Currently listening: a collection from the somewhat offbeat 1960s vocal group "Harper's Bizarre" that I legally downloaded and burned from I-Tunes. Don't even think for a minute I scarfed this stuff for free. They had a huge hit with Simon and Garfunkel's "59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy).
My at-work friend Steve used to be a pastor. He now drives a fork truck on the night crew in the plant where I have worked for almost 35 years. No, I am not thinking, even remotely, of retiring yet. Not when I can have passionate conversations about what came down in the 1960s. Actually, I'm surprised at how carried away I get with this topic and anyone listening from a distance would tend to think I am either a radical now or a throw-back to four decades ago. Neither is true. Actually, I think my world view has evened itself out. I have an appreciation for what has been, where I'm at, and where I'm going in the future. I'm at peace with myself, basically like myself, and everyone else. I can't think of anyone I dislike.
Let's move on. In this case, it means a bit of a reversal - to the mid-1960s.
What did my generation have going for it forty years ago? I've been thinking about this a lot.
We had passion and sensed the need for change. Some folks think that the Beatles came along and challenged conventional thinking, espeically after "Magical Mystery Tour," and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band," but it seems to me that the seeds for questioning just about everything came years before that. After President Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, there was an overall sense that things weren't as innocent and homey as we were led to believe on situation comedies of the day. Wise parents, obedient children, clean living rooms and kitchens were simply the brainchild of network set decorators. Harriet Nelson may have marched to the beat of her husband Ozzie's drum Friday nights on 1950s and early 1960s television, but the reality was more stark. With Kennedy's death and the farce of the Warren Commission stinking like a run down skunk in the middle of an interstate highway, young people and their parents clashed. Ideas, modes of dress, what was acceptable now open to question; the whole gamut came into the social crossfire. Dickens said it best. "It was the best of times, the worst of times."
Young people wanted nothing to do with a war in southeast Asia that, like its contemporary counterpart in Iraq, was unwinnable. We were fighting the "godless communists," (gotta love that phrase) and if one country, fell, what was to stop another from toppling like the next domino? Hence, the "domino theory," if it happens one place it's bound to happen in another place - or some such nonsense. I've often mused that communism may have been better than the carnage the war left, but that idea wasn't on the table. Credit Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Lyndon Johnson, for having the guts to admit thirty years after the fact that we were wrong to get involved in that whole mess from the get-go. But, you know how it goes: proverbial hindsight is 20/20, foresight is -20 in both eyes.
We had passion, but we needed a plan: we knew what we wanted, an end to war; peace, equality, the rest of it, but I'm not so sure we had a method to work it all out. It was an ideal that wasn't thought out. Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin and the Chicago Seven mindset had the right idea in Chicago. The modus operandi, though, was somewhere out floating in Lake Michigan. At least these guys are remembered for their presence.
I'm getting fired up about now - Harper's Bizarre may have to be replaced by Cream or the Doors on the stereo if this keeps up. . . or is it possibly the coffee?
Having passion and a plan means that if many of us were thinking about what we wanted, we might have realized that change takes time. But passion, per se, was running high on both sides of the controversy, on the side of the young as well as the Establishment. Remember those patriotic construction workers in New York that attacked a peaceful anti-war demonstration? It was chaos. What surprises me these days is the apathy on full display on college campuses as an unjust, uncalled for, and totally wasteful revisiting of Vietnam is played out in the Middle East. The finest of our young people are volunteering, with all good intentions and patriotic visions. Many are coming back to a funeral. I never thought I would see the day when patriotism, or whatever it is, could cause young people possessed of promise and ambition to abandon their futures to enlist in a war that can't be won. And what's the plan for Iraq? Are we foolish enough to think the people of that country are going to embrace democracy as we know it? If that's the plan, let's check back in about 2,000 years. The entire region is a hotbed of hatred, violence, and terrorism and has been since before Saul of Tarsus was blinded by a light on the Damascus Road, culminating in one of the most dramatic Christian conversions in recorded history.
Change taking time - that's not what was on the 1960s agenda - we wanted change and we wanted it then; "We want the world and we want it now. . . " (Jim Morrison of the Doors). It didn't happen, but maybe my generation started something. We appraised the values we were raised with, questioned them, and wanted better. Perhaps looking over our shoulders, realizing that the world doesn't always respond as quickly as we think it should, helps us see what was right and wrong with our generation and the upheaval bring about. Maybe, just maybe, that backward glance can help us respond to the present generation, help them make plans for theirs and our future. JFK said it aptly: "We all inhabit the planet and breathe the same air." Why is it so hard to connect the dots?
