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36 Years Since 1969 and We're Still Hip
By Dorian Bensen
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A lot of kids of my generation, at least the ones who were born to liberal parents, grew up revering the 1960's. Many of us even went through our own “hippie phase.” I know I did, donning tie-dyed shirts, baggy flower-print dresses, and Birkenstocks for a couple of my teen years. I’m not so sure that any of us really had a clear picture of what the 60's were or what the decade meant, but from what we could tell, it had been a hell of a good time and Reagan had not been president…heaven, almost.
No, we didn’t have actual memories, but we did have Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69,” which even to us seemed oddly incongruous and which I unfortunately heard on the radio a few days ago.
Which got me to thinking that now is as good a time as any to celebrate an anniversary of the year 1969 -- the height of 60's culture -- because it’s safe to say that by now a full generation has certainly passed since then, and also because it has been 36 years since ’69, and those are all multiples of three, and I take that as a sign.
It’s important to look at changes and constants, successes and failures. How far have we come in those 36 years? And how have we failed to progress?
In cultural lore, 1969 would not be 1969 without Woodstock. Hendrix, The Doors, The Dead, Janis Joplin; for the most part, all of those musicians who couldn’t be fucked with convention and rules. Same with the crowd, the majority of which stormed into the makeshift venue without tickets and proceeded to ingest liquor, drugs, and sex in unprecedented numbers. It was the epoch of the hippie era – the 60's finally really getting started just as they were about to draw to a close.
Right around the same time, which is strange considering that one never associates the two events, Neil Armstrong and Company were headed for the moon, and then they landed on it. Neil uttered his now-famous one-liner, and for a fleeting time anything seemed possible. This qualifies as one of the events where everyone alive knows where they were when it happened (much preferable to most of the others…JFK’s assassination, 9-11…).
There’s always violence, and 1969 was no different. Violence was rife in the following parts of the world: Northern Ireland, the Soviet/Chinese border, The Suez Canal (between Israel and Egypt, or in other words, The Middle East)…
And Vietnam, along with Cambodia, of course. It was during 1969 that Nixon began bombing Cambodia in secret, without Congress’ or the American public’s approval. And it was also during this year that Seymour Hersh exposed the Mai Lai Massacre. Anti-war sentiment culminated a few months after the moon landing and Woodstock, when roughly 250,000 protestors descended on Washington DC to express their disapproval. Yes, these were the days when people cared!!
Civil Rights were actually progressing in 1969: The Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of Mississippi’s schools and affirmative action was enacted. And the Stonewall Riots in New York City kicked off the Gay Rights Movement.
Three years later, my brother was born, and then in 1977, me. We are the generation whose parents embodied the 1960’s. And today, we are approximately the age that they were then (I am just about 28. My mother was 25 in 1969).
The time between 1969 and the present has seen three other decades come and go: The Desolate 1970's, the Decadent 1980's, and the Prosperous 1990's. And we are halfway through another decade; a decade that will surely be defined by history as the time when terrorists attacked us and we went batshit in response.
Culturally, the big thing in 2005 seems to be the Internet (which, incidentally, first went “online” in 1969). People are getting their music online, their entertainment, their friends, and their mates. Blogs are the new Media. Amazon is the new conglomerate. Google is one of the most attractive stocks on earth.
Where in ’69 the fringe folk were called “hippies” and everything was Peace and Love, in ‘05 they are “hipsters” and everything is Ironic and Self-Indulgent.
Today, the great steps in science are happening not in outer space but much closer to home, within the human body. We’ve got the Human Genome Product , and we have already cloned animals. The relevant debates we will have to deal with sooner rather than later are those concerning human cloning and “enhancement.”
The event for which everyone of our generations knows where they were when it happened was, of course, 9-11. Today, we are still dealing with the effects of that attack. And just like 36 years ago, there is a sizeable anti-war movement underway -- even though the media didn't get so soppy about it as they did in 1969, the fact remains that there were hundreds of thousands of protesters present at the Republican Convention last summer in defiance of Bush's pro-war government. People still care!!.
And, just like then, the president is conducting operations in a secretive and unauthorized manner. Abu Ghraib is akin to Mai Lai. Iraq is often compared, whether with justification or not, to Vietnam. American soldiers are dying for a cause they are not quite so sure about.
There’s still violence in the Middle East, Northern Ireland is quieter but by no means a tranquil place, and Sudan is struggling with war and genocide. In addition to this, there are bombings and other violence occurring in westernized countries the world over at the hands of terrorists.
Civil Rights is still underway, nowhere near to accomplishing its ultimate goals. Gays can’t marry (although, I’m not quite sure why they’d want to, for the most part), affirmative action may have helped but it hasn’t fixed things. And now we have a new underclass of Latinos, doing the jobs the rest of us wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole; illegal, without benefits, without protection.
It would seem at first glance, then, that the more things change the more they stay the same, that we trade in one problem for another, one earth shattering moment fades only to see the emergence of another one. But actually, I don’t know. The direct comparison between now and then is alternatingly hopeless and comforting. It changes and it doesn’t. There will always be problems and sometimes they will be solved. We will always think that the older generation doesn’t understand, and they will likewise always shake their heads at the naiveté of those who come after them. But we are bound together, if by nothing else, then at least by this: everyone will always cringe at Bryan Adams songs.
The end.
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Dorian Bensen is a writer living in New York City. She can be contacted here.
© 2005 Me Three