Here's a link to several articles about the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, from the serious to the frivolous. (You can even print out a flower to wear in your hair.)

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This particular article may be the most important.

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To be debated:

1. Was the Summer of Love really a time of such important societal change as this article implies? Or is this just Baby Boomer nostalgia?

2. If so, was this change mostly good, mostly bad, or about the same of each?

I remember the Summer of Love. I remember, as a pre-teen tourist, riding in the car with my parents as they drove through the Haight-Ashbury district. I still listen to the music of the time, and I still wear tie-dyed T-shirts. There is a part of me that will always be a hippie.

Peace.

How ironic. Just finished an analysis of Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and need to rewrite the summary today.

The summer of '67 I had just turned 15. What the hell do I know. My main interest was getting an old junker car running. Later I got into motorcycles, so no communes, some drugs, lots of good times, always struggling with money.

1. Was the Summer of Love really a time of such important societal change as this article implies? Or is this just Baby Boomer nostalgia?

Social change was all over the media back then. I do remember that. Time magazine coined the word "hippie" and people wrote songs about social injustice. Most of this was media hype.

2. If so, was this change mostly good, mostly bad, or about the same of each?

Celestial Seasoning is now part of corporate America. So's Rolling Stone. Environmentalism has gotten a toe hold in corporate America because it can save money. Herbal stuff is big business. Health food too.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is about Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1962) and the Merry Pranksters from about 1961 to 1964. They created the first hippie bus (Furthur, wrong spelling on purpose), started the first psychedelic parties (Acid Tests), did the wild multimedia before the Beatles and knew Jerry Garcia before there was a Grateful Dead. Kesey's ideas fell apart in 1964 and were dead well before 1967. The Summer of Love was an invention of the media, an extension of an illusion that didn't work.

My metric on this is that if the mainstream in America is aware of something, it has already gone stale. But that's okay, there's still plenty of money to be made. That's what drove the buses that followed Furthur.

I personally think the attempt was worth the try. That's better than having never tried at all, which is the only form of true failure. The backlash against this attempt has been interesting to observe too, and I knew it had to happen starting in the early 1970s while in college. My oldest brother, who was 22 in 1967 and doing a tour of duty in Turkey (Vietnam class of '69), is a microcosm of vet turned hippie turned yuppie turned war hero turned rightwingnut. He's safely retired now, Christian and really obnoxious about it, pretty much harmless. The proximity of mortality changes people.

Thinking about the bad things, there were drug overdoses, bad trips, the war on drugs, the rise of Jesus freaks, some really terrible knock-off musical acts, my father growing mutton chops, floofy shirts, earth shoes, plaid slacks, platform shoes, disco (sucks), James Watt, the term "groovy", Watergate, moon landings (hoax! or so what?), New Journalism (eh, maybe not so bad once you get used to it), inflation, unemployment, wage/price controls, the fall of Saigon, boat people, my modern English poetry professor, housing crunch, gas shortage, beef shortage, sugar shortage, day late and dollar shortage.

Good -- or at least interesting -- things that are still with us: hippie tribal meetings, war protests (peaceful!), artsy/craftsy fairs, music festivals (of all sorts!), bib overalls, comfy shoes, interest in nature, guitars, motorcycles, junky old cars, crooked old politicians, tie-dye, peasant clothing, and funky places to hang out.

Stuff I'll never understand: tats, piercings, neckties, big hair, what goes for country these days, rap, pop, newage, young Republicans, evangelists, bowties, electronic muzak, the publishing industry, white socks and black shoes (what were we thinking?), Hummers, experimental private aircraft (Oh God!), reality TV, Hot Pockets, monster RVs, electronic BBQ grills, Herman and His Hermits, British humor, and the number Nine.

I have decided to initiate my own boycott of the baby boom. I turned down free tickets to see the Who on this basis. I find the baby boom to be the most self-obsessed, navel-gazing, unaccomplished generation in our nation's history, and yet they are the proudest of who they are. One more American Express commercial that tells my how this generation "changed everything" and I am going to puke. Hooray for being born when you were born. I salute you. Now please either do something or go away.

