What are your thoughts, opinions, experiences and insight of the '60s (or hippie generation)?

Question

Again, this is part of my research for my Effective Essay Writing course. Please respond only if you fully consent to your comments, views and anything else that you chose to include being quoted or represented in my work. Thanks everyone, you have proven to be a most valuable resource!

Answer 1

The 60's was a fight for personal freedom and identity. The 1950's was a straight and narrow generation. People started to fight against gender expectation, the racial descrimination, and age suppression of the 1950's. This was the time when people were fighting for a cause: school protests, freedom riders, women's movement, ... ect.



LBJ passed many safety and environmentally friendly laws: seat-belt act, clean air act (you could not see NY skyline because of the smog and hundreds of people would be hospitalized for it), clean water act (a river lit on fire for a few days), supported the black movement, - ect. If there was any recent president who passed many worth wild acts, it was LBJ.



Did you know that women in the 1950s were prescribed speed as an anti-depression. Many young girls would marry into being a house wife and that's it. Many were left questioning, "Is this it? Is this all my life is going to be?"

Answer 2

You know they say what is old, will become new again. And so it has.



The 60's were much like today, the politics was frenzied, there was a stupid, needless war raging. The economy was falling apart and people were afraid of the evil from across the world. Change the names but the story is the same.



So the youth of the time, in hopes of making a better future for themselves and their kids, did the only thing they could. They revolted. They stood up against the establishment, and they had a ton of good times in the process.



Out of the ashes of the 60's came the calmer and more peaceful times of the 80's and 90's. The economy thrived, and people became complacent. They forgot what it was they protested for. Now they are our leaders. They are the ones saying "we want change". Vote for me to have "change happen". But what are they planning to do to make these changes?



Back on point. The 60's for me were a time of baseball games, climbing trees, and kindergarten through 5th grade.

I was born in 1960. But, what I remember was a simpler time. A time when there was less information being jammed into every orifice 24-7. To make a phone call, you had to go to a phone. A pay phone was a nickel. A bottle of pop was a dime, and it was a glass bottle, that if you returned it, you would get 2c. back. TV only had 3 channels, if you even had a TV. Cars were big beautiful metal gas hogs. Gas was fifteen to twenty five cents a gallon. To get the news, you had to read a newspaper. There was no CNN or Fox News to fill you in on every detail of Brittany's life. The radio was AM only and they played a lot of country and big band music. To hear rock and roll, you had to go to the record store and buy the .45 record.



My house was jacked up, but no one cared or said anything. My mom was a raging drunk and my dad was verbally abusive. Back then, no one called social services. I don't think they even had agencies for that then. It was expected that children would be beaten for bad behavior. Women took beatings from their husbands and it was considered their fault.



I didn't even see a black person until I was in high school. I lived in a small town, no blacks at all. I knew of them and I had heard the names they were called. I remember when I was about 14, I asked my mother why a black persons skin was so dark. She told me it was because they drank too much coffee and it stained them.



That wasn't the only strange story from my childhood but this is getting long so I will end here.



Please e-mail me if you want more. See my profile for the link.

Answer 3

Actual questions of some kind would have been helpful.



I was a child during the 60s, living in the SF bay area. My older sister was at the Be-In in SF.



At the end of the 60s, we moved to the coast where a lot of hippy "drop-outs" were building illegal little dwellings, in the "back to the land" "movement".



So, I have some experience.



Actually, I was more at home in hippy culture than "straight" culture.



Hippies were much more varied than most people realize. That is, a lot of people took on the trappings, but were otherwise not really hippies at heart. And there were all sorts of variations.



Hippies, being mostly young, were, on the whole, naive. THINKING about love and peace don't make them so.



There was a sub-group we called "Jesus Freaks" -- hippy, flower-children who "saw the light" and saw themselves as Jesus's true followers.



This was before the "Born Again" more conservative movement. But this was where I first heard the expression "born again" -- people very unlike the later born agains!



It also had a lot that was precursor to "New Age" "movement" -- crystals and pyramids were seen as magical; people believed in telepathy, auras, and other such stuff. (Reincarnation was pretty big, too.)



As I say, having some idea what you want to know about would be helpful.



A lot of people for decades have said that it was just a thing, and ended up having no effect, but I disagree. A LOT of hippies grew up to do very worthwhile things with their lives, that were the result of all the "peace and tolerance" talk of the time -- not to mention the incipient environmentalism.



There are a LOT of former hippies involved in such things as Amnesty International, Doctors (and Journalists, et al.) Without Borders, and all sorts of worthwhile groups.



One guy we met on the coast, a hippy who had dropped out of college -- studying to be an architect -- stayed in the area.



Years after we left I was there and saw his name on a sign advertising Solar Design.



Went back years later still, and talked to him. He was an architect. He'd just gotten a really cool computer program that let clients "walk through" their future homes, to really see what the design would be like. He was all jazzed about it.



(I had a major crush on him back when we lived there. I still think he's really cool.)



When we moved to the coast, summer of '68 or 9-- I guess 9 -- was an interesting time. There were hitchhickers on Hwy 1.



Local boys -- with nothing to do -- would chuck rocks at the hippies for fun. Within a few years, they were dressing like hippies themselves, and doing grass.



At first, people were hostile, but over time, the "hippies" ended up becoming part of the very straight, conservative local communities. Many were artists, dancers, and such (one dancer had hurt herself, could no longer dance on Broadway, so came to that area for its beauty, and taught dance and lived the hippy life).



You could click my avatar, and, if you allow email, pop me a note.



These are just stray ramblings to no real purpose; if you had questions or wanted more detail, I could reply.

Answer 4

Remember the 60's were in response to the 50's. The 50's were a response to the end of WWII, the baby boom, new industries in television and manufacturing. The 50's gave birth to a social, political, and racial atmosphere due to the tensions of the cold war, a conscious drift toward equality do to the genocide of Nazism and racism, and the corrupt culture of government and politics. The sixties were a time of rebellion against the forces which caused these problems globally. Many black soldiers came back from fighting against racism only to be treated terribly, which spawned political groups for equality (black panthers). Women were working in factories, had their own baseball teams, and helped run the country while the men fought. After men returned, women felt liberated from traditional silent housewife roles, (A feminist movement started). American's feared the spread of a new threat "Communism" After WWII due to tensions with Russia (Russia controlled part of Germany and began making nuclear weapons). The sixties were the heighth of political, racial, and social demands and tensions by oppressed and counter-culture groups. Hippies were a direct response to rejecting traditional roles of pro-war/ racist conservatism that saturated the country and lead to WWII. It was a global movement.

Answer 5

it was all about the love, man