Where Have all the Flowers Gone?
Posted: July 5, 2012 Filed under: Economy, social justice, the villagers | Tags: hippy values, Kurt Anderson, the 1960s, the me generation 40 Comments
I want to share the op-ed of Kurt Anderson in the NYT that is a think piece on the idea of American Liberty. There were several reasons I was drawn to it. First, he talks about growing up in a time and a place that we share. We went to high school together. He was the yearbook editor the year and a senior as I started my sophomore journalism class. I had a good friend that had a big crush on him and she would use me to get into the J-room just to get the chance to “accidentally” bump into him. He also hung out with those of us that frequented the social studies IRC which was a hot bed of political discussion at the time. Anderson’s experience–as voiced in this editorial–is basically my experience. Also, he writes on a question that I’ve asked myself a lot. Why has the myriad of movements and self-expression of the so-called “me” generation translated into this current philosophy of unfettered economic free marketeering that seems to betray the experiences of the 1960s and 1970s? Why the return to a gilded age by folks that grew up during a time that seemed in rebellion against all greed and power hoarding? I admit I saw most of the 1960s from grammar school but I still got the point.
Periodically Americans have gone overboard indulging our propensities to self-gratification — during the 1840s, during the Gilded Age, and again in the Roaring Twenties. Yet each time, thanks to economic crises and reassertions of moral disapproval, a rough equilibrium between individualism and the civic good was restored.
Consider America during the two decades after World War II. Stereotypically but also in fact, the conformist pressures of bourgeois social norms were powerful. To dress or speak or live life in unorthodox, extravagantly individualist ways required real gumption. Yet just as beatniks were rare and freakish, so were proudly money-mad Ayn Randian millionaires. My conservative Republican father thought marginal income tax rates of 91 percent were unfairly high, but he and his friends never dreamed of suggesting they be reduced below, say, 50 percent. Sex outside marriage was shameful, beards and divorce were outré — but so were boasting of one’s wealth and blaming unfortunates for their hard luck. When I was growing up in Omaha, rich people who could afford to build palatial houses did not and wouldn’t dream of paying themselves 200 or 400 times what they paid their employees. Greed as well as homosexuality was a love that dared not speak its name.
Anderson goes on to explain that maybe what ties the greedy to the bohemian is 1967. I find this an odd assertion but I’m willing to entertain it.
“Do your own thing” is not so different than “every man for himself.” If it feels good, do it, whether that means smoking weed and watching porn and never wearing a necktie, retiring at 50 with a six-figure public pension and refusing modest gun regulation, or moving your factories overseas and letting commercial banks become financial speculators. The self-absorbed “Me” Decade, having expanded during the ’80s and ’90s from personal life to encompass the political economy, will soon be the “Me” Half-Century.
People on the political right have blamed the late ’60s for what they loathe about contemporary life — anything-goes sexuality, cultural coarseness, multiculturalism. And people on the left buy into that, seeing only the ’60s legacies of freedom that they define as progress. But what the left and right respectively love and hate are mostly flip sides of the same libertarian coin minted around 1967. Thanks to the ’60s, we are all shamelessly selfish.
I’m not sure that that was my take away from the 1960s. It certainly does not explain my life choices that were made to escape the repressive conformity that’s so admired in Omaha. My desire to express myself does not take on the tone of oppressing other people in the process. I do not make decisions that actively advance my own interests at the cost of others. I have a difficult time equivocating the kind of get-ahead-greed-at-any-cost that I feel is typified by a Willard Romney and the desire to live life on your on terms as found in the denizens of the country’s gay and boho enclaves. You are not going to find the same kinds of “values” on Castro Street that you find on any street of a gated community. How exactly is being yourself on your own terms the same as doing everything possible to collect stuff and money including ensuring laws favor you at every turn?
I am reminded of a very famous phrase used by many writers through out the ages. That would be “comparisons are odious”.
Yup.
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It seems to me he has a good point in his comparison. I graduated high school in 1965 and have long felt that the drug culture subverted and ultimately killed most good that would have come from the freedom movements of the ’60s.
The wingnuts and the anarchists are very much alike in causation and attitude, at bottom.
