I was a teenager back then and I'm still trying to sort it out. It was rebellion and escapism. It was also a delayed reaction.
PEACE and LOVE may have been a reaction to the Vietnam war, but it probably goes farther back than that, to the use of nuclear weapons on civilians in Japan and our invasion of Southeast Asia, which began with our victory in the Pacific, in the 1940s. This was a turning point, not just for my country, but for the whole world, because the signal was out that morals no longer officially mattered and the end justifies the means. The signal was also out that the U.S. had world domination on its mind. The A-bomb had been used, and not on a military target, but on a population. I think people were in denial about this for a long time. Kids in the 60s were still being taught traditional American values- like truth and justice- as if nothing had happened, and we believed it, but there was a growing realization that what was being taught and what was actually being practiced, were two very different things, and that it had been going on, without our knowing it, since before we were born. (We knew about the A-bomb, but no one ever talked about it, and Vietnam had secretly been going on for 15-years already.) We were being lied to. A natural reaction was to reject everything you had been taught. Hence, the unconventional behavior. You had your choice. While some tuned in, turned on and dropped out, others went to law-school, so they could join the ranks of policy makers in Washington. Things became polarized.
I think with more intelligent, realistic leadership, beginning with Harry Truman, the 60s and subsequent decades would have been very different. We were led into a moral dilemma, by deception, and to a large degree, still are. My generation was simply the first to feel its full effect.
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