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As a witness to the Woodstock Nation
and as a young Bear Tribe member
our legacy will be one of
foolishness, excess, arrogant/naivete, privilege
and just ordinary stupidity.
But we looked cool doing it (not).
A good place to see research by people hoping to find the good there
is 'The Haight/Ashbury research papers'.
The dream is over.
Woodstock and the 1960's in general were a huge waste of time. People from that generation often say they changed the world but I'm sorry to tell you that you didn't make one bit of difference for the better. Bunch of hippies doing drugs and listening to crappy music in the rain and mud. Then, once the concert was over, all those same folks woke up the next day, went to college and got jobs. The result? Terrible.
If you were in your 20's back then, then you are in your 60's now so you basically had the last 40 years to change the world and it looks to me like it was one big failure.
Nucleur weapons still all around the world,
immense global warming problem,
hunger still rampant around the world,
30% of Americans without health care,
Wall Street gone crazy,
still no 100% electric cars,
still not drawing much electricity from renewable sources (wind, solar, etc.),
bi-partisan politics still ruining this country
still getting into wars that we have no business being involved in (Vietname and Iraq)
world opinion of the U.S. is in the toilet
Oh, and the music of the 60's is not all it's cracked up to be. Please put the Beatles albums away and stop listening to 50 year old music.
Your right about most of what you say but leave the Beatles out of this. Those are legaly 'fighting words'!
The previous generation passed the laws.
The younger generation, mine, lived it.
Look at the killings in Mississippi.
And further legislation was passed.
We had a real intersesting time in the early 70's with desegregation.
Not to mention the fact that MLK was assassinated in '68.
Tek, as you may be subtly saying, the Hell's Angel killing took place at Altamont, not long *after* the idyllic Woodstock.
This illustrates the fact that Woodstock was inspirational, but carrying through on our ideals is not so easy.
We've been through this argument before. Basically, we are asking what, if anything, the Boomer generation accomplished during their counter-cultural movement.
The thing is, we were never all that unified. Look at William Jefferson Clinton, and look at George W. Bush.
Was there any enlightenment from that time? Did the Boomers have any impact?
I think so.
Sure many hippie-types were fun-loving slacker idealogues, but they, more than the previous generation, had the time and the education to think about social injustices.
Of course many Boomers were never "true" hippies, and these days our music sells Toyotas on TV, but beneficial change did occur.
For me, the biggest change is an awareness of our environment. I remember reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring as a young teen. Back in the 1970's the Bald Eagle, unique to North America, a symbol of our nation, was threatened with extinction. Earth Day began in 1970, and the Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act in '73, it was the surging youth movement that brought this about. We read and contributed to the Whole Earth Catalog, began the now very successful organic farms, sang along with Randy Newman's Burn On, Big River. (His ode to the burning Cuyahoga River.)
Of course there has been much waste, and the exploration of renewable energy has ebbed and flowed depending on what administration is in power and what the oil prices are.
Every generation gets its chance. I think Gen X and Y will be more skeptical, and more fiscally responsible. OTOH--they will never give up their cell phones, so they will probably spend plenty of money developing and purchasing technology.
Concerning the underlined above.
In Africa alone twenty million men women and children die each year because of the ban on DDT that you refer to. Even IF it was a choice between those Africans and our eagles would you choose the birds? But tragically that isn't even the case. Back in the day DDT was grossly over used. And it got into places that it never would have if properly used. And eagle eggs became thin. Instead of rational use it was totally baned. Resulting in those malarial deaths. Unnecessary deaths. Could this be another form of birth control on the sly? A post-natal abortion. Or more likely one of those pesky unintended consequences. This does fit in with the Woodstock value of 'let's forget about today until tomorrow'.
Whoops.
Sorry about that.
But you see we meant no harm.
Man.
Your right about most of what you say but leave the Beatles out of this. Those are legaly 'fighting words'!
Is this about John Lennon? Or the Beatles in general? Gotta tell ya I've never understood why they are so great....but then I've never been one to idolize singers, actors, etc. Now Jennifer Love Hewitt, maybe, but nobody else.
The previous generation passed the laws.
The younger generation, mine, lived it.
Look at the killings in Mississippi.
And further legislation was passed.
We had a real intersesting time in the early 70's with desegregation.
Not to mention the fact that MLK was assassinated in '68.
The previous generation did not just pass the laws. They also lived it. They struggled. They fought, they died and they laid the ground work that had been going on for quite some time. The Boomer's are neither the Alpha nor the Omega. It drives me up a wall. I don't mean that as a personal attack, I mean as another poster stated: I have been listening to this for years.
Here is a little update and insight on Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Its long but you have complete access. Yeah, and then here comes Ronald Reagan (creator of the fictive Pink Cadillac Welfare Queen) in a 1984 speech to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg crowd that was just as horrendous as his idol Goldman. I sure as hell did not vote for the man. Yeah, good job. Funny thing I learned, did you know that a school district could go to a neighborhood with both black and white kids and take out a complete section of white kids and bus them 20 miles to an all white school? But it looked good on paper.
Before Rosa Parks there was Irene Morgan . There was also Claudette Colvin . The NAACP did not want to pick her up because she had gotten pregnant at 15. They picked up Rosa Parks instead, they were afraid of the image of a pregnant Claudette.
As any aside: Anybody see any change at all towards teen pregnancies? Anybody see any correlation between the attitudes then and attitudes now?
Mendez v Westiminister 1946 is not a SC case but did lay the groundwork here and deserves recognition. But my favorite case is Lau v Nichols 1974 is the least that you can do for ESL students and do you know that it is exactly what has happened? The very least. And this too, was on your watch. The ball was in your court.