I’m still having a difficult time buying that the individualism that causes some one to move to Taos and live in an earthship is the same individualism that causes some one like Mitt Romney to enjoy firing people and grabbing extreme wealth by destroying people’s lives; all the while calling this being just a really effective business man. Of course, Romney appears to be stuck in pre-1967 mode so maybe he’s not the best example.
They aren’t really the same but they are somewhat similar underneath I think. Pre-1967 a person could never have gotten away with the crap they pull now with no consequences. I don’t care who it was who tried, they would have probably ended up in an uncomfortable federal prison.
Of course, a lot of the things that would have landed you in a white collar prison then are legal now, so never mind.
lol
The poverty rate for children living in the United States is now 22 percent. http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/13/news/economy/poverty_rate_income/index.htm?hpt=hp_t1
That’s horrible!
And then you have some people touting that the rich GOP gives more than the rest of the population….(sorry just saw something about this on a friends fb page and it made me a bit pissy.) Proceed with caution.
Dataset of the Day: Who is more Generous? Republicans or Democrats? | GeoIQ Blog
Conservatives Give More to Charity than Liberals? – Casting Stones
I don’t consider giving money to go send missionaries to harass people charity. It’s a minor act of war imho.
Yeah, and it’s the fault of the culture of “the 60s!” Quick, get Kurt Andersen (whoever he is) to write another self-satisfied op-ed for the NYT!
He founded spy magazine and hosts studio 360 for WYNC. He’s got a couple of novels published and he’s got another book coming out called The True Believers.
Yes, I know. I looked him up and I addressed that down below. Sorry, but he’s still a nitwit.
I wondered if he was the host of Studio 360. As you know, I am a hopeless NPR junkie & I really like Studio 360. I will check out the Op-Ed once I get the herd of beasts fed & tucked in for the night.
There are too many gross generalizations in that article.
Thanks to the ’60s, we are all shamelessly selfish.
What he wrote about may have happened in the heartland and perhaps on the EAST coast.
We have so many different cultural centers — for example the East Coast writers tend to think that the center of the WEST coast during the mid 60s to the mid 70s was LA. LA is a little nation and it had very little in common with Northern California. Ronnie Raygun was Governor and he was at war with hippies and college students — which the dumb twit lumped together.
Hippies were plentiful in certain Urban centers in Northern California — San Francisco and Berkeley — and that’s where we high school students would go to observe that counter culture. I remember visiting my aunt and uncle who live near Stanford University and my uncle came in saying “I just saw some hippies thumbing for a ride on the freeway.” As if he had observed a rare bird in his back yard. That was his very first real life sighting of the subculture “hippie” in about 1969.
War protests and draft protests were ongoing in the Bay area — but only in the Urban centers. Oakland was were the newest draftees were bused in from all points east.
Gov. Raygun was busy using his armed thugs to beat the people involved in the Free speech movement. At the same time most of the students at Berkeley was just trying to go to class and get their degrees. Many of the hippies were self centered drug taking slobs — but many were concerned about the future and the environment. There were many classes being taught about organic gardening and recycling. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was an important Bible for one segment of the “hippies” — books about going back to the land, growing your own organic food were a huge seller. Awareness of what Corporations were doing to the land and to our democracy were being taught at Northern California colleges — probably as a direct result of the hippies asking about — relevance. How is this or that college course relevant to the world we are going to inherit. Meanwhile our college professors were under attack by RayGun — so they were fighting their own battles.
I’ve interviewed many of my contemporaries who went to high school and college during the mid 60s to mid 70s — and the ones living in rural or suburbia on the East Coast had no knowledge what was happening in California (north or south) and had never heard nor seen any war protests or hippies. Most never took drugs or experimented in “free love” — they came from a culture that was strict and rigid. The girls stayed home, worked and/or went to college and the boys went off to war and returned significantly changed.
The biggest upheaval for those of us who came of age during that era — were the drafts and also women’s battle for control of our bodies. The war on women was going full steam and the number of women who died from bad abortions etc was as high as the men being killed and injured in that far off war in Vietnam. Men writing about the history of that era ALWAYS forget that the war on women was being fought. Birth control pills and abortions became easier to get and the draft was ended, ironically close to the same time.
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97may/abortion.htm
I probably saw more of what was going on during that era — but I had to travel to San Francisco and Berkeley in order to see the counter culture. At the same time the ideas and culture did spread — the clothing styles changed, many of the words and saying associated with the hippie culture spread.