My at-work friend Steve used to be a pastor. He now drives a fork truck on the night crew in the plant where I have worked for almost 35 years. No, I am not thinking, even remotely, of retiring yet. Not when I can have passionate conversations about what came down in the 1960s. Actually, I'm surprised at how carried away I get with this topic and anyone listening from a distance would tend to think I am either a radical now or a throw-back to four decades ago. Neither is true. Actually, I think my world view has evened itself out. I have an appreciation for what has been, where I'm at, and where I'm going in the future. I'm at peace with myself, basically like myself, and everyone else. I can't think of anyone I dislike.
Let's move on. In this case, it means a bit of a reversal - to the mid-1960s.
What did my generation have going for it forty years ago? I've been thinking about this a lot.
We had passion and sensed the need for change. Some folks think that the Beatles came along and challenged conventional thinking, espeically after "Magical Mystery Tour," and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band," but it seems to me that the seeds for questioning just about everything came years before that. After President Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, there was an overall sense that things weren't as innocent and homey as we were led to believe on situation comedies of the day. Wise parents, obedient children, clean living rooms and kitchens were simply the brainchild of network set decorators. Harriet Nelson may have marched to the beat of her husband Ozzie's drum Friday nights on 1950s and early 1960s television, but the reality was more stark. With Kennedy's death and the farce of the Warren Commission stinking like a run down skunk in the middle of an interstate highway, young people and their parents clashed. Ideas, modes of dress, what was acceptable now open to question; the whole gamut came into the social crossfire. Dickens said it best. "It was the best of times, the worst of times."
Young people wanted nothing to do with a war in southeast Asia that, like its contemporary counterpart in Iraq, was unwinnable. We were fighting the "godless communists," (gotta love that phrase) and if one country, fell, what was to stop another from toppling like the next domino? Hence, the "domino theory," if it happens one place it's bound to happen in another place - or some such nonsense. I've often mused that communism may have been better than the carnage the war left, but that idea wasn't on the table. Credit Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Lyndon Johnson, for having the guts to admit thirty years after the fact that we were wrong to get involved in that whole mess from the get-go. But, you know how it goes: proverbial hindsight is 20/20, foresight is -20 in both eyes.
We had passion, but we needed a plan: we knew what we wanted, an end to war; peace, equality, the rest of it, but I'm not so sure we had a method to work it all out. It was an ideal that wasn't thought out. Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin and the Chicago Seven mindset had the right idea in Chicago. The modus operandi, though, was somewhere out floating in Lake Michigan. At least these guys are remembered for their presence.
I'm getting fired up about now - Harper's Bizarre may have to be replaced by Cream or the Doors on the stereo if this keeps up. . . or is it possibly the coffee?
Having passion and a plan means that if many of us were thinking about what we wanted, we might have realized that change takes time. But passion, per se, was running high on both sides of the controversy, on the side of the young as well as the Establishment. Remember those patriotic construction workers in New York that attacked a peaceful anti-war demonstration? It was chaos. What surprises me these days is the apathy on full display on college campuses as an unjust, uncalled for, and totally wasteful revisiting of Vietnam is played out in the Middle East. The finest of our young people are volunteering, with all good intentions and patriotic visions. Many are coming back to a funeral. I never thought I would see the day when patriotism, or whatever it is, could cause young people possessed of promise and ambition to abandon their futures to enlist in a war that can't be won. And what's the plan for Iraq? Are we foolish enough to think the people of that country are going to embrace democracy as we know it? If that's the plan, let's check back in about 2,000 years. The entire region is a hotbed of hatred, violence, and terrorism and has been since before Saul of Tarsus was blinded by a light on the Damascus Road, culminating in one of the most dramatic Christian conversions in recorded history.
Change taking time - that's not what was on the 1960s agenda - we wanted change and we wanted it then; "We want the world and we want it now. . . " (Jim Morrison of the Doors). It didn't happen, but maybe my generation started something. We appraised the values we were raised with, questioned them, and wanted better. Perhaps looking over our shoulders, realizing that the world doesn't always respond as quickly as we think it should, helps us see what was right and wrong with our generation and the upheaval bring about. Maybe, just maybe, that backward glance can help us respond to the present generation, help them make plans for theirs and our future. JFK said it aptly: "We all inhabit the planet and breathe the same air." Why is it so hard to connect the dots?
1 comment:
Thanks for your clarity on the issue of the 60s. I still say (as I did in my blog post IT'S BEEN AWHILE) that I am the ONLY good thing to have come out of the 60s.
Keep up the good work both here and at the plant!
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