If it doesn’t describe you then it doesn’t apply to you. Can we put the genie back in the bottle? Does anything ever get better?
Or was Yeats right, “Things fall apart”?
It would be interesting if one could see how many of those who actually tried, wholeheartedly and determinedly, the hippie "thing" and did so for what they thought were philosophical reasons saw that they were wrong and became committed and informed conservatives.
I was on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in August of 1967, having just hitchhiked from New York city. I wasn't there 5 minutes and some guy comes up and asks me if I know where he can get a gun. It seem people had been stealing his stash. I pleaded ignorance, and when he left, turned to my friend and said, "The hippie movement is over. It lasted about 5 months."
On the other hand, in NY there were what we called "weekend hippies". We used to go over to Greenwich village on Saturday evenings to watch them. They were colorful and naive and wanted to party, but weren't really serious about the kind of (equally naive) gnostic idealism of us hippies. So, having risked little, they learned little. Having avoided having their stash stolen or wanting a gun, they could pretend that somehow, somewhere, people could all just be nice and have fun and everything would somehow work out.
And as they moved through their lives, they thought was was really saving prudence was cowardice and told themselves that, though they were married and had kids and jobs, maybe somehow there was something less crass and less mundane that they could have done instead.
While my friend and I began to see that that was just a fantasy and a tragic lack of appreciation for the heroism of monogamy and having and keeping a job and persistently making sacrifices for our family and your community.
It struck me then, and stayed with me, that the friendliest most peaceable guys I knew were soldiers, while the angriest and most hostile were pacifists.
I think that few if any of us are called to tackle the entire genie. Love your spouse; take care of your kids; do your job well and honestly; be a good citizen; stand up for what's right. That's a great witness and pedagogy right there, I think.
I didn't set out to make my kid a conservative. I just tried to be the most loving daddy I could be. I just found out today she's a registered Republican in California, and she loves the Barracuda as much as I do.
Mission accomplished.
Like hell it doesn't. Count me among the Boomers who have paid their dues who are sick and tired of this carping crap. An entire generation is a very large demographic to condemn simply because you can't wrap your rhetoric around the subtleties of distribution within it. I'll give you an example - in your generation there are a number of fine people and there are a number of jerks. Which are you?