Back to sixties - Was it great era or not ?

Question

by accident I stumble to this sit.

http://moreoldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm

EDIT;

i did not thumbs down any one just wanted you all to know

Answer 1

As you will see by some of the other responses, the 60s were a period of freedom and political activism which many people fear more than, e.g., government abuses. IMO they are right to fear, since they have no self-control and can't handle liberty.

The 60s had way more substance and meaning than long hair, pot and hippies, although the right wing likes to conveniently dwell on this to work up their Boob base.

The 60s were marked by the victory of the Civil Rights movement, the most significant event in 20th century America. That victory took a lot of hard work, suffering, and casualties, like Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Medgar Evers, Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney (no relation -- obviously), the 4 black girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing... on and on.

So victory was mixed with sorrow, and knowledge that the job of achieving real equality was far from over.

We also had the Vietnam War -- which I'm sure you've noticed, America is still fighting. The American people and their representatives took a long time to fess up to the foolishness of the war, and it has left a deep legacy of distrust and hatred within the American body politic. Americans have accused one another of treason and worse since before the republic was born, but it got, and has remained, truly ugly.

Largely thanks to the existence of the draft and the coincident Civil Rights struggle, the level of public mass political participation was unprecedented during the 60s. The great Marches on Washington for Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War may never be repeated in terms of sheer numbers of people who ponied up the dough and made the trip.

Probably most reviled, the 60s saw women "mad as hell and not going to take it". Rush Limbaugh, the Republican intellectual, has described feminism as "a movement to see that women who aren't attractive can make more money". Think about that for a second. If you think that's a bad thing, hate feminism. If not, thank feminists.

The 60s really changed the landscape for the political parties too. The Dems had the South before the 60s, but when Kennedy and Johnson busted up the "states' rights" repression of the black man -- for their own party-based opportunistic reasons -- the southern whites (and a whole hell of a lot of Yankees too) moved out of neighborhoods "threatened' by integration and moved to the party of "law and order", the Republicans. The South has been solid Republican ever since. That may be coming to an end, I personally hope, if the Dems can get more guys like Jim Webb in.

As for the cultural stuff the squares get so bent out of shape about, well, do you like the Beatles? the Rolling Stones? do you think there's really not a big deal about a guy having long hair? how about marijuana use? how about marijuana use by white people -- or by your kids? how about LSD? You'll really have to make up your own mind on this... for me, yeah, there are good and bad aspects, but American culture now is WAY more variegated and interesting than the repressive whitebread I grew up with. For awhile a whole lot of young people followed Norman Mailer's advice in "The White *****" and started lighting out for Injun country to get away from the button-downs, the manicured lawns, the lousy music, the blinders American society put on itself so that Leave It to Beaver was taken for reality TV rather than the fantasy it was.

In terms of pure "party down", the early 70s were way more fun than the 60s, because in the 70s the kinds of tension noted above were way more subdued. However, the music had lost a lot of its original edge as it became much more of a mass phenomenon. In the 60s it was really rare for even the biggest act to play at a sports arena -- the Beatles at Shea Stadium is the only one I can remember. "Concerts" were more intimate, in the sense that a 4,000 seat theater is more intimate than a 60,000 seat stadium... and you tended to get seated next to a fellow "inquiring mind" rather than a stoned lumpenprole wannabe.

By the same token, the uncontrolled and stupid use of more and worse "bad" drugs took off way more in the 70s. The Babbits don't mind all that much, tho, because the kids are binging or huffing or doing crack or meth without any interest in how the government and our other institutions are screwing up their future.

REDISCA, I'LL TAKE A SMALL AMOUNT OF YOUR STUFF RE SELF-INDULGENCE... BUT WHAT EXACTLY HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME, OR ANYONE ELSE, LATELY? DID YOU JUST GET A JOB FOR THE FIRST TIME, OR WAS IT READING ALLEN BLOOM'S BOOK? YOUR COMPLAINT SEEMS TO BE THAT BOOMERS BRAG -- WHY DON'T YOU PROVIDE SOME REFERENCES TO THIS FEVER OF SELF-DIRECTED BACKSLAPPIING YOU'RE SO CONCERNED ABOUT?. OR BETTER STILL, WHY DON'T YOU GET INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY WORK, IF YOU'RE NOT ALREADY, SINCE YOU SEEM TO HAVE THE INSIDE WORD ON THAT.

Change the dialog from substance to process, dear. That's always a good one. The caps were to get your attention, nothing more.

As long as you like to rail on my "assumptions", well, tit for tat. I'd have looked at anything you might have sent, and it probably would have been easier to just crank out a couple lines of that rather than composing the self-pitying and presumptive addendum where I get told in advance what you know I'm going to do. I think the shrinks call that "mindfucking".

If you do in fact work for Legal Aid and volunteered for Botswana 1) my hat is sincerely off to you 2) it doesn't make you "right" about ****. It's irrelevant -- as you say -- but in my mind it provides you some credibililty for bitching about others' failures and 3) it surprises me that you would despise 60s activists. Since I suspect that both the initiatives in question would have started, or at least expanded significantly, during the 1960s.

