“At heart, it was always and really about that license, whatever the official branding. Formally, the Love Pageant Rally of 1966 and subsequent “Human Be-In” had political goals, trying to unite in pursuit of a new age both the antiwar movement (whose elites viewed the hippies as too stoned) and the hippies (who considered the antiwar movement as too uptight and enmeshed in conventional politics). In practice, the culmination of this effort, 1967’ s Summer of Love, ended up less a synthesis of the various strands of Leftist political culture than a straight-up antithesis, standing against middle-class morality on matters of drugs and sex and for very little else.
“In keeping with the hedonic theme, many ostensibly political events were really more about drugs than demos. The Pageant’s date, October 6, 1966, was not the anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the Emancipation Proclamation, women’s suffrage, or anything too goody-goody or consistent with political platform. Rather, 10/ 6/ 66 was the day when LSD became illegal in California, an event to be protested, inevitably, by taking LSD. “ -Gibney, Bruce Cannon. A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America (p. 54). Hachette Books. Kindle Edition.
Fair enough. There was a lot of hedonism at the heart of our protests and resistances in the 60’s and 70’s. Our issues with the war, the establishment, racial, gender, and economic equality, and whatever else we addressed were often used as justifications for our choice to do drugs and screw freely. We did as much with relativism in which we took an ethical issue to an ontological one that eventually resulted in the overreach of Richard Bach’s Illusions. But as we all know (and knew then), even a relativistic hippy knows better than to step in front of a moving bus –that was unless they were on Acid. The thing was: we really didn’t need to go to these extremes since it came down to an issue of engaging in activities that should have been matters of personal choice.
But I think Gibney’s background in law, hedge funds, and venture Capitalism becomes a liability, blind spot, and outright hypocrisy. The main problem is that for all his articulation, he still seems stuck in the tyranny of the functional disseminated for the sake of producer/consumer Capitalism: that which he clearly prospered from. This is why he dismisses the drug culture and sexual revolution with such venom. It is also why he addresses (articulately (the sociopathy inherent in Capitalism while conveniently dancing around the issue of Capitalism itself. Here he comes off like an alcoholic trying to convince themselves that if we engage in the same behavior in different ways, we’ll be able to continue with the vice involved without the consequences. In 12 step programs, they call that denial.
What this results in is Gibney failing to see the mixed package the 60’s and 70’s actually were. He fails, for instance, to see that regardless of what people were “doing it for”, it still managed to produce results. Advances in social justice were made. And they’re still being made (based on the spirit of the 60’s (such as the advancement of LGTB rights and the legalization of marihuana –the use of which he condemns. He further fails to mention how many of those boomers, taking drugs in dorm rooms and riding on a government funded education, are now out there fighting the good fight for environmentalism and other causes such as the ACLU –many of which no longer do drugs. This is further why he (out of what feels like pop hipster cynicism (can dismiss Hillary Clinton as he does as an opportunistic ice queen while completely neglecting to note that she did attempt to get us the same healthcare system every other advanced nation has, only to be beat down by the sociopathy Gibney describes.
In fact, one has to wonder if Gibney doesn’t share the same sociopathic resistance to such a non-market healthcare system that might benefit the many at the expense of a certain group of people. Perhaps hedge fund managers and venture Capitalists?