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3. The Vietnam War, the Hippie Countercultural Movement and the Mass Challenging of Taboos
I found the following poem when I did a search on Yahoo for the keywords "Hippie" and "Taboo."
Flowers
by Mick Davis Forth we came in innocent youth
With butterfly wings unfurled
We spoke of peace
We lived in love
Bestowing it over the world
Over shattered ruins of joy and truth
Our beautiful flowers appeared
We cast off war
We threw aside hate
And all of mankind we revered
We opened our eyes
We opened our minds
We offered to open theirs too
We took joy in living
And honestly giving
And freeing our souls of taboo
Come join us in love!
Come with us in joy!
Unto the whole world we'd exclaim
Our music rang forth
As our rainbow sublime
Illumined idealism's flame
Some heard us not
Some didn't care
Some sneered and called us insane
We handed them flowers
We offered them peace
They rewarded our efforts with pain
But still to this day
Although we now know
This world is not ready for love
We circle together
Yes we'll work forever
To manifest joy from above
We know we are strong
We'll still sing our song
Should Babylon crumble and fall
With strength of Spirit
We never will quit
Until we've enlightened them all
So come take my hand
Become part of the band
And sing that our love will not die
Sing loud and sing long
Our euphoric love song
For love is the ultimate high
And thus joined as one we can rise to the sun
Knowing at last we are free
Above pain and strife
Beyond this last life
Eternal in bliss we shall beMick Davis
I found the following article when I did a search on Yahoo for the keywords "Hippie" and "Counterculture." It was written by a homeless man named Ace Backwords. The entire article can be found at:
http://www.sfherald.com/columnists/backwards/ace05.html
Counterculture Casualties
"I haven't driven a car in 25 years. I haven't been to a doctor or a dentist in twenty years. I haven't had a bank account in fifteen years. I haven't watched a TV show in ten years. I haven't lived in anything that would remotely be considered a "home" in six years. (Which reminds me of the old street person joke: "What does the street person do when he gets sick? He dies." Ha. Ha.)"
(snip)
"In a radio interview, cartoonist R. Crumb talked about coming to the Haight-Ashbury in '67 right before the so called Summer of Love. He mentioned what a beautiful city San Francisco was then: the streets were clean and safe, the people were friendly, housing was cheap and plentiful, living was easy, etc. And he mentioned an idea that was very much in vogue then amongst the countercultural set: How much more wonderful the city (and the world) would be when the Age of Aquarius set in and all the old farts died off and all the groovy hippies took over."
"Well, I'm here to tell you, all the old farts did in fact die off, and all the hippies (including me) did in fact come tramping through the city. And it was hardly improved by our presence. But here's the funny part. These "'60s icons" seem to think it's still 1967 and that they should be judged on all the groovy, idealistic things they intended to do, as opposed to the actual effect they've had. I think it's getting a little late in the game for that."
"In the '50s, Oakland was averaging about twelve murders a year. After the '60s it started averaging about 150 murders a year. What would we have done without all the "love" the hippies invented in the '60s?"
"I think we all could benefit from an honest appraisal of what actually went down in the '60s. Lord knows we still haven't sorted it out. Lord knows this society is schizo in its attempts to assimilate the counterculture into the mainstream."
(Snip)
"My opinion? LSD is garbage, Jerry Garcia was an idiot, and the '60s was b***s***. The '60s was basically a dead-end we went staggering down. The '60s impacted on the modern street scene in several devastating ways:"
"1. Drugs (need I say more?)"
"2. The sloppy sexual unions that came out of the so-called "sexual liberation" movements - and the shattered family structures and the generation of orphans (especially in the black community) that resulted from that."
"3. The romanticized notion of being against the mainstream society. Number three is probably the most devastating, because usually the street person starts out feeling alienated enough from society to begin with. Then the counterculture ethos feeds him this romanticized notion of the Hip Rebel Outsider, which locks him permanently into this state of alienation. Why try and integrate yourself into society when your alienation is your badge of honor, the very source of your identity."
From 1960 to 1975, America fought the Vietnam war. During this war, depending on the report you read, somewhere between 50,000 to over 100,000 Americans died. Another three hundred thousand Americans were injured. There were 1,800,000 total deaths. This war was fought against "the communists", people that we could not see, and for the protection of the Vietnam people, more people that we could not see and, in fact, had probably been people that most Americans had never even heard of before.
