What was it like to be in the 60s?

In 1968, my parents moved to my hometown where my Dad got a job as a Professor. I was 4, but I remember it well. Within a year or so, my mom moved out on my dad and moved into a trailer park, and everyone living there was a hippie, 'cept my mom was a little old, bein' in her late 20's. I remember the social unrest and the protests, but I also remember the lifestyle, it was pretty cool, like no one needed anything to live on, and there was a great deal of freedom. I remember walking down the main road that separated the trailers, everyone was sittin' out front, playing music on their drums and electric guitars, smokin', and hangin' out, it was a mellow scene. I was fortunate enough to be one of the few kids in the place, so everyone was really friendly to me, and they'd show me stuff like riffs on their guitars, art they had created, whatever...

...now the trailer park is a condo complex, so sad...

 

I grew up part time at The Freedom Farm with my dad. Communal living was an awesome expierence. I got to see The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and The Flying burrito Bro's. When I was little. They had a huge garden with everything. My job was weed puller and I picked beans and berries. The sense of love and light were all around. I learned tolerance and got a great love for mother nature. Although I live in KC (not a "kind" place) I have raised my sons with those values and the music. Now I have 2 hippy sons and I couldn't be prouder.

 

i love reading of everyones experiences back in the sixties. hearing of everyone talking about how it was and all the people my age responding it gives me hope that the movement its still alive. many people say that they would want to live back in the 60's and part of me wants to, just cause of the whole vibe that was there because what everybody was doing was new. the music the clothes the lifestyle. but then the rest of me wants to stay in my time because that is where all of the work needs to be done. there is even more polical corruption and there is a huge war for unjust reasons and there is more greed and just general corruptness and absotuely no freedoms left anymore. these are all thing that need change a reason for a new revolution. i feel that it has reached a breaking point in this country and if we don't do something soon if the rest of america doesn't wake up we could loose the country for good. i for one will definitally be out there soon protesting and demanding change even if i am the only one in the streets. but it looks like there are plenty of people to join me.

 

That's good to hear, especially from someone who's younger, 'gives me hope for reform which was what the movement was all about to begin with.

We have a higher standard of living than ever, yet we're more miserable than ever, 'seems like all this wealth has led to a culture of materialism, greed, and bad karma, and the sense of community has been lost.

On the bright side, younger folks seem to be becoming more and more grounded in grass roots values, they're not taking it anymore, they're no longer lured by materialism into a workaholic lifestyle of climbing the corporate ladder (like the "me-generation" of the '80's for example). A few friends of mine in their early 20's recently graduated college, and have turned down high paying professional positions due to the long hours and responsibility, way to go guys, just say no to da man!

...I digress...

I feel I re-live the 60's every time I go to a music festival and camp out with the family, kinda brings back that minimalist sense of being happy with next to nothing, free and at peace with myself, that's what it's all about. The point is the 60's wasn't all that different than how it is now, it just depends what you make of it...

 

The SEEDS you plant today, is that which you shall reap tomorrow.

 

I feel sorry for the younger crowd who have never known the vibrancy of the U.S. back in the 60s and 70s compared with the stifled conformist atmosphere today. Many today have been socialized into thinking that being libertarian and hippie is agreeing with Bush 99% of the time instead of 100%. It's difficult to know a world unless you've been there.

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What happened after 911 was really nauseating. The people were looking for comforting words from the leaders after a terrible tragedy and Bush goes on TV and tells everyone to shop more and get on a plane and take a vacation in his brother's state of Florida (fly! fly! fly!). Can't these people even find just a little sliver of compassion in their hearts?

I can just imagine a tragedy at Woodstock and one of the leaders of the rock band saying "Hey everyone, go out and buy more stuff!" Or Johnson after the Kennedy assassination, "Hey all, take a vacation in Texas!"

