How love brought economic ruination
(Last updated: 06/08/09 7:33pm)We have problems. I don’t think a single person currently living in Michigan, or even the U.S., could deny that fact.
James Harrison
The real question, one that will probably be debated for years, is where exactly do the origins of our current problems lay? I’m not just talking about the subprime mess, either. I’m talking about the root causes that brought about those events that created our current situation.
While plenty of people will put forward their own theories on what exactly went wrong, I have my own pet theory that I’ve occasionally expounded on to those within earshot. In my view, our current issues can be directly traced to that so-called Summer of Love.
Picking that oft-romanticized event as the origin point of any modern crisis is probably surprising to many people. After all, wasn’t that a golden time where 20-somethings changed the world by engaging in positive thought and great music? Didn’t it bring an end to hate and prejudice?
If you ask me, not even close. All it spawned was a generation that learned that it was alright to indulge in selfish desires to the detriment of society at large. Even worse, they learned that all their sins could be forgiven if they simply justified them by saying that they were doing it to better the world.
In my eyes, those who participated in that farce of an event — not to mention the culture that spawned it — were self-involved idiots who rejected the multiple opportunities for real change that the tumults of the ’60s presented, and instead preferred to check out and indulge their base desires for drugs and music.
I’m not alone in this view, by the way. No less a public figure than George Harrison, the famed Beatle, found himself turned off by the whole scene after visiting San Francisco’s famous Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, calling the denizens “hideous, spotty little teenagers.”
The worst part was the way that they justified these hedonistic tendencies, by claiming that they were bettering the country and the world in some unidentified way.
I’d still love someone to tell me exactly how doing drugs and listening to music can improve the nation. If you know, my e-mail’s right over there.
Some might point to the civil rights movements and the large gains that it made as a sign that achievements were made.
Yet, I don’t really see Martin Luther King Jr. hanging out with the same crowd that flooded San Francisco at the time. The hippies might have been without prejudice, but that’s just a baseline of being civil and polite, and not real progress, if you ask me.
Still, the long-term damage didn’t really come at that time. If it had been isolated to that one period, it’s possible that the crowds would have eventually grown up and rejoined society in a productive way.
Unfortunately, what instead happened was their youthful temper tantrum became that much more important and grand when viewed through the lens of nostalgia.
Instead of being vilified for being selfish, they were celebrated.
Through this, they learned that it was alright to be self-involved, as long as it could be loosely justified as helping others in some nebulous fashion.
Thus, when they gained the reins of power in the ’80s, we suddenly found trickle-down economics, a theory in which those who had espoused the evil of money and all it brought could become as rich as they wanted, and it would be all good.
This could later be seen extending to the corporate thinking that brought our current travails. Those in power would do anything to bring individual wealth and short-term gains to a company, even if it harmed it in the long-term. But it was alright, because they were helping the stock price.
I have to say that Eric Cartman was right when he began his crusade against hippies. The country would probably be a lot better off if we’d simply take off our rose-colored glasses and look at that time for what it really was.
James Harrison is the State News opinion editor. Reach him at harri310@msu.edu.
Originally Published: 06/08/09 7:09pm
Exceptionally dopey
06/09/09 7:50am“ .. This could later be seen extending to the corporate thinking that brought our current travails. Those in power would do anything to bring individual wealth and short-term gains to a company, even if it harmed it in the long-term.”
That, as opposed to the enlightened thinking of OLD Carl Levin, lifetime politician and ex-hippie STAB-a-cow, ex-hippie Gov.
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bbwhine
06/09/09 8:28amJames: You surmised all this from one summer that consisted of maybe at best 10K participants. Wow, you sir must be a really deep thinker, no wonder you’re writing for the SN. Ron Reagan would be dumbfounded that it was the hippies who unleashed trickle down theory when all the time he thought his ecomomic advisers had done so. It’s odd that Harrison who promoted drug use and Mr. Clapton, ol’ cocaine hisself, found it necessary to comment on something they both helped to foster. But it is truely an odd world after all.
