Posted on 08/05/2017 9:02:24 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
For the baby-boomer generation (or at least the counterculture segment within it) the summer of 1967 became known as The Summer of Love.
Actually, most of us boomers never experienced it. Certainly, 1967 wasn't a blissful, carefree summer of love for the hundreds of thousands of Americans serving in Vietnam.
It didn't feel much like love in my hometown of Detroit either. Fifty years ago this week, on July 23, 1967 (a Sunday, as it is this year), deadly riots erupted in the Motor City. They lasted through Friday, July 28, when, with help from the National Guard (including Detroit Tigers' second baseman Dick McAuliffe), the mayhem expired. During that week, my friend Rick was scheduled to lay down some violin tracks at a music studio downtown. His dad asked me to accompany them to the inner city. When we knocked on the door of the studio, an unsmiling middle-aged African-American man looked at three nervous white guys and drily told us that they weren't going to set anyone on fire that evening.
The actual Summer of Love took place in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. It had become a spontaneous hedonistic mecca for 100,000 hippies. A "summer of drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll" would have been a more accurate description. Showing the proverbial power of the pen, writers managed to glamorize and mythologize a prolonged session of debauched self-indulgence. They portrayed hormonally charged young people taking the path of least resistance and luxuriating in sensual pleasures as something supposedly idealistic — loftier and nobler than the war in Vietnam and the economic struggle for the supposedly "almighty" dollar. The counterculture embraced the Summer of Love as its nirvana.
Whatever thrills the hippies at Haight-Ashbury might have had then, the legacy of the summer of '67 is far from glorious. Drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll is hardly a formula for generational excellence. Think of "the greatest generation" that found the inner strength and character to prevail in the existential conflict of World War II: Would they have achieved such heroic heights had their priorities been to tune out the world and pursue ease and pleasure? Not a chance.
The Summer of Love romanticized unromantic sexual liaisons. Casual sex "liberated" men and women from commitment. It turned the life-affirming act of procreation into a life-cheapening pastime of recreation.
I'm sure many baby-boomers smile at the recollection of youthful flings in those days, but there was a dark side to unleashing the human libido. Millions of American families have fractured as a result of a man's or woman's addiction to the intense but transitory thrills of sexual pursuits. In doing so, they have inflicted incalculable emotional damage on millions of innocent children. Millions more children were never even born, because baby-boomers didn't want their pleasure-seeking lifestyles to be hampered by such weighty responsibilities.
Drugs? The tragedy of lives blunted and sometimes prematurely ended by drug usage has grown since the Summer of Love. You can supply your own statistics, anecdotes, and headlines. For me, the bottom-line issue is: How did our society get so spiritually anemic that millions of our compatriots still fall for the wicked illusion that happiness can be bought, then ingested, inhaled, or injected?
Rock 'n' roll? Here I'm ambivalent. 1967 was a fertile year for exciting, creative music — ranging from the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's" album to the beguiling West Coast sound of The Doors and Jefferson Airplane. The music was great, but it often wasn't innocent. The Doors evoked oedipal imagery. My wife loved the Airplane's "White Rabbit," not realizing until I explained to her in the '80s that it was a drug song. The Grass Roots' captured the essence of the Summer of Love with their paean to immaturity and irresponsibility, Let's Live For Today:
"By chasing after money / And dreams that can't come true / I'm glad that we are different / We've better things to do / May others plan their future/ I'm busy loving you ..."
Bottom line on the rock 'n' roll aspect of the Summer of Love: Sonically enchanting tunes conveyed distinctly countercultural messages into many pliable minds.
If you are old enough to remember the Summer of Love, I hope you emerged unscathed and have happy memories of it. If you are younger, you didn't miss anything except some fantastic music, and you didn't really miss that, because it's all available today. As for real, genuine love – not the hollow Summer of Love counterfeit – it dwells within you (see Luke 17:21).
“We got played for suckers by the democrats and their dirty little war.”
Opposing evil is generally the right thing to do.
You did that, whatever the motivations of the demonrats.
It was honorable. The USSR collapsed ten years early because of it.
And then they got into Country when “Urban Cowboy” came out.