Raygun was the biggest problem because he would react after the fact and send out his goons to beat peaceful protesters. He probably did this as a PR stunt to whip up his political base. Then the bumper stickers on the conservative beer drinking salary workers bore sayings like — America — Love it or Leave it.
Many of the Flower Children moved on and out of California — and move to Washington State. One of the good outgrowths of the Hippie era is probably the back to Nature — organic food. The hippies who over indulged in the drugs self centered part of the hippie movement burned out rather quickly and most have died. But far more survivors of that era were harmed by Nixon’s war. The war was a larger influence than the hippies ever were. I’m thinking that the biggest cultural change agent was the Vietnam war. We learned that the military lies and the politicians lie all the time.
Do you happen to know where SDS originated? Gasp! It was in the American heartland. Can we all stop latching onto stereotypes, please? These kinds of arguments are deliberate attempts to distract us from what is actually going on in our country TODAY. And it isn’t a direct result of peace protests or other kinds of political activities that took place 50 years ago.
The society we live in today is in the control of the wealthiest people, just as it was back then. The main difference is that our society is slightly more inclusive than it was then. In the ’50s, if you weren’t a white, heterosexual male, you had no chance to “do your own thing” or “be all you can be.” as Maslow and Rogers said was the goal of human nature.
The powers that be lost a little bit of their iron grip on the culture after WWII, and they still want that control back. Right now, they’re very close to achieving that, and people like Kurt Andersen are the types who defend their goals in the corporate media.
Ooooooo-kay, they out slapping another guilt trip on us, Oooooo-Lord.
I went and read the op-ed and I’m beyond flummoxed. Is Andersen actually arguing that this country would have been better off if there had been no civil rights movement, and therefore no women’s movement and no gay rights movement?
I don’t even understand his concept of “the late ’60s.” So he’s saying that something that happened between say 1966-70 is responsible for the current financial crisis and economic inequality? None of that had anything to do with Ronald Reagan? Or were a small percentage of kids who became “hippies” responsible for Reagan too?
Ralph mentions the “drug culture.” How is that the meaning of “the 60s?” Guess what? LSD and amphetamines were introduced to the U.S. population by the CIA. So the people who became addicts are now somehow responsible for causing our current political and cultural problems? Let’s see now…how did the small percentage of the population who got addicted to drugs cause every current problem?
Northwestrain says that people in the middle of the country and on the East Coast didn’t experience the counterculture. I was in Boston and Cambridge in the ’60s and ’70s and I can definitely tell you she’s wrong about that. Even before I left small town Indiana I was well aware of the what was happening!
It seems as if everyone has an idea about what the “60s” were and what their meaning was. Well there was an awful lot happening then and lots of different kinds of people and events were involved. To say that it was all about “do your own thing,” which Andersen calls “selfishness,” is ridiculous. In the first place, “do your own thing” was about authenticity, not about getting everything you want and the hell with everyone else.
“The Me Decade” was a label dreamed up by writer Tom Wolfe, who is a reactionary who supported Bush. Now we’re supposed to accept Wolfe’s judgment of what the ’70s were about as the key to “the ’60s”?
Andersen isn’t even explicit in this op-ed about what he thinks “the ’60s” was about. But to suggest that what young people did at that time was equivalent to the Gilded Age makes no sense. If I were grading Andersen’s essay, I’d have to give it a C at best. He isn’t specific enough, he doesn’t define his terms, and he doesn’t provide concrete examples to back up his highly questionable points.
Having lived through the era Andersen is talking about–and I was an adult in the late ’60s, not a middle school or high school kid–I simply can’t even follow his muddled arguments. You were fortunate not to get involved with such a dimwit, Dakinikat.
In case it isn’t absolutely clear yet, I will not be reading Kurt Andersen’s forthcoming novel.
OK, I figured out who Andersen is. He founded Spy Magazine, which I loved. I was a subscriber for a few years. But I’m not surprised that I don’t agree with him politically. The magazine was delightfully snarky, but it was also mean-spirited in some ways. It was fairly obvious that his attitudes were shallow, elitist, and nihilistic. Sometimes that’s fun in a magazine, but not as an overall perspective on life, IMO.