Such addendum is unfortunately an all-too-appropriate addition to your original diatribe with its verbiose hogwash, absurd generalizations and hyperbole.

(One example: what are these "riots" you speak of as excuses for drug abuse and sexual abandon? Aside from the black inner city riots in Detroit, Newark and elsewhere, the only such thing I can come up with is the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968 -- which the government's own investigating body called "a police riot." Or maybe you are extrapolating some of the weirder activities of the Weather Underground et. al. into a generalization about '60s political activity -- which to my mind is about as fair as saying Timothy McVeigh represents those in favor of limited government. It's really hard to tell WHAT you're talking about since no specific examples are brought forth to support the blanket indictment

So this is one place where you're just dead wrong about my reasoning process. Show me the evidence that your portrait is accurate, and I will confess -- right here, in CAPS if you like -- that YOU ARE RIGHT. There it is, in public, so, to modify the cliche toward less belligerency: put up [the evidence] or reconsider what you're really basing your caricature on [the "shut up" bit is deleted in the interest of courtesy].. You see, I've known a lot of activists, and what I've seen bears no relationship to your caricature -- kindly relieve my cognitive dissonance with some fact-based back-up.) .

I also suspect, unfortunately, plagiarism -- I've got The Closing of the American Mind on hold at my library and want to do a quick scan to see if whole paragraphs were lifted from it. I already know the sentiments were, so I really don't feel compelled to apologize in advance..

Get real. People are people and generations are illusions. If you've been hearing all kinds of stuff about how the 60s were the greatest generation, do send some of it this way -- because I never hear much of anything except the exact opposite, and it would cheer this doddering fool up in his senility. It's really too bad that we all didn't do enough for you. I hear a violin -- a very small, distant one.

You're obviously an intelligent individual, and I really do wish you are putting your energy into something that betters the world, because the world can use more of that, rather than the corporate sharks you rightly lambaste. I don't think this last rant of yours -- either the target or the content -- does you justice, but that's really presumptive and I'll simultaneously apologize if it in fact is the apex of your talent. Or not. I sure can see a lot of truth to your piece, whether you want to believe that or not. It's just that the excess of the reaction feeds the reactionaries, one more stick to beat back anything that isn't "every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost".

And if you've been irritated by patronizing asses who recall the 60s as a time of unmitigated glory when in fact "we blew it", you have my sympathy. I've never done crap like that to the young folks in my family or anyone else. Times are way tougher now, especially with The Man in the driver's seat of a buyer's market in labor. You sure are right that the 60s were a fat time, things have never been as fat since, and right now they are really chilling.

Peace, honest, and good luck with everything, honest.

Answer 2

I'm a boomer and was there, I think it had many advantages to today.

1. We had real causes to believe in, Peace! Justice! Freedom!, today when things are getting worse by the moment kids just sitting around drinking beer, as if none of this affects them.

2. Our music - The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Mo Town - all of it much more original then the currently popular bands. Also the "Roots" musicians in blues, jazz and country were still active and did concerts and records.

3. Generally more interesting drugs - more hallucinogens less speed. Heroin was as bad as anything today thiugh.

4. Constantly growing economy - we all did better than we expected. With the Bush stagflation coming I'm afraid my daughter and her boyfriend won't do nearly as well as my wife and I.

Answer 3

No internet, cell phones, or starbucks. Good drugs. Stinking hippies. Nuclear Drills in school and bomb shelters in the back yard. $ .25 a gallon for gas. Those were the good ol' days alright.

Answer 4

I'd take the 60's over the past twenty years!

Answer 5

At this time, when the so-called "Generation X" (so called sanctimoniously by its parents) is barreling towards middle age, and even X's own children are entering adulthood, may I say that many of us are sick and tired of hearing of how great the Sixties were.

The Sixties generation (i.e. people who were born roughly in the 1940's) inherited a world of unprecedented prosperity, comfort, and stability. Note, those were the very things against which they "rebelled" (that is, before they became corporate sharks in the 1980's). Sure, the post-WWII world still had serious problems to contend with (namely racism, which was being addressed mostly by the maligned Fifties generation), but on balance, it was the most prosperous and promising time for humanity since the dawn of civilization.

Now that the Sixties generation is retiring, the time is ripe to look at their accomplishments. What have they done with their legacy, and what kind of world are they leaving for subsequent generations to inherit? Well, now, let us see. Today, we are far closer to the brink of another world war than we ever were in the 1960's. The environment has been severely compromised. Religious fundamentalism, and particularly Islamic extremism, is on the rise -- to the point where it is the single greatest threat to world peace today. Runaway corporatism looks less like the stuff of science fiction and more like reality with every passing day. The quality of primary education has sunk below the level of the sewer and continues to fall. (The Sixties generation has done its best to ruin higher education too; in some places, it succeeded.) A culture of entitlement has flowered (pun intended), eroding the concepts of personal responsibility, integrity, and character. The progress in favor of equality between the genders has degenerated into pitiful and caricaturish squabbles over semantics. Political correctness is choking debate; sensitivity has foreclosed the quest for truth. Political discourse has been transformed to ignore issues of major importance and to focus on secondary (and tertiary) less significant crap like abortions, innocuous religious displays, and stem cell research. So if the sainted Sixties generation was so great, why is the world so messed up?

