lumped into one homogenous experience. Yes, some things were shared universally. Our president was assassinated in 1963. Our values were challenged. And our national conscience was scarred by Viet Nam and the Deep South racism made highly visible through the medium of television.
But as time has elapsed the Sixties became more associated with hippies, drugs, psychedelic music, and dropping out… all having the appearance more of faddishness than significance.
The sense of hippiedom being a fad was reinforced by the rapidity with which Seventies youth, to my personal dismay, embraced the Yuppie values of high fashion and glitz, trading in their love beads for suits, ties, BMWs and window seats in corporate America.
As for me, I truly bought into many of the key issues that had been brought to the forefront during the Sixties. Here are some primary values that resonated with me, and which I still hold as valid.
1. Question authority. In other words, don’t accept everything you hear, wherever you hear it from… including here. Think things through, make your decisions because you have weighed things out for yourself.
This idea flies directly in the face of the prevailing attitude of those days, “My country, right or wrong,” which is why the “hippie philosophy” generated so much ire.
Today, it's strange how much alignment there is with the values our current idiocy that our current administration is pushing. How did this happen?
2. There is more to life than the material world. More than anything, the youth of the Sixties were especially misunderstood on this point, and in retrospect misunderstood their parents’ generation. We did not know what it was like to be raised during the Great Depression. When our parents gave us clothes and stocked refrigerators and gifts, they were doing something for us that seemed meaningful. My mother remembers living on navy beans for a while in West Virginia. Grandpa would come home with a hundred pound sack of navy beans. That was all they had, all they could afford.
On the other hand, so many young people in the Sixties had large homes in suburbia, surrounded by manifold blessings of the good life, and still felt empty. They learned through experience that there was more to life than things. Without love, even a castle is little more than collection of empty rooms.
And so, there was a reaction against materialism, against “things.” There have been many misunderstandings on this matter, but the message remains true that life is more than gadgets, toys and things. “Love is all you need” is a bit of a simplification, since I can’t pay my heating bill with “love.” But love for my family will sufficiently motivate me to do what it takes to provide for my family, which includes paying those nasty heating bills.
3. The “Beautiful People.” I remember sitting in the donut shop in Athens, Ohio with some other Ohio University hippie-type students and thinking, “These people are so beautiful, but in the ‘success’ world they would probably all be rejects.” The one fellow’s beard concealed a weak chin, another girl did not fit the Barbie mold, yet each was a person, a human being with special value. To the degree that we determine value based on outward appearance, race, economic earning power or social status, to that very degree we have become impoverished as a culture.
4. Increasing awareness of the power of the Military-Industrial Complex. Might makes right was not a value of the hippies. Flower Power, which is looked back on as something of a joke today, had at its heart a seed thought: ideas have power, too. Yes, there is evil in the world, and naivete was certainly part of the reason the seeds of Flower Power found such fertile soil in our hearts. But there were real issues being raised as regards to what war and the military-industrial complex was doing to our humanity. On this, there is more to say, but we’ll follow up on that another time.
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Here’s a song from Bob Dylan’s second album which became somewhat of an anthem for that era. I remember singing it as part of our youth group at First Presbyterian Church in Pluckemin, NJ. Its questions still beg for answers today.
Blowing In The Wind
How many roads must a man walk down, before they call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand?
How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they are forever banned?
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.
How many years must a mountain exist, before it is washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist, before they're allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.
How many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky?
How many ears must one man have, before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take till he knows, that too many people have died?
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.
Note the nod to friends, fans and people of Minnesota
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