Who the hell said the drug culture was the meaning of the ’60s? However, the acceptance of it by the young was just one more nail in the coffin of a movement which without drugs could have reached far more people and had more effect.
The youth movement became more of a sideshow than anything real. An example would be the protests against the war. If Mothers hadn’t joined in, they would have been a violent joke. Once the Mothers joined, then they had an good effect.
What about Ellsberg, the Berrigans, Walter Cronkite, Viet Nam Vets Against the War? Don’t you think when the “establishment” joined it, it strengthened the anti-war movement? I also think the murder of 4 students at Kent State shocked our nation, or at least a large percentage of Americans.
Sorry, Ralph. I didn’t take what you said to mean that. I agree that drugs were a problem for some of the movements of the ’60s. What I’ve been trying to say is that focusing on any one aspect of the many strains of political and societal change that came together in the ’60s is too simplistic. I shouldn’t have used shorthand. I read Andersen’s piece as focusing on the negatives of the time–and I took from what you said that you had a similar reaction. Even back in 1969, I had already come to the conclusion that drugs were destroying the movement. And I’m sure the CIA and FBI applauded that!
What many people such as Andersen don’t recognize is that the societal upheavals of the ’60s and ’70s weren’t youth movements per se. I think masses of young people got politically involved because of the draft. But even the anti-war movement wasn’t just made up of young people. There were lots of older people who were leaders of the peace movement–like Benjamin Spock and Alan Ginsburg. And the psychedelic movement was pushed into prominence by Ken Kesey, who was born in 1935.
IMHO, one of the main triggers of “the ’60s” was the fact that after WWII, economic inequality increased greatly, thanks to the GI Bill. People had more money and thus more time and energy for focusing on social issues instead of just grinding out a living. After 1973, that all began to change drastically.
His view of the counterculture is obviously extremely stereotypical, but I also have a really hard time believing that America in the 50’s was this magical unicorn land where greed was unknown, wealthy people were eager to pay half their income in taxes because they cared about the social fabric and no one would ever dream of taunting the unfortunate. I have to wonder where the prominent ideology of the horrible greedy industrialists who pepper our unusually violent labor history went during this period and why in the 70’s, coal miners and other workers at the bottom of the economic heap were still dying from preventable and treatable illnesses like Black Lung and employers were still resisting every basic reform. He sounds as if he’s on nostalgia overload.
The ’50s were a cultural nightmare. White people were prosperous, that was pretty much it.
This is his core thesis: Thanks to the ’60s, we are all shamelessly selfish.
By the way I have or did have close ties to the heartland — my mother is third generation Kansan. And every summer while I was in High School we traveled through the Southwest and up to Kansas to visit relatives in Kansas.
You should have read the article BEFORE you commented on my remark — because you have more or less said what I did.
He is saying that our personalities went through a gigantic shift and we all became selfish. This is rubbish — I’m saying that many of us came out of the 60s very concerned about the environment and the welfare of all humans.
Out of the 60s came the gay right, civil rights and women’s movement. At that time women were drying from back alley abortions.
I have a ton of classmates who joined the Peace Corp — and know a few who still travel to 3rd world countries.
I know about the SDS — also that some of the leadership ended up at the university I graduated from — because Nixon’s college was too small.
Raygun continued his hatred for college students with him to the white house in the 80s — so what was begun in many places.
There was a lot wrong that was identified by our generation — and others in our generation learned how to manipulate the system in a bad way — like ROMNEY and the other parasites of Wall Street etc.
What BB said — sorry my west cost outlook uses different English than yours. I was on the East Coast in the mid 70s (and could not wait to leave the place). EVERYONE I spoke to on the east coast were completely ignorant about what had happened or was happening on the west coast — and most though LA was the whole WEST coast. Most had no idea that there was a northern California, or Oregon, or Washington. The press did not help at all — everything I read on from the east coast media was completely false and misleading.
I don’t think you bother to read what I wrote before you wrote:
on this point we will have to disagree because YOU know nothing at all about the WEST coast which is typical of most people who live in MASS. I on the other hand spend two miserable years in that place.
These kinds of arguments are deliberate attempts to distract us from what is actually going on in our country TODAY. And it isn’t a direct result of peace protests or other kinds of political activities that took place 50 years ago.