And Celestial Seasoning, Rolling Stone, "environmentalism" and "Herbal stuff" do not count as doing something, sorry. Mediocre tea, inaccurate yet sensational journalism guised in a blanket of cool, and mainstreaming of pot to make another generation of stupid annoying teens has not elevated our culture.

While I agree with you on the navel-gazing bit, the fact that you have something to boycott illustrates the accomplishments of baby boomers.

And as far as your "hooray for being born when you were born," I wonder if you'd say the same about the greatest generation...

Modern American coorporate culture markets itself in two ways: hip and hipper. Even Army Recruitment pamphlets deck themselves out in the language of the counter-culture. Coorporate America once meant IBM suits with pocket protectors. Today, coorporate America is way cooler, way more on top of trends that any of us could ever be. Networks are tripping over each other to sell stuff to the 18-24 y.o. bracket, as are cell phone companies, and everybody else. Newspapers survive or fall based on whether their ad department can boast of a high enough 'young readership' to sell ads. And of course, nobody needs the attention of 18-24 y.o.s like the US Pentagon, or for that matter, the Democratic Party. Martians receieving our airwaves would wonder if the human life span exceeds 35.

This trend was put in place by the feckless hippie generation, whether or not they asked for it or did anything except inherit disposable income to deserve it; nevertheless, by merely attending college baby boomers affected a demographic shift in the focus of American commerce.

Besides, are we forgetting about Gay Rights? Stonewall? Woman's Lib? Black Power?

How can any one of those not be considered an accomplishment?

Drug culture might not seem like much of an 'accompmishment,' but it's everywhere today. That may be more jazz's responsibility, but the Summer of Love, the Beatles record that came with it, and the resulting TIME cover articles concerning the plague of drug use helped spread it.

More alternative papers were founded in the mid-late 1960s than any other period in US history, including abolition. (This comes from a Bob Ostertag book im currently reading "The journalism of social justice movements") So at least a sizeable fraction of those navel-gazing, lazy pot smokers were out-publishing their counterparts in literally every American generation before or since.

Lastly, I don't see how anyone with a 40 minute suburban commute because Huey Newton scared the skin off of somebody's parents can call the 60s generation 'unaccomplished.' I mean, This country spent 8 years under Reagan reacting to one summer, so 1967 must have done something right.



Beautifully put. Not only do I think that says something about the baby boom generation in general, and the 60s specifically, but it'd be a good candidate for that best quote thing. It also says oodles about why the Iraq war has not netted the protests and sociological carnage that vietnam did.

That is quite a turn of phrase there

But ... Outpublishing every generation before or since? Really? Out-alternative-publishing I will buy. However, Generation X and its weblogs have surely contributed more words than their predecessors. The Hearsts and their ilk founded actual newspapers, to which the alternatives are an ... alternative. Revolutionary pamphleteers, anyone? Sounds like more boomer hyperbole.

Black power - yay. How perfect an example of symbolism without substance is black power. Two guys who weren't even sure what fist to raise won medals in Mexico city. While my own congressman is an ex-Black Panther, most of those misguided pseudo-intellectual socialist gangsters couldn't organize their way out of a paper bag. I think that abolitionism accomplished a wee bit more on a global scale than "black power" here in the 60's. Have you ever read their ten-point program? Guaranteed full employment for all blacks, courtesy of the federal government. Liberation of all black prisoners. Control over the 'means of production.' Let me know how that is coming along.

Women's lib? You mean the equal rights amendment? Nice job on that. To use your own phrase, the suburban mom who has a 40-minute commute coupled with child-care, soccer practice and everything else, surely appreciates being so 'liberated' by her predecessors who deemed life outside a McMansion and Lexus not worth living.


No, but those guys don't have to tell me just how great their generation was. Maybe I am just too young and I missed it, but those I've met, even guys who served in WWII just had a quiet, stoic sense that they did what they had to do. I can't turn on the TV without seeing IBM, AMEX, Ted Koppel or anyone telling me just how 'great' counter-culture and drug culture have been for our society. Not buying it. The culture that they were counter to had its flaws, but I wouldn't be so quick to elevate the counter above the culture itself.

Point taken, and with the internet on their resume, Gen X may have significantly mroe to brag about, despite significantly fewer numbers...