Nicknames
06/09/09 8:36amDopey-
Could you give me a nickname? You come up with such clever ones.
Oh Come On
06/09/09 8:54amPrevious commentors – James writes, “I have my own pet theory….”
Way to really take this opinion piece to heart and write some serious replies. I hope you two losers feel better about yourselves hoping you proved some grand points on the SN website. bbwhine – next time you put down an opinion editor for writing for the SN, remember that you essentially are a corn kernel in the turd that is SN writing. Afterall, you’re the one that actually reads it then leaves degrading comments. Big man. Go pop that zit on your forehead.
Liz Kersjes
06/09/09 9:12amIt’s an interesting theory, but I would like to see a stronger connection between the mindset of the ’70s and the current economy. To me, get-rich-quick schemes and immediate gain don’t even have the appearance of helping the greater good, and the acid-dropping hippies from the West Coast aren’t the type to shave their beards and move to Wall Street in a decade. I guess I need more examples of how the mindset of a small subset of the culture affected America at large.
Exceptionally dopey
06/09/09 9:55amINCONVENIENT FACTS
“To me, get-rich-quick schemes and immediate gain don’t even have the appearance of helping the greater good, and the acid-dropping hippies from the West Coast aren’t the type to shave their beards and move to Wall Street in a decade.”
Google “Jerry Rubin,” yuppies and Yippies. Then get disappointed.
Also Google what happened to the “leaders” at the 1989 Tiamennen (sp?) Square matter. Note relationship to HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL. Get disappointed again.
Next disappointment: MESSIAH. And how he FAILED math. Told you so.
Dr. Huxtable
06/09/09 10:26amThat this guy is the opinion editor does a lot to explain the quality of this page lately.
bbwhine
06/09/09 10:40amOh Come on: What a put down dude! You’re my hero for today.
Dill
06/09/09 10:43amI didn’t know that guy MESSIAH who wrote the Quantum Mechanics book was from Acorn. Weird.
Where’s Acorn, anyway? Is that in the UP?
Acorn
06/09/09 11:41amJust ask Obama, he knows where to find us. Interestings blogs, very creative….they got my vote.
AB
06/09/09 5:25pmDill- I really enjoyed his exposition on the Dirac equation and the basics of QED. The last section of that book is so well written, it’s hard to believe that he’s a yooper…
Liz Kersjes
06/09/09 8:54pmHey “Exceptionally dopey” why are you being a jerk? I was just trying to have a conversation about the column. If you had brought up those points in any kind of decent or sociable way I’d be really interested in taking the time to learn more. Instead I’m annoyed with your self-righteous pomp and I no longer care. You have ruined learning and constructive conversation.
:(
eye no english
06/10/09 12:54amdoesn’t anybody edit these things? can’t you use a dictionary to look up the difference between lie and lay?
RC River
06/10/09 4:20am“Instead of being vilified for being selfish, they were celebrated.”
As Ayn Rand described it so well, I won’t do more here than remind Mr. Harrison: Selfishness is often a virtue.
I grew up in those difficult times, though drug-free, and nowhere near San Francisco. We lived in a world where nuclear holocaust might be one hour away, and hated those “reds” who would kill us all, or should we kill them all first? Given a choice between megadeath now or megadeath later, how selfish of us to seek a third option.
Eye See
06/10/09 12:48pm“I’d still love someone to tell me exactly how doing drugs and listening to music can improve the nation. If you know, my e-mail’s right over there.’ It can’t!
Blogger 3&4 you could be a little nicer
06/10/09 12:52pmThis is the Nice Police. Or I may have to give you a ticket. I see that you are needing a little attention, before you introduced yourself by name.
Hey James...
06/10/09 4:18pmYou do realize that the summer of love was not an “event,” right? Because you refer to it as such multiple times in this…..whatever you call this insane rant.