I disagree — ROMNEY went to Stanford and HE was protesting FOR the draft way back in the dark ages. He was FOR the draft before he was against it. The west coast helped shape Romney. I was there going to another college not far from Stanford. I know the area well.
People are still fighting the peace protesters — look at the way some fools still are holding on the hatred of Jane Fonda, for Gods sake. And parents are passing on that hatred to their kids and grand kids. There are people out there who believe that the students murdered at Kent State deserved it. And that was NOT 50 years ago!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kurt Anderson is a flake — his experience is completely foreign to most of us who survived the 60s and 70s.
READ before you jump — please.
If that’s directed at me, I read the article before I made or read any of the comments. I tend to get really angry about these attempts to blame the ’60s counterculture for all the ills since. Any hostility you detected in what I wrote was coming out of my irritation with Kurt Anderson’s piece. If I said something offensive, I’m terribly sorry.
The piece you quote from my comment was referring to Kurt Andersen’s arguments, not yours. I must have been particularly incoherent in my comments today. Again, sorry to offend.
No problem I went on to read the rest of what you wrote. Anderson’s BS really hit me — I was thinking about what he wrote as I was out and about today.
I’m also passionate about that era — because I saw some of the protests first hand. The anti-war movement run by the boys who told the women that their place in the “peace” movement was prone — turned me off to the leaders of that movement. But I’m not a joiner — I’m an observer.
Nixon and Raygun together did their best to pervert any good that could have come from the 60s. And then there was Europe with all their protests — the French really know how to raise hell.
I know what you mean. I’m not much of a joiner either, but I marched in many anti-war demonstrations in Boston and I even did some work for Vietnam Vets against the War when John Kerry was in charge. There were also demonstrations about other issues–a huge one after the Chicago 8 were convicted.
I was in Harvard Square during two full-out riots after the bombing of Cambodia. People were getting really angry by then. My first husband was in Vietnam in 1968-69, so it was a big deal for me. I went to Washington for the Moratorium demonstration–the one Nixon supposedly watched football through. In 1970, I was in San Francisco for a few months. The Haight was already dead then, although there were some demonstrations.
But really, to me biggest achievement of the ’60s was the Civil Rights Movement. When Martin Luther King started publicly opposing the war in Vietnam and making noises about a poor people’s movement, the crackdown was inevitable. To me, King was the hero of the ’60s, more than anyone else.
I agree — MLK was the real hero of that era. We lost so many great liberal leaders.
This is pretty amazing. Dead beat Rep Joe Walsh get his ass handed to him. He looks like shit and stressed out. Darned good TV for 10 minutes.
Ashleigh Banfield And Joe Walsh Get Into Screaming Match Over His Tammy Duckworth Remark
Good for Ashleigh!
Personally, I think generalizations are much more odious than comparisons. I graduated from HS in 1968 & started college later that year, moving from the big city, Miami, to the country, Orlando. It was BDW – before Disney World – then. By 1969/1970, the boys hair was longer & the first protests happened on campus. But the protests were few & far between and there were few hippies. The college was new & mostly a commuter college, and was populated by mostly “All American boys & girls.” However, should boys make a Royal Castle run into Union Park they’d have to take some girls along to keep the rednecks from harassing and/or beating up the boys with longish hair. The one thing that united most of us was the music.
I think there is almost always a mixture of different types of people across geographical areas. Often it just depends on which “group” gets the press attention that tends to define what “everyone” is doing. I tend to agree with Kat that the greed & freedom/free love types aren’t similar. The capitalist/greedy ones are simply selfish. The hippie/free love/counter culture types may have been irresponsible, but selfish wasn’t a side I ever saw. At least that was my experience.
Wow. I graduated in 1965, and by that time there were already some “hippies” in Muncie, Indiana. I started college there that same year, and there was an SDS chapter on campus protesting the Vietnam War. Boys in my high school started growing their hair longer beginning in 1964 when the Beatles became popular.
I came to Boston in the spring of 1967. A couple of days after I got here, I went to a “love-in” on the Boston Common. Harvard Square was full of head shops, and freaks. By 1969, disillusionment had already set in after the murders of MLK and RFK made it clear to all concerned that the murder of JFK was no fluke. FBI and CIA had infiltrated every kind of protest organization. Nixon had been elected and he really didn’t have a secret plan to end the war. Instead he started bombing Cambodia. I guess in Andersen’s mind that was somehow the fault of the peace protesters?
