Where did the 60's & 70's spirit go?

I'm thinking it was drug quality; 1975 was just about the time really good acid became scarce, coke too.

I would not say there were no significant social changes during the period when the hippies grew into adults.  For instance, it would probably have been unthinkable in the 60s for America to have a black President.   Irrespective of what said President has achieved, it is significant that he got to the top job in the first place.  I think at a broad level, there is greater tolerance for different cultures in democratic nations.   Unfortunately, the 'war' against communism was won through questionable means (which I won't get into), the Islamic Gulf and West Asia polarised and isolated far too much and it seems Creationism is now taught as akin to something passing for science?  I don't know much about the last one, just reacting to what I read in the papers.  But being too pessimistic about the state of the world is much worse than all of these.   I think we should strive to maintain societies where there is respect for law and order on the street (not chaos and indiscipline) while at the same time, individual liberty is permitted to the greatest extent legitimately possible.  Overthrowing the ruling class is a pipe dream and not particularly necessary to achieve either of these goals.         

lol, just a reaction to the pessimism I see in most such discourse.   The 60s generation would have had parents who had seen WWII.  If that didn't burden them enough to kill their optimism, why should it be different now.  In the last couple of years, I find people run out of steam and give up too easily, whether in micro or macro situations.  It could simply be a work situation where people are afraid of even attempting to persuade the other department about something they need to get done.   And having given up, they blame people for the state of affairs rather than their lack of perseverance.  I know it is not really related to the topic, but I am just saying we don't need to paint everything in black.  

Edited by rogerthat - April 07 2013 at 03:29

Where did the 60's & 70's spirit go?

Madison Ave. put a price tag on it.

Ironically the corporate takeover of music was designed by hippies and everyone on this site is aware of that realization. No matter how many Frank Zappa speeches on the subject exist, all the kids I grew up with in the 60's and 70's were quite aware of that happening. A change was needed for these people to survive in the next generation..in which case one might view a hippie on the "Woodstock" film urinating and dancing in the mud that later became an executive with short hair/suit and tie. It makes you wonder just how genuine their anti-war/goverment rebellion truly was. There was chaos in the early 70's across the nation with cults corrupting the youth. At age 15 , I assumed it derived from the nutty sadistic experimental activity on the west coast with icon super stars like Charles Manson. Evidently the west coast was always more of a place to experiment with religion until..a few respected cult leaders  moved to my hometown on the east coast, kids went missing, and ritualistic killings frightened the community. Many were isolated incidents out of control , producing ritualistic killings and "born again" Christians were brought in to many towns producing a new net result of controlled power over the situation. When I was in high school..Pastor Harry Snook de-programmed a total of 90 teenage Devil worshippers. I personally believe the goverment wanted to rid society of this corruption and so individuals came to our school to censor the kind of music/environment we were exposed to. I believe that alone changed the concept/ideas of product sold in the U.S. Ironically this grew progressively worse in the bad hair days of the 80's with religious cults corrupting day care centers and mindless metal heads forming their pathetic "Lost Boys" cults. I personally believe by that time the entertainment industry was going in the opposite direction to gross millions by promoting the garbage that the goverment originally tried to censor for the sake of avoiding ritual killings, programming through the left hand path, abduction of innocent children by cults and heavy drug consumption. Every half of a decade ..the environment would change. First it was one belief system to change the youth that was later passed on or forgotten and would return once again in the evil corrupted kind of image for an excuse to profit. The press would profit through sensationalism until kids became de-sensitized by journalistic exploitation of violence. In the 60's and early 70's the presentation of entertainment through media was split in half. One half being the commercial world and the other being the prog/underground. It's money that changes everything and especially the freedom to express art to the public. 

Edited by TODDLER - April 07 2013 at 14:45

Atavachron wrote: I'm thinking it was drug quality; 1975 was just about the time really good acid became scarce, coke too.

There was a lot of bad acid before 1975, and a lot of coke after 1975

As you said earlier, they grew up.  I presume they looked for jobs on growing up.   And maybe they saw some of their friends who were into drugs slip into delinquency and lose the ability to control their lives.   Maybe it happened to themselves.   Perhaps, that makes them instinctively distrust somebody who was supposed to have smoked joint in his youth.  Especially, in these difficult times, such a reaction could be a plausible explanation.  But I am just speculating.   

The Dark Elf wrote: The free spirit of the 60s and early 70s descended into a morass of crass consumerism, and the corporate takeover of music. By the 80s, all that was left was bad hair, bad bands and death by unprotected sex.

That's pretty dang accurate.

If you look at youth culture today, it's a lot of sex, mindless entertainment, celebrity worship, consumerism, and general apathy about anything that matters.  Not saying that about everyone (certainly not about the young people on this site) but about the youth culture in general.  I think it's less of a return to conservative values like Gerard suggested, and more of a maintaining of liberal values but without the drive to push for change. 

There are probably a lot of factors in this, but I think a big one is that the hippie movement was by nature unsustainable; sure, it provoked a lot of change, but, as other posters pointed out, you can't maintain that attitude forever, at some point you have to settle down.  I think the influence of disillusioned hippies on their kids had a lot to do with it, as well as just general social entropy; there was good and bad in the hippie movement, and eventually, as Dark Elf pointed out, the good started to disinigrate and leave just the bad.

Those who questioned authority back in the 60s and 70s were sucked into the power structure.  College professors, in particular, have turned into apologists for the state because that's where their bread is buttered.  They promote group think instead of independent thinking.  Through a state run education system and an unquestioning mainstream media the statists have crushed the average persons desire for liberty and replaced it with a desire to A) be taken care of B) be part of a group.  The idiotic "left vs. right" political spectrum has been pounded into people from all angles so that people remain divided into teams chained to their masters in government.   Anyone who does not adhere to the notion that elections are a battle to see who gets to control your life for the next x number of years is cast as a nutjob or whacko.  I mean, why on earth wouldn't you want to tell everyone else how to live in this day and age, right?  A good example of how well this divide and conquer strategy has worked for the statists is the American anti-war movement which completely disappeared when a democrat entered the white house.

Edited by manofmystery - April 09 2013 at 10:50

I still have the spirit of the 70's.