The Social Revolution 1967 to 1974? Part 2

So, the reason I began with 1967 is it was the "Summer of Love" which is a way people tended to think (at least on the west coast) a lot then.

I think this type of thinking came out of the awfulness of the Viet Nam War which nobody wanted and no one really could tell young people any useful reason why we should be there in the first place and the 50,000 people my age (more my age born in 1948) died there than any other age group during these times.

So, in some ways the Free Speech movement was a way to begin to talk about just how upset my generation was about the Viet Nam War where our fellow high school students not going to college were drafted and then sent to Viet Nam often to die within their first two weeks there on the front lines of the Viet Nam War.

So, 1967 beginning with "The Summer of Love" is a good place to start or the Free Speech Movement (which allowed us to even talk about the Viet Nam war in UC Berkeley and other college and high school campuses around the U.S. at that time.

Someone recently asked me "Was there free love then?" And I realized that he was too young to have seen it all himself because he is only 50 or 60 years old and you sort of had to be my age or just a little younger to have seen it all as a high school and college student.

The ideal Age likely for "Free Love' likely would have been someone from the California Coast who was born in 1951. This is the epitome of the age of "Free Love" people in California at least.

I was born in 1948 so I was a little old for this Free Love stuff so I wasn't really introduced to people like this until I was 21 years old.

What was Free Love all about?

I think it was a way to try to break free from constraints in life that just were not working for people.

However, I also see all this as sort of "Throwing the baby out with the Bathwater" at this point too.

So,  Free Love was sort of a knee jerk reaction to all the things that socially were not working leading up to all this.

And if you want to actually know on a physical level how this began I think you have to look at the introduction of the Birth Control Pill to college campuses starting in 1960.

This changed everything where girls didn't have to get pregnant if they didn't want to. Before this date rape was the primary cause of many marriages or unwanted children.

And the end result was Roe Versus Wade in 1973 which legalized abortion for the first time in U.S. History.

So, the social revolution actually changed women's and children's lives the most of anything else in life.

Men were changed but in an entirely different way which in some ways not makes no sense to me at all.

So, did free love exist? IN girls where they used birth control pills this sometimes happened.

However, what actually happened is that so many people were having unprotected sex that VD starting with Herpes spread a lot starting in 1975 to 1980 and then by 1980 AIDS happened and millions died from this around the world.

So, this changed everything sort of back to what it had been before sort of sexually uptight and rigid.

So, the true Sexual revolution only could last from around the Free speech movemnt to when Nixon resigned from the White House after the Viet nam War ended.

Then Herpes and other VD and the AIDS completely killed "Free Love" unless you wanted to die or something soon just from too many people having unprotected sex.

Was the social revolution useful?

In the ebb and flow of life it probably was useful but often now I see the 1960s as more about "Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater" in many different ways.

Now we are seeing the Backlash of what has happened since around 1960 here in the U.S. and around the world which seems to be taking us back right now to what happened in the 1930s and 1940s that began World war II once again with Trump becoming the Neville Chamberlain of this era not dealing with any of the real problems the human race is facing right now which likely will lead to a 3rd world war. 

Could Something else happen?

Of Course. I'm always surprised in some ways what happens next each day here on earth.

My point of view is basically: "Will so many people die of flooding and mud slides and Fires that world war III cannot even happen?"

Or will AI drones kill most people on earth during the next 20 or 30 years?

These are the kinds of questions I have now that are realistic to these times.

I don't really have the answers to these questions.

There are just too many variables in place right now to fully understand any of this for any one person.