40 Years After the "Summer of Love": A Study in Societal Change

These days, many "oldies" radio stations are playing a lot of music from the summer of 1967, the so-called summer of love. I remember it well. I was only 15, the Beatles were all the rage, and my friends and I couldn't wait to buy the Sgt. Pepper Loney Hearts Club Band album. This was the beginning of the hippie movement, free-love, flower-power, psychedelic drugs and peace signs. As a high school student, I was fascinated by the movement, caught up with the music, but like most of my friends, my strict upbringing kept me away from the dangerous parts of this movement - the drugs and early sex. But it was a fascinating time. Everything was about love and peace, and everyone talked about concern for your fellow man.

The peace and love movement not only influenced great music and new fashions, but also influenced my generation to think about careers that helped people. A lot of us became teachers, nurses, psychologists or social workers. We joined the peace corps. The computer age was twenty years away, and people spent more time with family, and went to dances, not bars.

How did we get to 2007, when instead of love and peace, people are exhibiting things like road rage. It's a far cry from the "Road to Shambala", made famous by Three Dog Night in the early seventies. At least in New York City, drivers have no respect for one another. People bump into you and don't say excuse me. Many children are brought up without knowing when to say "thank you," and work ethic is hard to find. Everyone wants to make a lot of money today, so that there are fewer and fewer young people interested in service careers such as teaching and nursing. Volunteerism is at an all time low. We want peace in the world, but very few of us know how to generate peace- peace in ourselves as well as peace with one another. Why are so many people on antidepressants - the new drug movement. What is missing, and how do we get it back?

Unfortunately, I believe my own generation is to blame. My generation parents taught us manners and protocol. They spent time with us, not just taking us to soccer practice or some other sport, but there was the evening family meal when all types of things were discussed. For most of us, our parents took us to church. The extended family lived nearby, not many states away. There was discipline in school and a dress code. We learned "real" things in school, not only what we needed to pass a state test.

This is what I believe happened. I believe my generation let things slide. Maybe we reacted against the strictness of our parents and thought we should ease up on our children. We didn't want to force religion on them. We were interested in their education and their making a good living, but emphasized competition and winning more than respect for others. Did we teach them protocol or when to say thank you? We started to depend on fast food in the rush to get them to all types of sports activities. We gave them everything they wanted because we could now afford to do what our parents could not do when we were growing up. In the meantime, travel became easier with more airlines, so our extended families began to move away. Their influence became long distant.

At the same time, everyone's "civil rights" started to become an issue. Schools cannot discipline beyond a certain point, and in some districts, you cannot even set a dress code. How will young people learn to dress for the work world, if they come to school as if they are cleaning their rooms? Newspapers don't hesitate to print provocative pictures of celebrities on page 2 or 3, and celebrities such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are all over the place with their latest escpades. In the meantime, HIV and AIDs are rampant worldwide.

For some young people, receiving a lot of material things but not getting enough of sound values, depression can set in. What does one look forward to when one has everything? They say you reap what you sow. If you receive everything but do not feel the satisfaction of giving of yourself, what do you have? Everyone must feel productive to be happy. I recognize that depression may be medically based, but why do we have such an epidemic?

Here and there, "society" is beginning to realize that we have to get back to basics. TV commercials speak of the importance of the "family table." More people are returning to religion. Working parents are beginning to shorten their work weeks to spend more time with their children. The newspapers are denouncing the frolics of Britney and Paris. It will take a long time to turn the tide, but one by one we must begin to get the word out. If we each do a little bit for our own families, maybe we can begin to effect change. We shouldn't want to go back to 1967, but rather find a way to develop a new love and peace.