One of my most vivid summer memories goes all the way back to 1967, which now seems almost like an age of innocence. I was lucky enough to be living in Santa Cruz, California, and for once, I was in the right place at the right time. I spent as much of that time as possible up the coast in San Francisco. This was not because of any special devotion to antique cable cars or overpriced fish restaurants. At that time, San Francisco was ground zero for the Hippie phenomenon. Young people had flocked there from all over America and the world to create what newspapers called a “Counter Culture.” This was the newest and most colorful example of America’s perpetual culture war - the war between freedom and order. San Francisco in 1967 was the high point of the youth counterculture, and it was all about freedom. They called it the Summer of Love. What could be more counter to our regular culture than love?
I liked the Hippies. They were gentle and amusing, mellowed by a huge marijuana consumption, and they meant well. They despised money and material possessions and thought that libertarianism meant freedom to live as you liked (“Do Your Own Thing”) rather than freedom to make unlimited profits through deregulation. They were doomed from the start. What kind of political program is “Peace and Love?” Our present leaders would be shocked by such a revolutionary idea.
For a moment that summer, it seemed that the young protestors might actually make some impact on a country that was being roiled by the Vietnam War and the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement. Could a movement of nonviolent people without wealth or power but inspired by slogans like “Make Love Not War” succeed in changing a whole culture? It was a naïve question, and I’ll save you the suspense: the answer is no.
I’m all in favor of love, but a whole summer of love demanded too much of human nature. The entire wistful movement dissolved into bad drug experiences, crime, and conflict with the forces of order over petty issues like housing and public nudity. On Oct. 6, 1967, a mock funeral for “The Hippie” was held in the Haight-Ashbury district, and that was the end of that particular, hopeful episode.
I don’t think we could describe the past few months as a summer of love – rather the opposite. Perhaps we should try again, but on a more modest scale. The French have a National Day of Kindness once a year, but kindness is no more fashionable than love these days. Too many things conspire to make us wary of kindness as a form of weakness: sports, war, video games, business, and, of course, politics.
Even a whole day of kindness might be beyond us. Perhaps next summer we could manage a single afternoon of tolerance. Would that be too much to ask?