True, we have done away with segregation and tackled racism. But, that is the accomplishment, for the most part, of the generations of the first half of the 20th century -- who were true liberals, true intellectuals, true movers and shakers; not armchair revolutionaries spewing platitudes and fifty-cent words in between drug hits. The Sexual Revolution isn't a Sixties generation accomplishment either, contrary to popular belief. The people resposible for the Sexual Revolution are the bohemians of the 1950's and the nine stodgy old men who decided Griswald v. Connecticut in 1960. Nor can the Sixties claim full credit (or even most of it) for feminism and women's rights: most of hard work was done by SERIOUS feminists in the 1920's, 30's, and 40's.

For all its cutesy chirping about community and togetherness, the Sixties generation promoted values that are essentially sociopathic: a kind of culture that would condemn out of hand any harmless or even socially beneficial act if it was motivated by money, yet validate almost any atrocity if it was motivated by "feelings"; and made "getting in touch with one's feelings" -- whatever that is -- into a priority over objectivity, honesty, and competence. It promoted these values so vehemently, so relentlessly, that they have become, at this point, an unassailable dogma.

This was a generation whose contempt for private property and ownership was matched only by its own prosperity and wealth. It was a generation which made participation in a riot a fashion statement rather than an act of true desperation. The first generation in recorded history whose existence was not defined, at least at some point, by scounging for food and dodging untimely death, it became the first generation the hallmark of whose existence was radicalism brought on by sated ennui and personal aimlessness. Its discourse has the amusing, clueless sanctimoniousness of people who had never tasted privation nor felt close to death, but were horny and bored as hell. And, at the end of the day, riots were a great place to meet people to get high with and f**** -- and then pretend like it all meant something more than ordinary self-indulgence.

The Sixties generation had Eden handed to it on a silver platter. They squandered it miserably. During their tenure, they have managed to transform it into something half way between Purgatory and Hell. And, true to the ethics which they embraced, they now deny any responsibility for the mess, blaming it instead on the Boogeyman. In the great words of Elvis, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.

I realize there were some great individuals in that generation. But the generational impact was considerably different from what we are frequently led to believe by many self-aggrandizing members of that group. Those members are about to sit back and look to us, the Great Unworthy, to take care of them while sorting out their messes. We've heard your message and taken it under advisement. Now let's move on. Remember your own principles: you can't live in the past.
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Braz: There is no need for all that "shouting". I can "hear" you just fine in lowercase -- and typing in big letters as opposed to small ones does not make one more convincing (and neither does raising one's voice). In any event, whether you are a member of the Sixties generation or a faithful disciple, your self-assured assumption about what I read and do, and that I do nothing for you is actually quite typical of that whole holier-than-thou generational one-upmanship that I was talking about. Whatever the nature of my contributions (or lack of them, if it makes you more comfortable to believe that) -- at least I don't go around admonishing younger people that my generation is better than theirs, that they are worthless, useless, greedy, and lack a purpose as a group. Moreover, contrary to your statement, I don't particularly care about self-indulgence per se; it is the mischaracterization of it as a community service and a gift to mankind that I find objectionable. Further, it is not the bragging that I think is the problem -- it is the hypocrisy. The "we" generation of the 1960's was, after all, the "me" generation of the 1980's -- at any rate, I doubt there were too many teenagers or twenty-somethings busting companies on Wall Street in the latter decade.

With all due respect to your request for references and evidence of my personal contributions to your well-being, I will not provide them simply because it would be a waste of time. You don't want a bibliography or a biography; you are just demanding these things because it's an automatic, reflexive response to a contrary point of view (and an immature one, by the way). Were I to meet your request, you would, of course, discredit the sources themselves, as I am sure that only the sources whose views you embrace are deemed "reliable". The demand for references and a list of personal qualifications marks that point in the debate when the time is ripe to cut through the BS and ask you: What kind of evidence will it take to convince you that I am right? If I tell you that I work for Legal Aid out of conviction and that I spent 5 years volunteering in Botswana, will that really convince you that my argument is correct (though this information would be completely irrelevant)? Usually in situations like this, the honest answer to that question is "no evidence would convince me", and I would venture a guess it would be yours as well. I'll take "none" as an answer, and we can part ways civilly, each maintaining our own opinion and without wasting time compiling information which will prove useless anyway.

Answer 6

It was the beginning of the end of what made America Great.
The general overall disdain for morals and the perpetuation of drug use. The Sixties Culture is what spawned the cancer that is eating, America's moral fabric, from the inside.

Answer 7

Everything is better in hindsight.