I was 14 through most of the summer of love, and didn’t really appreciate for what it was or wasn’t.
One thing for sure: The Doors suck! Probably the most over-rated band of all time. They didn’t even have a bassist for gosh sakes!
The bad added a little SDR&R burt college provided the lion’s share of such activity and 30+ years later, I see the same SDR&R but the kids just have different haircuts than back then.
And while I was young in the 60’s I spend most my life in that decade in a nation in the middle of a civil war and our family had a security force.
When we would come back to the States, nothing shocked us.
I was five or six and the irony of my living in a nation in the middle of civil war and then going home to the United States where people were protesting a war that was way on the other side of the world, was not lost on me.
In the second grade a kid walked into the classroom and was telling everyone about the car crash he witnessed on his way to school that morning.
I replied “that’s nothing kid, when I was in first grade, I was on my way to school and saw a car get blown up, a man on fire and there were body parts in the street! And better yet, I did not get kidnapped while in the first grade!”
My dad was a chemical engineer and either had very bad luck picking places to work or wanted to work in places where it was hot, real, hot.
As far as we were concerned, The United States in 1967 was Disneyland.
As Dennis Leary said,
“Let me tell you something. We need a two and a half hour movie about the Doors? Folks, no we don’t. I can sum it up for you in five seconds, ok. I’m drunk. I’m nobody. I’m drunk. I’m famous. I’m drunk. I’m ....... dead. There’s the whole movie, ok!? 'Big Fat Dead Guy in a Bath Tub', there’s your title for you.”
And since you weren’t here and didn’t go through any of what the early to mid sixties offered you still have no clue
““Let me tell you something. We need a two and a half hour movie about the Doors? Folks, no we don’t. I can sum it up for you in five seconds, ok. I’m drunk. I’m nobody. I’m drunk. I’m famous. I’m drunk. I’m ....... dead. There’s the whole movie, ok!? ‘Big Fat Dead Guy in a Bath Tub’, there’s your title for you.”
That says it all LOL. I remember seeing the movie with Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison. He did a decent job. Probably an under-rated actor. His portrayal of Doc Holliday in “Tombstone” was outstanding. He should have at least been nominated for an Oscar for that role.
Dad was a WWII vet, I was a kid.
Other than the threat of kidnapping, hearing bombs at night, and seeing dead people on the street, the lifestyle was great. Drivers, maids, nannies for each kid, a breakfast cook, two dinner cooks and security guards 24/7.
Back in the States, I had to walk to school, make my own breakfast and clean my room.
Teheran, Beirut, Cairo, New Orleans, Bogota, Buenos Aires all offered greater amenities for a kid.
But trust me, the US in the 1960’s was a cakewalk compared to bombs in Bogota, blasts in Beirut, assassinations in Cairo, the collapse of Teheran, the riots in BA or the sloth of New Orleans.
That's a strange thing to say. Most of the crooks I met in life are Christians. I enrolled my kids in Catholic school, took them out later because of corruption in the school administration. Some of my relatives are Catholic hypocrites, preaching about Jesus while being hateful and lying. You are full of sin casting slurs on others, and can't know Jesus while doing so.
So true. My future wife convinced me of that, and I turned away from the pointless chaos going on in my life back then.
Not strange at all.
Church as a cover up act is very common.
That excuse won’t fly before God.
Tell me about knowing Jesus when you actually do. Rather than whipping out some cherry picked shibboleth as an excuse for yourself.
It remembered man’s spiritual side even though misusing it. The right was caught up in materialism.
The key to identifying a Christian is not that he can brag “my hands are always clean.” He praises the Lord that “I have found the soap.”
A typical materialist, you point to crimes of the material world. When those are actually the easiest crimes for God to remedy.
Do you mean platoon?
Neighbors son died of a drug overdose this weekend asked why the wake is on Tuesday, there were 4 other overdoses deaths ahead of him. Small town USA, when do we stop the killing of our youth
No cake walk if one was against segregation and living in Missippi or Alabama
Both of my parents were WWII vets....and so
You married well
No it wasn’t. That is foolishness
And prey tell me what is apiritual about hedonism?
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