Never in history have so many youths been idle, bored, restless, frustrated, rebellious toward authority as today!
Why?
What has produced such despair and disillusionment?
Who is to blame?
TODAY'S YOUTH, world-wide, is in revolt! Young people, in general, are disillusioned. Where has society gone wrong?
Rebelling Against What?
What do today's youths want? What are they rebelling against?
A British writer recently put it this way. "They [the hippies] want nothing to do with the world we've built for them. They're anti-everything from police to Press."
They are even against money. "It's rotten," said a London hippie. "And it rots people."
It's time we considered both where the adult society and where the hippie generation have gone wrong. For both adults and hippies share responsibility for the wrecked, weird, tormented lives of so many of today's youths.
Many hippies feel cheated, sick, frustrated, BEAT — disgusted with the sham and hypocrisy of today's society. And they are totally frustrated in their vain attempt to replace it with anything better. Many didn't deliberately set out to become dropouts from society. These youngsters by no means planned to spend the rest of their lives in hippiedom. Most of them are casualties of a calloused civilization. Because of the grave shortcomings of present-day society, they were often shunted by circumstances into a totally non-productive, lay-about life — lives which not even an animal should experience!
Power of Big City Bright Lights
Many of today's dropouts from society are city-bred youth. Others left the country or small-town life in search of the thrills and glamour which they fancied awaited them in the big city.
A country boy or a small-town girl might, for instance, travel to London, New York or Paris to see the bright lights of "the big city." All their lives they had heard of the wonderful things to see and do in the city.
But what they hadn't been told is that a big city is a human anthill. Hundreds of thousands, even millions of people rushing about madly — going nowhere fast — except to the grave! Any big city is a concrete-and-asphalt jungle. Petty and big-time crimes thrive in the environment of city bigness. Drug addiction, drunkenness, prostitution, gambling and other equally fruitless facets of man's fading civilization turn men and women into monsters.
A big city can be a very cold, lonely, dirty place. Today's city dweller commonly doesn't even know the name of his next-door neighbor. Many fear striking up a friendship. Who knows — your next-door neighbor may be an ex-convict, a thief, a pervert, a maniac or a potential murderer!
"No, thank you," says the average citizen. "I'll be friendly — but only at a distance!"
A typical youth's initiation into the bright lights of today's big-city life is not unlike the fascination of bright lights on night-flying bugs and beetles.
Did you ever have the eye-opening experience of seeing myriads of summertime insects — fascinated by a bright street light — busily bashing their "brains" out as they repeatedly flew into a street lamp? The next day many of these same bugs — the bugs who the night before were batting their "brains" out against the bright street light — are lying totally insensate or dead near the base of the street lamp.
Like these unthinking insects, many of today's youths are bewitched, fascinated by the bright lights of today's big-city life. Unfortunately, many of them figuratively have to bat their brains out against the hard realities of life before they learn the real facts — before they learn that today's world is a pretty cold, heartless, impersonalized civilization that swallows up its victims with little hesitation, compassion or compunction.
Is it any wonder, then, that so many of today's young people, wrecked by such a cold, heartless civilization which has not taught or trained them to cope with its pitfalls and hardships, have joined the ranks of the social dropouts?
Again we ask: Why are today's youths so woefully unprepared to meet the pressures, stresses and strains of today's civilization? How is it that the adult generation has so miserably failed to equip these young-impressionable with the knowledge which would have enabled them to overcome life's difficulties?
It is time some adults quit placing all the blame on today's youths for dropping out from society — for joining the cult of hippiedom, when it is the adult world that has so ill equipped them to cope with the society's strains and pressures.
Can one blame young people for turning to a far-out way of life when, in all too many instances, adults have offered them nothing genuine?
Can one blame them for their moral conduct when all too many adults practice sophisticated forms of polygamy while professing to be monogamous?
When children see and observe, daily, adult examples of lying, cheating, immorality and general lawlessness — can one really point a finger at youth for espousing a way of life that accepts "free sex," drug addiction and shiftlessness as a way to live?
Is not the prime responsibility that of adult society?
Hyde Park Hippie Rendezvous
This year has witnessed three big pop festivals where the fruits of today's hippie generation could be observed firsthand.
On Saturday, July 5th, the biggest pop concert of all time was held in London's Hyde Park. On that date half-a-million hippies flocked into London's famous Hyde Park to pay homage to the Rolling Stones — the world's "greatest" (or most notorious — depending on one's point of view) rock-and-roll band.
Shortly before this pop concert opened, Brian Jones — a former member of the Rolling Stones — was found drowned in a private swimming-pool.
Some referred to this pop concert as "Requiem for a Stone." One of the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger, read poetry by Shelley. Many of hippiedom's faithful were there. Besides the Rolling Stones, there were such "notables" as Marsha Hunt and Marianne Faithful. Two days later Marianne was near death in an Australian hospital, reportedly suffering from the effects of drugs.
On the stage, Mick Jagger writhed, gyrated, groaned and growled — while his long hair flung, like a horse's mane, in every direction! The audience understandably lapped it up with frenzied rapture.
The pop fans jostled against each other, cheered, applauded, shouted, burned joss sticks, or played tambourines. Overcome by heat and emotion, 250 fainted and were carried off by "Hell's Angels" to first-aid tents to be treated by a long-haired doctor. (This gaudily clad, long-haired assortment of hippies from all over Britain and the world were "policed" by "Hell's Angels") Some fans actually went berserk!
Fifteen tons of rubbish had to be cleaned up from Hyde Park when the pop festival was over. All in all, the hippie fans believed the Rolling Stones' pop concert was a rip-roaring success.
Bethel Pop Festival
Then . . . across the ocean, over 400,000 hippies turned up for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair held on a 600-acre farm at Bethel, New York, August 15 through 17.
The usual hippie crowd and accoutrements were present at this pop festival. There were no reported rapes, assaults, robberies or murders as in the adult world. But three died from drug usage.
Sanitation was at a low level, food was scarce. There were the usual piles of litter and garbage. Two nights of rain turned the farm on which the festival was held into a veritable "sea of mud." The young people referred to it as "beautiful"!
The usual gay clothes, long hair, smelly persons, spontaneous and unabashed nudity and open, casual intercourse were part and parcel of the Bethel pop festival.
The New York Times asked: "What kind of culture is it that can produce so colossal a mess?"
This rock festival in the mud fields of the Yasgur farm in Bethel, N.Y., produced the usual loud beat music and was saturated with pot and every-which-way sex. Those who attended were, in the main, the sons and daughters of America's well-to-do, affluent middle classes. They were the storm troopers of the counter-culture that is rebelling against today's world — against all forms of organized society, against any suggestion of law or authority.
Isle of Wight Pop Festival
Then, in September, another large pop festival was held on the Isle of Wight, just off the south coast of England.
For days dropouts from society, hippie lay-abouts from all over Britain and the world began to congregate on the Isle of Wight.
An estimated 200,000 hippie pop fans awaited the arrival of the "high priest" of folk music, Bob Dylan, from the U.S. Other "notables" included Jane Fonda and husband. Beatles John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were also present.
During this pop festival drugs and nudity went hand-in-hand. Newspapers reported the "goings-on" — which included at least one instance of a young female undressing and dancing in the nude. In the bizarre world of the hippie festival, the fans made a big bubble bath which many shared — and needed.
Hippies want to "do their own thing."
The wildest scene occurred when a young man and woman (possibly under the influence of drugs) removed their clothes and . . . you guessed it!