The Past as Prelude:
I am a product of the '60's. But then so are many others who are nothing like me. So let's not over play this generalization. Still, the '60"s probably had the most influence on my persona of today. The 60's were a decade of intense cultural wars, social protests, entertainment revolutions, an outrageous war, and political/religious turmoil. To be honest, I was not a warrior in any of these turmoils. But eventually the messages behind many of these conflicts sunk in and in subsequent years I changed my politics, my religious beliefs, my tolerance levels, my priorities, my social life, and my relationship to Mother Nature.
In youth there is an intensity level that magnifies just about everything. I could not possibly get as excited about anything today as I did about everything back in my youth. Back then relationships were intense and I was driven by charged emotions about most everything.
During and after college certain individuals of unusual introspective natures virtually made me see things I could not see before, understand better the nature of justice and diversity and charitableness. In essence, I learned earliest in life how to protect myself and achieve things personally---then learned to expand my understanding and empathy to those less privileged than I. By the time I reached my terminational years there was a lot less attributing any success to my own genius and self achievement, and a far greater understanding that almost all the basic building blocks for success were handed to me via God's laws of evolution---like my parents, place of birth, the schools I attended, my neighborhood friends, my athletic or scholastic abilities, my looks, my health, etc. For better or for worse these were the cards dealt to me by God's created evolutionary process---and these cards kind of determined my successes and failures. People build people and I was no exception. Most of those mentors responsible for the real education of myself are gone---gone with the wind---and so too will I, and, like them, will take a compelled last giant leap into the dark. Ready or not, here I come. There were 6 never-to-be-forgotten tutors in my younger years of life who affected my inner psyche enough to really change my persona. When Obama addressed a rally in Florida the day before the election and tears strolled down his cheeks after being told his grandmother, who he has stated helped make him the persona he now is, had just died---I understood the pain he felt. Those are the times when a part of you dies too, the saddest of sadness descends, and a Lincolnesque melancholy permanently envelopes a part of your psyche. We mostly suffer silently, not like a young horse when removed from his mother after months of close attachment---and the young horse brays with an eerie blating that gives sound to the depth of the loss.
Below are some of the quotations from the sixties which reconstruct the era for any of those who lived through that decade: (I didn't list the authors as sometimes it is best to just concentrate on the message)
"If you can remember the Sixties, you weren't really there"
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex"
"I feel that this do-or-die, my-country-right-or-wrong kind of patriotism is not merely out of place in a nuclear armed world, it is criminal egotism on a monstrous scale. The world won't be safe until people in all countries recognize it for what it is and, instead of cheering the leader who talks that way, impeach him"
"white people sending black people to make war on yellow people in order to defend the land they stole from red people"
'we have guided missiles and misguided men"
"i ain't got no quarrel with the Viet Cong.....No Viet Cong ever called me a nigger"
"If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad"
"Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today"
"We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it."
"The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race."
"Draft beer, not students"
"Make love, not war"
"Hell no, we won't go"
"Girls Say Yes to Men Who Say NO "
"Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry".
" I want my woman dirty looking, as though I'd found her in some alley."
"Save water, shower with a friend"
"If it feels good, do it"
"Wheat Germ, Holly has your bag with your medicine. Please meet at the information booth as soon as you can, please."
"Due to lack of interest, Tomorrow has been canceled."
Being told "We don't serve Negroes" by a white restaurant waitress, Dick Gregory responded, "No problem, I don't eat Negroes".
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character".
"Non violence is a powerful and just weapon...which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals."
"If you think I'll bleed nonviolently, you'll be sticking me for the rest of my life. But, if I tell you I'll fight back, there will be less blood. I'm for reciprocal bleeding."
"If SNCC had said Negro Power or Colored Power, white folks would have continued sleeping easy every night. but BLACK POWER! BLACK! And the visions came of alligator infested swamps arched by primordial tress and moss dripping from the limbs and out of the depths of the swamp, the mire oozing from his skin, came the black monster and fathers told their daughters to be in by nine instead of nine-thirty. "
"your either part of the solution or part of the problem."
"We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated".
To the Columbia University President: "Up against the wall, motherfucker, this is a stick up. "
"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."
"The foundations of authority have been blasted to bits in America because the whole society has been indicted, tried, and convicted of injustice. To the youth, the elders are the Ugly Americans; to the elders, the youth have gone mad."
"Personally, I always held my flower in a clenched fist"
"The youth rebellion is a worldwide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I do not believe they will calm down and be ad execs at thirty as the Establishment would like us to believe. Millions of young people all over the world are fed up with shallow unworthy authority running on a platform of bullshit."
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part....and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears.... and you've got to make it stop."
"We'd been raised on a diet of anti-communism; American was anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-anything critical of society"
"Today's Pig is Tomorrow's Bacon"
"America, Love It or Leave It."
"If your heart is not in American, get your ass out"
The above, while substantially incomplete, gives a picture of the raw conflict going on in the 60's---racial conflict, equal rights for women conflicts, Vietnamese War conflict, gays coming out of the closet conflicts, sexual revolution conflicts, planetary concerns conflicts, rebellion against greed and injustice conflicts, a broadside attack on the status quo conflicts, and diversity pushed as a good, not a bad, conflicts.
The 70's bought in a back lash and an abundance of material things, and things settled down, BUT now this new century seems once again about to explode over equally tumultuous issues. Another Past as Prelude. It should be interesting.
