We Are the Counter Culture

I'm going to riff on a couple of ideas I mentioned in passing way back in 2010.  Take yourself back in time to the summer of 1969 - if you're old enough.  Consider this in the light of the last few years two historical events from that summer.  I'm talking about the Apollo 11, the first moon landing, and then the Woodstock music festival which was about 3 weeks later in mid-August.

The first was a tribute to hard working men and women: engineers, technicians, assemblers, and tens of thousands of hard working people who undertook a task that many viewed as impossible.  "To land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth by the end of this decade".  It was hard work, it was risky work.  Men died: outstanding men you'd be proud to have known or worked with.  It was a triumph of intellect, done with slide rules and calculators that your Smart Phone out powers by a factor of thousands.  Even today, it is thought of as being so hard to do that about 5% of the US population thinks we never did it.

These men weren't perfect; nobody ever is.  They worked hard, and in some cases played just as hard.  When it was the weekend, the workers on Kennedy Space Center, in Houston's Manned Spaceflight Center, and on the campuses of the many subcontractors by and large came home to their families and lived the suburban life of the dominant American culture.  Think weekend barbecues, Sunday drives, backyard swimming pools and dozens of other ideas that have come to be associated with the 50s and 60s.  Certainly Sunday included church for many of them. A song in the early '60s, Little Boxes, mocked that culture; mocked the idea of suburban tract houses.  It was a popular idea to attack; the Monkees did the same in "Pleasant Valley Sunday" within five years.  This was the dominant culture of the time, so the counterculture attacked it.   

The second was a bunch of kids having sex in the mud while drugged out of their minds, listening to singers and musicians drugged out of their minds.

The first group was dedicated to doing things others can barely only imagine - bending the universe to their will through sheer intellect and power.  They are "can do" people. 

The second group was dedicated to rubbing body parts against each other with no effort of will and no character.  Their entire focus in life is their genitals.   

The second group is now in charge of the country.

There's no denying that the counterculture of the 1960s is now the dominant culture in our country.  The examples are everywhere: the sexualization of even young children is widespread; the increasing sexualization of the content of movies and other entertainment is obvious to anyone who compares songs or movies from that period with now; the hookup culture is straight out of Woodstock; it is simply everywhere.  In the summer of 1969, TV family sitcoms like My Three Sons had functional fathers.  Today, if there is a father at all, he's shown as a bumbling moron always being educated by his children or wife.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in commercials, where men are always morons. 

One the worst effects of an incessant stream of labor and other regulations is a constant reduction in the number of people working a steady full-time job, and while the progress of technology has enabled more and higher quality home entertainment options for the dwindling incomes, there are fewer homes living in the older culture.  

Today, those of us who live a quiet life trying to work honestly and diligently at a career, provide for our families, spend time in quiet reverence and just keep plugging are the minority.  Those of us who want to be left alone, free to choose our way of living, our way of working, our way of worshiping and our way of earning, are in the minority.  If you object to having sexuality thrown in your face every time you venture outside, you're in the minority.  If you object to the perpetually intrusive government requiring more and more of you for no benefit to you, you're in the minority. 

In half a century, the country has turned upside down.  Counterculture and mainstream have switched completely.  Of course, I suggest we take it back, but the only way I know to do that is by being a good example.  And that won't work if nobody is watching you.

But I can't talk about this subject without showing this video of Joe Cocker from Woodstock, which always makes me laugh.

I can laugh at it, but I don't want Joe or his peeps telling me how to live.