I was born in '59. I was in an atypical and very insular town (Los Alamos NM) in Junior High and High School and somehow got the notion that the wave of sea-change type social change that began in the 60s had continued to swell and permeate everywhere other than Los Alamos and a few other nooks and crannies.
Yes, I thought the revolution was in process. Not military-overthrow, the junta in red berets will be occupying the White House next year or anything like that. But that marriage was in rapid decline and that nearly everyone would be living in communes (intentional community-families of 8-20 people, not The Farm), semi-permanent clusters of loosely committed folks owning and sharing property in common (appliances like washer & dryer and lawnmower, maybe some cars, oftentimes all iving in a big old house from the big-family era).
I believed religion was gasping out its last, and that everyone was becoming their own philospher, with a universal “do as ye wish as long as it harms no one” / “anything between consenting adults is fine” / “peace love and no more coercion, live and let live” attitude becoming so widespread that the vew vestigial holdouts would not attain any social traction in trying to push downer agendas of forcing people to do things or not do things.
I thought the trend was towards people sharing things and caring about the plight of others to the point that there would be no more greed and gap between haves and havenots; that the money system itself was on its last legs and people would just share resources and pitch in to do work and we’d cease to try to track who owned what, who earned what, or who could buy what. Everyone would have signs up that said “prosecutors will be shoplifted” and “need one take one, got extras leave one” and bulletin boards for who seeks what and who has what for the asking.
I thought nations were winding down and would disappear as external threats disappeared and as collectives and communes and local-initiative responsibility took over the doing of necessary things formerly done by governments.
I assumed we’d never get into another war. War is obviously over. The human race has weapons too destructive to weild without destroying us all, and soon everyone will have them, so we have to outgrow that childish behavior. Besides, we aren’t confronted with a world of scarcity, we can feed everybody and share our other resources, there’s plenty to go around.
Only the old people (you know, the folks like 50 or older) still think in all the old suspicious negative downer control-freak NO-minded ways, and as long as we can weather the remaining years of them being in “power” (ha) that will all pass away soon.
How cool is it to be fortunate enough to be coming of age at the dawn of the Age of Aquarius?
Hey, want some microdot? Third eye vision, man!