The 60s were Different

Now, I haven’t actually seen Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and probably won’t any time in the near future. Hyper-violence is not my thing, although he does usually tell an interesting story and he does the hyper-violence thing with such style, and such humor. I like him a bit better than David Lynch, but both of them are in the “I’ll wait until I can download it or watch it on Netflix or something” category. I don’t need to spend money on that.
But, that’s not really the point of this blog. I was just reading a Facebook friend’s review of it, and he complained about how Tarantino didn’t understand the zeitgeist of the ’60s. I think that’s pretty likely. Pretty much nobody gets the zeitgeist of the ’60s, and it seems to me journalists and the media have been getting it wrong ever since, well, the ’60s.
You can’t describe it the way you can other decades. It’s not defined by it’s fashions. Although they set it apart, the only fashion the Hippies believed in was anti-fashion. The fact that it became fashion is sort of a comment on herd mentality, but it’s not what the time what the Hippies were all about, and when we’re talking about the 60s, we’re talking about the Hippies. Of course, there were millions of people, a majority even, who were not Hippies, but that is true in every generation. Most people today are not Rappers or Gangsters.
It’s not totally defined by it’s music, although the music was great, and important. The 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and so on have all had their music, and some of it has stood out.
The difference between the 60s and other time periods, between the Hippies and the Yuppies and the Punks and all that followed is that the Hippies had a philosophy. We were making a concerted effort to give some meaning to our lives. The philosophy was threefold. Freedom was one point. Do your own thing. Equality was another. People living and grooving together. And love. We tried to live on love.
It was basically Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. The ideas have been around a long time, and occasionally surface under other guises.
Of course, Hippiedom wasn’t really sustainable as an economic model, and as musical and fashion trend, those are always on limited time, so the movement died down – to a simmer.
I am 65 but still proud to have been a Hippie, and as far as the basic philosophy of it is concerned, to still be one.