It was the Summer of Love. The largest single demographic group were in their teens and twenties. They were crashing at each other's pads, borrowing each other's cars, sleeping with each other's boyfriends, smoking each other's dope. There were so many of them, and they felt united by this way of living which didn't keep track of who owed whom what. The tenuous sensation of being part of something larger, something unique, was enhanced by drugs, sex, and rock and roll. And there _was_ something there. With so many people feeling it and seeing it all at the same time, it was more real than it ever had been before, and maybe more real than it will ever be again. But it wasn't what people thought it was. It wasn't a political movement. It wasn't a drug effect. It wasn't a spiritual awakening.
I don't know what it was. I'm still working on that. I think that part of it, though, was simply the optimistic belief that it was possible to make real, substantive changes to people.
I followed a friend-of-a-friend link here and wanted to comment that, from my point of view (I was 18 in 1968, about to graduate from high school and spending most of my weekends hitch-hiking between the Sierra foothills town where I lived and San Francisco), you've nailed both the character of the era and the difficulty of parsing its place in history.
I think we Boomers may have been the last generation to believe, deep in our hearts, that we could change the world. We did, in many ways - practically none of them the ones we intended or hoped for. But the optimisim of that belief was powerful beyond words.
Would you object if I added a link to this entry to my own LJ?
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2003-03-30 11:02 am (UTC)I don't know what it was. I'm still working on that. I think that part of it, though, was simply the optimistic belief that it was possible to make real, substantive changes to people.
I followed a friend-of-a-friend link here and wanted to comment that, from my point of view (I was 18 in 1968, about to graduate from high school and spending most of my weekends hitch-hiking between the Sierra foothills town where I lived and San Francisco), you've nailed both the character of the era and the difficulty of parsing its place in history.
I think we Boomers may have been the last generation to believe, deep in our hearts, that we could change the world. We did, in many ways - practically none of them the ones we intended or hoped for. But the optimisim of that belief was powerful beyond words.
Would you object if I added a link to this entry to my own LJ?