And I’ve left out all the upheavals related to the Civil Rights movement–1968 and 1969 were filled with violence and riots in many American cities as the powers that be tried to clamp down on people who demanded a little freedom and opportunity.
Although Florida wasn’t considered part of the South in the 60s because of all the transplants (mostly from either NY or OH), it was definitely part of the South. At the time I graduated HS, boys could not have their hair below the tops of their ears & girls had to wear skirts (no slacks & definitely not jeans) that came to the middle of their knees. Orlando was even more straight-laced than that. And can we forget that the born-agains, Billy Graham/Anita Bryant (Queen of homophobia) & Campus Crusade for Christ all came of age in the 60s – at least in the South?
That’s even more evidence for what I argued above–that Andersen is wildly generalizing about an extremely complex societal phenomenon. I noticed that he wasn’t born until 1954, which means he was an 11-year-old in 1965. He wasn’t really old enough to be aware of the complexities. He seems focused on Wolfe’s “me generation” stereotype, which was a very twisted view of the personal growth movement.
Dakinikat, on the other hand, was even younger and yet she was obviously more aware of the opening-up of the culture that was happening when she was still a child. She was actively involved in the women’s movement when she was in high school Andersen was apparently more self-involved.
But there were many movements going on simultaneously at that time. Millions of people–around the world by the way–were involved in the rebellions and protests that took place in 1960s. The fight against academic stultification really began in Europe.
I’m in agreement with you. It’s like saying that Kerouac defined his generation and, per Tom Wolfe, Ken Kesey defined his generation. Those are just 2 examples of just one of the things I think is wrong with the history books: generalizations. Everyone, always & all of those all encompassing words. Like all women were stay at home moms in the 50s – mine wasn’t & I’m sure there were plenty others. We can’t & shouldn’t “simplify” life/cultures/generations. We are each unique individuals, not robots running on the same program/script, at least not yet.
Kurt was eager to get to an Ivy League as I recall and spent a lot of effort making that so.
You’re right, Connie. And as you pointed out (and Northwestrain did also), the experience was different in different parts of the country as well. I tend to get very passionate on this topic, because I was very involved with the anti-war movement, and I really felt that the bohemian aspect of the time actually saved me. I never felt I belonged anywhere I lived as a child.
Once I heard Dylan, the Doors, and other such artists, I finally realized there were people out there like me. Even Bob Dylan said that he had that realization (I’m not a alone in the world) after he read Alan Ginsburg.
BTW, Ken Kesey was first turned on to LSD in an MKULTRA (CIA) study in the mental hospital he worked in.
LSD — yes the CIA went wild experimenting with that. Killed a few people and covered up the fact as well.
Thanks Connie for your insight and experience about Florida. People from different regions had different experiences. Last winter I interviewed someone who was born in Virginia and lived and worked there all her life. Again the claim from an “expert” who was a mere 11 years old — just don’t hold water to those of use who lived through that era. Years ago I was at a authors event held by the up and coming Amazon.com — one of the authors had written a book about the era — so she got up and started talking pure BS — those of us who actually lived during the era got up and walked out while she was talking.
Kurt is trying to cash in on something he really has no direct knowledge of — just like that twenty something was back in the 90s.
One of my friends from Pennsylvania never heard or saw any anti war protests. She never saw any hippies — except for phony photos of actors years later. My Kansas cousins also had a similar experience. What’s the big deal — they’d say. They worked the land, got married, and had babies.
But Kent State was a huge event — I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard that the Ohio National Guard had murdered college students. I’ve talked to people who went to Kent state after the murders — it had a huge impact even years later.
What happened then is not unlike the Occupy Wall Street — of today. The generation who is bearing most of the burden of the Wall Street crooks is trying to raise the consciousness of the 99%. We are watching the law enforcement going berserk just like they did in the mid 1960s. The tactics of law enforcement are so similar that sometimes I feel like I’m having flash backs to 1968.
Does anyone of the 60s era remember the Vietnamese monk who lit himself on fire? At that moment I began to wonder what the he$$ was happening.