(If you have not as yet, please take a minute to read part 1)
The 1960s was a pivotal time when it came to our culture. If I could sum it up in a phrase it would be, “I just want to be free.” In short, it was a revolution.
To explain it three questions have to be answered. Free from what? And what? Who was revolting? And what were they revolting against.
Before we get to the answers it’s important to understand the context of the time then.
There was the struggle of the civil rights movement. The Vietnam war was in full bloom and the curuption of our politicians were on full display. JFK was assassinated. Martin Luther King was assassinated. We had landed on the Moon. Thousands of soldiers were coming back in body bags, and there was Watergate. In short, it was a time of political and social upheaval.
Free from what? For the first time the youth of America were questioning the values and morality of their parents and grandparents. They had enough of what the establishment defined as reality and success. They looked at their parents and thought, with all their success and material abundanceandstrick religious practices, they still weren’t fulfilled. They wanted to be free from what they viewed as restraint. The rock group Chicago had a song that reinforced their heart cry, “I just want to be free.”
At the same time college professors were teaching existentialism. The philosophy that if your looking for reality and will only find it inside yourself.
Armed with this new way of thinking rejected everything that was taught to them previously.
The “hippie movement” began. Sex was no longer confined to the context of marriage. They had sex with whoever was willing and with as many people that they wanted. Clothes were optional. Nudest colonies sprang up all over the country.
They experimented with all sorts of drugs in an effort to “find themselves”. To find their own personal “reality.”
It was a time of total debauchery.
Next up and to sum this chapter in America history, and in the lyrics of a popular song of that time, “We still haven’t found what we’re looking for.”