However, what I am saying is that the brilliance of the baby boomer generation WAS its 'boomer hyperbole, perfect case in hand...



The essence of that movement was its insanity, its crazed ambition, it totaly disregard for the lines between the possbile and the fantastical. If it was pragmatic and reasoned, then the Panthers would have the allure of the SLCC-- that is, not much.

So maybe, what we disagree on is the value of self-promotion, hyperbole... I would say, looking out the window at the modern world, as paris hilton might agree, the public sphere is driven by those who know the art of self-promotion and hyperbole. And if theres one thing that binds the movers and shakers of the 60s together -- from Huey Newton to Clive Davis to Abbie Hoffman -- its the way in which they forwarded that crass, uniquely american art of PR. Which, for better or worse, is the world we are imprisoned in today.




I'll just quote somebody better at thsi than me:





In fundamental ways, would you not agree, we resemble the nation -- self-absorbed, navel-gazing -- envisioned by 60s youth culture more than the one for which our generals fought? Looking at an electoral college map, I'm not sure I can totally decide which is 'counter' to what anymore.

And last I checked, the History Channel has boiled down 10,000 years of human existence to 4 years of European combat.

1. Was the Summer of Love really a time of such important societal change as this article implies? Or is this just Baby Boomer nostalgia?
Both. I'd never want to live in a world like this was pre- summer of love, but baby boomers give themselves far too much credit for their role in what has been an ongoing process for as long as people have been around.
Humanity through the ages has gotten less and less brutish, mean and nasty, has come to understand more and more of the universe, has granted basic rights to wider and wider swaths of people.

2. If so, was this change mostly good, mostly bad, or about the same of each?
Mostly good. Much as conservatives like to mourn the loss of a Leave it to Beaver America that never existed outside of fiction, I'll take desegregation thanks.

I think that I have to agree with your premise here. Also that materialism is gender-neutral.

You have me there on the state of the nation. Question - how many generations of navel-gazing, self-absorption can a society last?

As for the History channel, the Greatest generation is watching a lot of cable from their adjustable beds, I guess.

I agree- it is the suckiest generation in US history- they deserve our scorn just for the GW and Clinton presidencies alone

As a Gen X-er- in a sweeping generalization, I tend to find the baby boomers the most nauseating in US history

Boomers constitute 29% of the population, so the rest of youse better get used to it.

The "Baby Boom" covers a huge swath of people - from age 43 to 61. It's really not fair to lump them all into one "generation". After all, a boomer from the high end could also have a boomer child.

Boomers fought for individual freedoms, and the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movements were important parts of that. Boomers gave us the computer age (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs-born 1955, Steve Wozniak-born 1950). Our lives would be quite different if not for them. Gen X’ers tend to forget who started the whole computer/internet age. Some of the most brilliant musicians were boomers. Several 2006 Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry, Medicine and Literature are boomers (see, we’re not all hippie weirdos ).

Eh, don’t hate us cuz there are so many of us. If you're a woman or a minority, you should be grateful.

Kudos to Carlito and CR.

I'd never have thought of these points, but they make sense. I think we could argue a million points about the Baby Boomers being rough, but the only exception might be the Civil Rights revolution and how the baby boomers facilitated that.

Otherwise, I can't think of anything but excess as you mentioned. I generally think of things like baby boomers spitting on Vietnam Vets and Presidential Candidates throwing someone else's medals at the White House. Interesting group I'd say.

Gen X hopefully will turn the corner... we'll see. I'm sure they'll complain about us too.

Ageism is so ugly. I could say that Gen X is a bunch of disaffected and directionless losers, but that would be too sweeping a generalization...just as it is to say that the boomers are "nauseating" or "sucky" (you're talking about your parents, y'know, the ones who enabled you to live a cushy lifestyle). Each generation provides their own contribution. Lately, I've been hearing that Gen Y is in trouble because they have a hard time taking orders from people, are loyal to no one but themselves, are narcissistic and bore easily - and a huge influx of foreign workers less picky are eager to step in and take their place. Let's not degrade this into an "old people suck" vs. "young people don't have a clue" battle.