Was the 60's really all about peace and love or was that just fashionable

[dwixi]

Just been watching a documentary about hipppys in the 60s and flower power and stuff. And it seems like they created a revolution of love and peace. The fashion was amazing and everyone seemed so happy.
What happend!
Have we just gone down hill from then or was it never that great? Is this just the impression i get from the media and in reality it was just a minority and the people wernt genuinely into it they just acted like it because it was in fashion?
Im 17, i would like to hear from someone that was a teen back then.
Thanks

[Brutha]

Was the 60's really all about peace and love or was that just fashionable

What is the difference between the two?

[missing]

Originally Posted by dwixi

Im 17, i would like to hear from someone that was a teen back then.
Thanks

I'd be careful asking about those times from people who were young and might want to idealize it out of nostalghia. Keep in mind the same group that ushered in "peace" and "love" where quick to vote Ronald Reagan for the selfish, greedy 1980's. But back to the 60's, here is a blog entry from somebody who was heavily involved in activism to end the Vietnam war. He actually spent time in prison for draft dodging. While he felt at the time that there was potential for major breakthroughs, in retrospect he views it all as a massive failure. If you read the responses he gets, you will see that others disagree.

Getting Depressed? « cinemaelectronica

(you have to scroll down about a page, past the Mao picture).

from the blog:

And history makes clear that the entire “Movement” was a failure - America, conned by Nixon, lurched to the right, and basically kept on going there. The Vietnam war dragged out with another 25,000 US dead, and a million or two Vietnamese (and Cambodians and Laotians) left dead as well. The 60’s overall proved little more than a short-term fashion, the folks wearing bell-bottoms shifting easily from Yippie to Yuppie, like Rubin, ready to follow the Dylan line ironically another way “don’t need a weatherman….” and the wind was blowing from the Right, and money became fashionable, and here decades later $4 cups of fancy-ass coffee is the norm.

[Stressless]

Hi dwixi,

I think part of it was the Vietnam war thing, part of it was the new drug culture and part of it was the 'make love not war' hippie chant.

Have you seen anything of Woodstock? "All we are saying is give peace a chance" - so it was a movement against war and for peace and also it was about being young and rebellious. Oh yes, and everybody grows up and becomes 'establishment' after some time.

[funchy]

Drugs like LSD hit the market during the 60s. Drug enforcement wasn't as strict as it was today. And they didn't have the really scary drugs such as crack. So it was ok to smoke a little and be happy.

It was also the peak of sexual freedom: the birth control pill was finally commonplace. AIDS had not yet appeared. It really was an era of free love.

Mix in the new rock-and-roll music. The 50s do-wop was replaced with Elvis, Beatles, and the start of the first real rock and roll.

Color TV was starting to slowly catch on. People became more aware of fashion and entertainment.

Lots of things were happening those years and on into the disco 70s.

I don't think we'll ever have another 60s hippie scene. Music today is too commercialized so a Woodstock-type event would turn into a Tickermaster $150/per person commercial event with overpriced food and rent-a-cops. Crack and AIDS are out there and aren't going away. People also seem more violent in general; you're more likely to carry a weapon than to carry a guitar these days.

[dwixi]

Originally Posted by funchy

Drugs like LSD hit the market during the 60s. Drug enforcement wasn't as strict as it was today. And they didn't have the really scary drugs such as crack. So it was ok to smoke a little and be happy.

It was also the peak of sexual freedom: the birth control pill was finally commonplace. AIDS had not yet appeared. It really was an era of free love.

Mix in the new rock-and-roll music. The 50s do-wop was replaced with Elvis, Beatles, and the start of the first real rock and roll.

Color TV was starting to slowly catch on. People became more aware of fashion and entertainment.

Lots of things were happening those years and on into the disco 70s.

I don't think we'll ever have another 60s hippie scene. Music today is too commercialized so a Woodstock-type event would turn into a Tickermaster $150/per person commercial event with overpriced food and rent-a-cops. Crack and AIDS are out there and aren't going away. People also seem more violent in general; you're more likely to carry a weapon than to carry a guitar these days.

yeah.. i wonder what it would take to maintain soomething like this again.