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I agree.
I am not old enough to remember the 1960s too well but I can remember the 1970s like they were yesterday.
President Reagan ,Prime Minister Thatcher & Monetarism created the 'Super-Capitalism' of today........or what I like to call this current: 'Orgy of Capitalism' in the Western World.
We are encouraged to be 'Super-Consumers' to earn more than just covering our needs & to spend on things we don't really want.
The young are taught that the struggles of the 1960s-70s helped to lay the foundations of the money-obsessed atmosphere of today;-as if by default.We are so much richer.We gourge on the obesity of over-consumption/production.
In very general terms; I remember people being happier in the 1960s-70s before all this hyper-capitalism started.
Being wealthy or rich doesn't make you happy.It makes you comfortable.
We didn't need huge sums of money or a jet-set lifestyle back then to be happy.
Now,today; the above is the perrogative for coming anywhere near to the current western ideals of 'success'.

 

and they do it mostly through the tv. i try to watch as little as possible.

 

"Orgy of Capitalism", good term. Unfortunately, we're programmed by modern culture to be more about excessive consumption and materialism, not relationships, freedom, and spirituality, as was more common in the '60's (is the UK as bad as the US?).

However, more and more youth these days seem to be rejecting these ideals because they're learning that it doesn't get them anywhere. In the long run, wealth and status mean nothing, and the pursuit of these things leads to emptiness. What's important is community and inner peace. Eventually you're gonna be dead, and you can't take it with you...

 

i wish i could have lived in the 60's and 70's...everything seemed so free lovin

 

i think as many people as can need to get back to the streets and start living the life and spreading the message (i trying not to sound like a church) so other people see more people living a life out of the system and materialism and then people can see other options than just playing in to their game.

 

I was born too late, i always said so. The 60's had the freedom i crave. I have it now but it was different then.

 

We played in the street and ran around the neighborhood, caught crawdads and fished. We didn't need to worry about some freako kidnapping us or drive-by shootings.
Mom's stayed at home to care for the kid's. Most everyone was semi middle class. NO ONE had a pair of $100.00 sneaker's or a starter jacket. We wore jean jackets and wind breaker's. We were humble and had family values.

We played board games cuz there were no X-Boxes or video games. No computer's. Kids were out-side all summer long. I remember saving my baby-sitting money for The Grateful Dead's, Skeleton's in the Closet album. It was just so much simpler then.

My kids are 22 and 18 and Luckly they were raised with a hippy mom and my hippy friends. Yes they still buy X-Box games and watch DVD's but they are also nature freaks and volunteer with me at the home-less shelter. This year they amazed me. I planned a garden for the Ronald McDonald house and when I went to check out the plot of land, there were 10 kids there waiting to help me.

The times they have changed for sure. But the spirit of the 60's and 70's lives on...

 

i feel sorry about folks like you who are lost in a time warp and seem so clueless about the vibrancy and love in the times we live as well as your total delusion in thinking that people think that agreeing with Bush upwards of 99% is representative of modern political awareness

wake up and smell your shit

 

That was certainly a statement full of love and vibrancy. That's an example of today's confused atmosphere that I was referring to.

And no, I didn't say supporting Bush 99% of the time was representative. I said it was ashame that some think that supporting him 99% of the time instead of 100% is somehow rebellious and hippy. I see it often on this board, especially with young people.

I wish everyone could go back in a time machine briefly just to see what the era was like. Sometimes a stifled conformist conservative atmosphere like we have today is needed as a breeding ground for movements like the hippie one back in the 60s.

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do you really think that by how much you can tell people how stupid they are or how stupid Bush is or how stupid everyone is besides yourself that you are helping current political or otherwise realities of the world to evolve? Yes things may be confused today but don't be so quick to excuse yourself from the confused ones if your m.o. is rubberstamping other people than yourself as being misguided whilst you yourself are drowning in your own shit.

wake up and smell your shit, peace and love, molly

 

Do you know what a "comma" is? Shit that was annoying to read.

 

Keep posting, Molly. You're portraying what I was referring to better than I could ever explain it.

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Yeah. Hippies in the 60s were better at grammar than those of today.

In today's world, I'm not allowed to say that because it would be politically incorrect and might 'insult' someone who isn't good with grammar. Plus it could get me accused of being arrogant.

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