winthrop

As you know, CosmicRocker, unlike some of our younger friends here, we "aging hippies" changed the world, some of us think for the better, helping bring women and other minorities out of the cages the previous eras had kept locked and sealed, taking to the streets in an attempt to end the slaughter in Vietnam, and modernizing the culture, including removing the stigma and fear from even a frank and open discussion, never mind the practice, of sex.
Were we perfect? Hardly. Our openness to exploration and alternative perceptions led many of us into the black hole of drug addiction and death, and the cleaving of love from sex had its own disadvantages. Too many of our number simply gave up and spent the '70s dancing and snorting cocaine and finally believing our and the world's best interests were served by a doddering old manipulative and manipulating fool like Reagan.
But we had seen our heroes shot down in the streets for daring to not only question the status quo, but acting to change it, so despair and cynicism, although hardly desirable traits, were neither surprising. Many of us, however, have continued dreaming and have fought the gathering darkness every way we could.
It is natural and right that ensuing generations should look upon their predecessors as wrong and outdated, that the new kids have all the right answers and experience counts for nothing. We did it. In some ways we were right, in some ways wrong. Our fathers and grandfathers were, perhaps, right in their warnings about the dangers of some of the substances we used in the search for our own path (although their choices of alcohol, tranquilizers and tobacco were hardly good ones), and in their view that the quality of the sexual experience improves with commitment and romance. But they were wrong that women were weak and unable to cope with life on their own or able to do jobs as well as men, that Blacks were somehow unworthy of equality and dignity, that the government should always be trusted and if we entered or fought a war, then that war was just and necessary.
Just as we were, these young people coming into their own are sick and tired of the dominance of the previous generation, to the point that they may be inclined to overlook whatever wisdom we have gained by our checkered experience. But we "aging hippies" have been here before and caution comes with experience and age. Caution does not mean, however, that we are any less bold and ready for change as the youngsters, after all we made all of this possible.