[NexusOfCompletion]

I think from the perspective of today, many people view the 60's as some sort of fashion statement. I've noticed this sort of neo-hippy trend where they embrace peace and love in a more materialistic sense if you know what I mean.

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by dwixi

yeah.. i wonder what it would take to maintain soomething like this again.

Maybe something interesting will pop up by the 2020s. With advances in medication, AIDS could become the next Herpes, something many people have, but that isn't particularly life threatening. In addition, moving beyond color tv, holograms and virtual reality (not to mention nanotech) could allow for a lot of new creativity to be expressed.

So, for a chance at a new '60s, make AIDS a minor health issue, or at least have virtual reality enable people to do most anyhing they want in a low risk manner, and have a successful manned mission to Mars. It wouldn't be identical to what my parents experienced decades ago, but it'd be a good start.

[Capstan]

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.

[Stressless]

Hi Capstan,

As I said in my earlier post, most people became part of the 'establishment'. Hence we had a president like Clinton, who did not 'inhale'!

Politicians have almost always lied to the people, it is only now that the lies are getting caught; remember Nixon? Now with the freedom and increasing competition of the press, we are bombarded with information. Also people are becoming increasingly cynical.

[Capstan]

Originally Posted by Stressless

Hi Capstan,

As I said in my earlier post, most people became part of the 'establishment'. Hence we had a president like Clinton, who did not 'inhale'!

Politicians have almost always lied to the people, it is only now that the lies are getting caught; remember Nixon? Now with the freedom and increasing competition of the press, we are bombarded with information. Also people are becoming increasingly cynical.

Hello, Stressless.

You're right, politicians are inherently liars. If cynicism is required to keep them in line, then I'm all for it.

A big part of the 'Revolution' was the emergence of the new "mega-"
technologies. One of the best is the information network we're using. Secrecy in government may be our worst enemy.

[Stressless]

Hi Capstan,

Do you really think that cynicism will keep politicians in line? The ground realities politician face are actually much different from what they lead the people to believe.

I also think that with the advent of new technology it is becoming harder, though not impossible, to keep things hidden for a long period of time. Let's not forget that Watergate was a result of journalistic investigations prior to the new mega technologies in place.

[Capstan]

Originally Posted by Stressless

Hi Capstan,

Do you really think that cynicism will keep politicians in line? The ground realities politician face are actually much different from what they lead the people to believe.

Perhaps not cynicism, but skepticism. At any rate, a realistic view of our leaders is better than the nievety of the 1950s. Thomas Jefferson said, "It is the nature of government to serve itself." We should keep this in mind, when our leaders speak of all they're going to do for us. I don't think Jefferson was being cynical, but was telling the truth. The recent creation of the Dept. of Homeland Security is an example of government serving itself, by making itself larger. Vietnam wasn't about "stopping the spread of world Communism," or liberating a people; it was about military control of the Asian hemisphere. The same can be said about what's going on in the Middle East today. What's incredible is, the American people let them do it to us twice. Since World War Two, our foreign policy- at least these forays into military expansionism- has had no benefit for ourselves, but only for those in authority. As long as we believe the lies we're being told, the government will use us- and our tax dollars- to make itself bigger. For the government, the "homeland" does not extend beyond the halls of Congress or the White House. This isn't a cynical point of view, but a realistic one. If the American people desire perpetual warfare, the government will certainly provide it. It benefits them, but not us.

I also think that with the advent of new technology it is becoming harder, though not impossible, to keep things hidden for a long period of time. Let's not forget that Watergate was a result of journalistic investigations prior to the new mega technologies in place.

I think the new technologies contributed to the "shock" of the 1960s, but I also think there are more new technologies to come, perhaps very soon. Part of the effect of these technologies is to broaden the gap between government and the people. The cultural changes that have come about are a response by the people to get the government to re-focus its attention back where it belongs: on the people.