We still have racial profiling, there is still a DWB problem. Tell me about how far we have come in civil rights and then tell me about the effort and money in inner-city schools. Pay no attention to the racial population in jails and prisons. Because every time I hear this story it is that this was all taken care of in the 60’s and is now either non-existent or minimized. Tell me more about diversity but don’t read anything on the international front. Tell me, please, what you learned.
Location: Just transplanted to FL from the N GA mountains
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pba
Woodstock and the 1960's in general were a huge waste of time. People from that generation often say they changed the world but I'm sorry to tell you that you didn't make one bit of difference for the better. Bunch of hippies doing drugs and listening to crappy music in the rain and mud. Then, once the concert was over, all those same folks woke up the next day, went to college and got jobs. The result? Terrible.
[
Let's see... Technically I am a Baby Boomer. In 1969 I was 7 years old. I wish I had been there for the rain and the mud. And the FANTASTIC music.
Today instead of hippies doing drugs and listening to crappy music in the rain and mud, we have grunged out teens with multiple piercings and tattoo's all over their body's doing meth or crack listening to crappy rap music and hooking up, all the while posting their pics on facebook for the world to see. And you know what.. if that's what you enjoy... go for it. But to call another generation a waste is hypocritical at best. Remember... you WILL be this age some day, and you will be thought of as a waste too by the younger generation. It's inevitable. When you grow up and can look at things from an adult perspective, then we'll see how you think....
Let's see... Technically I am a Baby Boomer. In 1969 I was 7 years old. I wish I had been there for the rain and the mud. And the FANTASTIC music.
Today instead of hippies doing drugs and listening to crappy music in the rain and mud, we have grunged out teens with multiple piercings and tattoo's all over their body's doing meth or crack listening to crappy rap music and hooking up, all the while posting their pics on facebook for the world to see. And you know what.. if that's what you enjoy... go for it. But to call another generation a waste is hypocritical at best. Remember... you WILL be this age some day, and you will be thought of as a waste too by the younger generation. It's inevitable. When you grow up and can look at things from an adult perspective, then we'll see how you think....
The difference is that the Gex Xers haven't claimed to have changed the world for the better. Hippies of the 60s achieved nothing but claim to have laid the groundwork for historical change is this world which is completely false.
It's a given that every generation will have its share of slackers but the 1960s pretty much amount to a wasted decade of protests and drugs for a lot of people while the other 99% of the hard working Americans raised families, held down jobs and did there best to keep this world going all while the hippie idiots of the time went out and made complete fools of themselves. It's a shame that the extreme minority can claim to be representative of the 1960s when they were, in fact, a trivial detail that didn't achieve anything.
By the way, fantastic music? Tell me how fantastic you thought the music of the 1910s was when you were in the 60s. Your 60s music is now 50 years old and is a huge pile of crap to most people born after 1970. Just like the music of the 1910s was a huge pile of crap to you during the 60s.
Slightly more serious answer. There was some great music from both the 1910s and 1960s. However it might be true that time sifts the wheat from the chaff.
I got to listening to swing and such so decided I liked thirties music. Then my Dad got a Victrola with music from that era. Most of it was terrible. However the stuff I liked I still liked. Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington really are good, at least some of the time.
Likewise I thought I really liked 60s music so I got to listening to an oldies channel. The stuff I already liked was still good, but there was a great deal of other stuff and much of that was bilge. The stuff you'll still hear is mostly the good stuff. If you take the best songs of any decade, even the 1970s, you'll have a CD's worth of really good songs. It's chronological snobbery to think you won't.
Still I do think the 60s were good musically in that they opened up American music to more folk and foreign influences. They were also bad musically, in a sense, because they emphasized youth too much and led to a generation of musicians who burned out or died young. That left the 1970s, to some degree, culturally bereft.
If you where alive back then, then your'e pretty much a Baby Boomer or older. I was a child growing up through the 60's and as such experienced it's wonderments without experiencing some of it's drawbacks.
How are the children of Gen X and Y different?
Did the "Peace And Love" generation come down off the mountain and get jobs as Lawyers and High School Principals...? What dichotomy exists if so?
Progress: Racial equality improved I think...Barack Obama being elected President a good example.
Vegetarianism: Didn't fare so well, look at all the shows on cable from traveling all the rib joints of the U.S....extreme pig outs, even public television has Barbeque University an a host of other cooking shows all searing, grilling, stewing meat like there was no tomorrow. Some of it is "organic" though...LOL
Any thoughts, examples, predictions.....?
There were really only a handful of counter-culture protesters who actually believed in any of that utopian stuff anyway. Mostly it was a time for civil disobedience and any excuse to pary and rebel against what was considered the norm. Look at the generations of mankind these people spawn who are running things now and clearly you see they had no real solid values and core of beliefs to pass on to their kids. Not saying the conventional thinking was perfect, it was'nt because pursuit of material gain at any cost without regard to the environment or fellow man never really did go away, it simply morphed like a Chameleon lizard. You can dress it up any way you like but it's the same ol same old but worse.
I remember friends from school wanting me to come along to a protest. I'd ask what is it for and they'd say they did'nt know, it was just an excuse to get rowdy and call the police pigs. Most never believed in all that stuff. Later many became the Yuppies of the 1980s with Beamers, the big American Dream house and dumped the Left for the right. Racial equality ??? Mostly it's the laws that give that appearance. Attitudes have in many areas never changed. The Woodstock era is only a blip in history. Now we have a world according to Monsanto with left & right supporting them. Yeah, real progress.
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