"In the United States, sentiment against U.S. participation in the war mounted steadily from 1967 on and expressed itself in peace marches, demonstrations, and acts of civil disobedience. Growing numbers of politicians and ordinary citizens began to question whether the U.S. war effort could succeed and even whether it was morally justifiable in a conflict that some interpreted as a Vietnamese civil war."
Britannica CD 98 Standard Edition �1994-1998 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fightin' for?
I don't give a d***
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up those pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
"I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die" � Country Joe and the Fish: 1965Where did the hippie countercultural movement of the sixties come from? What made so many stand up and challenge every single aspect of our society? Was the perceived corruption of the government so bad that people felt that the society that brought us the war must also be corrupt? What was it that created the mass challenging of societal taboos?
"The Vietnam war divided the country into hawks and doves. Thousands of young men fled to Canada rather than allow themselves to be drafted and sent to Vietnam. Back home, those remaining took to the streets to protest. Using non-violent tactics to get their message across, teach-ins helped explain [w]hat was going on in Vietnam. Marches - drawing as many as 500,000 people at one time - were held. Draft card burning indicated non-cooperation with the war machine. Protests at induction centers attempted to stop people from signing up for the war. A massive protest once surrounded the Pentagon. The bloodshed continued."
"Leaving Vietnam was the happiest day of many soldiers lives. That happiness changed returning home. Soldiers were jeered at. Some were called baby killers. Friends, family and even strangers to these soldiers made the message clear: Vietnam was a taboo subject. Those soldiers who took part in this dirty little war were considered embarrassments to America."
http://www.ridgewater.net/mmdt1021/samples/fl02site12/page3.html
"This war has already stretched the generation gap so wide that it threatens to pull the country apart."
Sen. Frank Church, May 1970
How strong was the effect of the Vietnam War on American culture? Below is an incomplete list of the positive and negative factors kids of the sixties would have had to measure and consider when choosing whether or not (or how much) to abandon US culture.
Adhering to the Abandoning the
Dominant Taboo Dominant Taboo
Structure Structure
-----------------------------------------------------------
Positives Acceptance of Life
Parents Sex
Food and Shelter Drugs
"Honor" Acceptance of
Peers
"Freedom"
Fun
New Beautiful Music
"Intellectual Superiority"
Love
Friendship
Food and Shelter
-----------------------------------------------------------
Negatives Possible Death Disapproval of
Terror Parents
Possible Physical Possible Homelessness
Handicap "Shame"
Shame
DoubtThe words "Honor," "Freedom," "Shame," and "Intellectual Superiority" are all quoted, because all were perceived at the time in ways that might not adhere to current definitions.
The "honor" that a person who had not yet entered the Vietnam war might have received was very different than the "honor" that a veteran from WWII had received. WWII was widely accepted as an honorable war; a war in which a person could be proud to have served. The Vietnam war though was not widely accepted thus making the perceived value of the honor of serving in it much less.
The "freedom" that a person would have received from being a member of the countercultural movement would have felt like true freedom from the beginning for a short time, until the consequences of unwise decisions began to build up thereby reducing said freedom. The important aspect of it though, is that it "felt" like true freedom to begin with and was much more enticing than the lukewarm "honor" that was available even though the end result of this "freedom" was much less than actual freedom.
The "shame" that a preson would have felt by not entering into the war would have not felt much like shame due to the overwhelming numbers of individuals who were arguing that the war itself was wrong.
The "Intellectual Superiority" that was felt (lines 11-13 and 39-40 of the above poem "Flowers") was based on a new social structure that many today consider faulty due to its lack of attention and responsibility in the areas of sex, drugs and financial responsibility. At the time though, the new social structure "seemed" better due to its lack of immediate hurtful consequences and its mass of pleasureable "new freedoms." At the time, to youths, the lifestyle seemed superior and those who participated in it therefore felt pride.
The Vietnam War appears to have been the main source of movement away from the Judeo/Christian social/taboo structure of America in the 1960s. Youths simply were unwilling to die for a cause that they felt was unjustified, and the abandonment of the social structure itself was a byproduct of that.
http://thebird.org/poetry/md072198.html http://www.sfherald.com/columnists/backwards/ace05.html http://www.vietnamwar.net/quotations/quotations.htm http://www.ridgewater.net/mmdt1021/samples/fl02site12/page3.html Britannica CD 98 Standard Edition �1994-1998 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
-- Jonathan Scott -- [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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