Commentary: The Summer of 2017 is an important cultural anniversary in American life. This will mark 50 years since the Summer of Love. What was the Summer of Love? It was many things both good and bad. But the common thread was a desire of many mostly young Americans to question who are as people and where our lives are headed. It was a time to think about what it means to live a good life. It was a time to question whether the acquisition of money and the pursuit of material things really was a true path to happiness. It was a time of fostering a new sense of community and a culture of sharing. It was an electric and energetic period of trying new things and throwing off old boundaries and limitations. It was a time of liberation filled with the excitement of wondering where all this might be headed. There has never been a time like before and there likely will never be another one like it again.
For this one short season, it was glorious. The joys and freedoms and optimism of the times had a hold on our national consciousness until the good feelings collapsed and died. What happened? There was no plan or vision or foundation to sustain the values and dreams of this special time. Too many young people traded in their newfound freedom for unbridled self-indulgence and harmful behaviors. By the following summer of 1968, most of what the Summer of Love represented was gone. The good feelings and promises of 1967 were shoved aside by the ugliness and pessimism that took hold the following year.
If 1967 was the Summer of Love, then 1968 were Days of Rage. For America, 1968 was one of our nation’s worst years. It was a boiling cauldron of conflict, fear, dissension, and disharmony that overwhelmed honest debate and national unity. Why is this important now? Because many people today seek a return to a contemporary version of the worst of 1968. Back then, America was divided by war, racial tensions, and deepening economic problems that were appearing due to the offshoring of American jobs. Great Americans leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated. Embedded racial tensions were flaring up all over the country and several major cities burned. Young people were at war with the older generations. There was little sense of America as a unified nation because it was not. People of all generations chose sides and became tribal factions who identified more with their chosen cause than with our country. Sadly, much of this same spirit has been revived some fifty years later. In 2017, wars drag on. Race relations are the worst they’ve been in years. Young people are frustrated with an increasing lack of opportunities and they blame older generations. Many people openly express their hope that our current President will fail. In many ways, 1968 never went away.
What are the lessons in all this for today? 1967 proved that flower power alone is not enough to sustain a complex society. 1968 proved that anger and conflict just produces more anger and conflict and does nothing to sustain the hopes and needs of people. In 2017, our times are desperate for new and better ways of thinking and ways of relating to each other. We return to the same questions that millions of us were asking in 1967. But this time around, we must be smarter. We must again consider who we are as a people and where we are headed. 2017 is begging for wisdom and energy through which will be found the answers to today's problems. In 1967 we were told that All You Need Is Love. And 50 years later, this remains the best and only place to start this journey.