The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
We are living out a grand social experiment that began in the sixties, but whose results are still unknown. The widespread use of contraception and abortion, the movement of women into the workforce, the decline of marriage and family, growing secularism and individualism: all of these phenomena now seem baked in the cake. Yet it may well not be so.
It’s been about six years since observers began to notice that declining birth rates flowing from the technological and social changes of the sixties posed a major economic and cultural challenge to the West. With so few young people left to support the massive baby boom generation in retirement, the welfare state as we know it could collapse, with untold cultural consequences. In 2005, I reviewed some of the first books on the subject and concluded that a demographically induced economic crisis could spark a revival of religious traditionalism, a far more radical decomposition of the family, or both.
At the time, it looked as if a possible demographically-induced economic crisis was at least a couple of decades away. We seem to be running ahead of schedule. To a large extent, the economic troubles here and in Europe already factor in the unsustainable entitlements of the future.
Although an economic crisis is imminent, and the underlying cause demographic, I haven’t noticed many calls for increased child-bearing. That is in striking contrast to the world-wide movement in response to the less proximate and more theoretical global warming crisis. It’s a measure of how unthinkable changes in our post-sixties life-styles still are. Yet it doesn’t mean change won’t happen, if and when a demographic-economic crisis truly strikes.
No-one knows for certain what will happen, of course, but there is at least the realistic possibility that the retirement of the baby boomers will be a sad and ugly affair. We could be in for a massive generation of impoverished elderly, many with little or no help from small, broken, or non-existent families, limited assistance from a crippled welfare state, and too few nurses and caregivers even for those who can afford them. Medical innovations that enable a more vigorous old age and delayed retirement would help to counteract that worst-case scenario. Let us hope.
The first generation to experience the changes of the sixties has yet to pass from the scene. The baby boomers will have to undergo the test of old age before we’ll know if the new social forms are sustainable. It’s easy to be free when you’re young and strong. The test of our heightened individualism is how it handles the periods of human dependence: childhood and old age. We’re having fewer children now. What will happen when we ourselves grow old?
The optimistic interpretation of our current economic troubles is that we have been alerted to the looming demographic-economic crisis early enough to do something about it. The pessimistic interpretation is that our economic troubles today are only a pale foreshadowing of what will happen when the massive core of baby boomers retire. The test is underway, but the experiment is far from over.
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May '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Well, I certainly hope you're right about the resurgence of religion and traditional values. More and more it seems to me the only real hope we have of survival as a civilization.
May '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
On that point:
I take it as a good sign that many of our most promising and effective conservative politicians and leaders are also devoutly and unabashedly--if unostentatiously--religious.
Jul '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Birth control and feminism have precipitated the nation's demographic decline.
I'm all for gender equality, but it has come at a terrible price. A working mom simply cannot sustain a family of the size that was common up until the 1960's. And as women flooded into the workforce, the forces of labor supply and demand dictated that the income of the traditional single-breadwinner family was no longer sufficient; both spouses needed to work in order to maintain a decent lifestyle.
May '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Kenneth, I agree completely on your key point. Only I wouldn't identify "gender equality" as the culprit, but rather a feminist confusion (or obfuscation perhaps) between equality and identity.
No such thing as a humane society that doesn't extol and protect and privilege maternity.
Mar '11
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
As pessimistic as your assessment is, it doesn't really go far enough. The ideology you refer to under the rubric, "hippie," won't die just because the "last hippie dies." Even if there really were literally a "last hippie standing," the ideology won't die. Ideologies do not die because their believers die. They die because they're defeated. Then, because we hate to be on the losing team, their support fades into the woodwork of crazy extremism, like the Nazis.
I don't advocate or support violence to defeat the "hippie" ideology. There are other ways to defeat it. For example, Dr Kurtz's analysis. But the point is, society can't afford the luxury of just sitting back and waiting for the "last hippie" to die. Before that happens, the "last hippie" will have recruited others, etc etc. Society has to push back hard to get any results that matter.
Oct '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
The saddest part of your scenario is that when the system collapses, many of the older generation who have led responsible and conservative lifestyles will become the targets of the losers desperation. I've always believed that one of the liabilities of being openly Mormon (I'm not) is that all your neighbors know where they can find supplies when things get really bad.
What is the Mormon churches position on gun control??
May '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
The fundamental worldview and principles that underlie the hippie movement have been around for thousands of years. One can clearly trace their ascendancy to power since the so-called Enlightenment. This corruption of Western civilization began centuries ago.
We can't defeat this ideology, just as we cannot eliminate evil in this world. We can only subdue it and promote wiser ways.
Edited on Mar 2, 2011 at 10:20amMar '11
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Yes, indeed. It's a hard row to hoe. But total defeat can happen (excluding the crazy fringes). Look at Christianity's defeat of the religions of the ancient world. Look at the defeat of divine-right monarchism. And so forth.
It takes patience and determination to "promote wiser ways" while working for total defeat. This is because, as things stand today, defeat won't happen before we're all dead, along with "the last hippie." "Promoting wiser ways" takes too much time for that.
Feb '11
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Until the start of the 20th century, most families were on the farm or agricultural workers. Do you want to suggest that women weren't in the workplace? After the population shifted from rural to urban, women continued to work out of necessity. Women not working outside the home was a mark of the class you were in. My father grew up in a mill town. His mother worked in the mill as did virtually all the mothers of his peers. No experiment going on there just making ends meet. And that was from the 1930s until the 1960s.
Do you honestly think that an increase in child bearing will be more or less of a drain on the welfare state in the short-to-medium term? And how exactly would that help with coming to terms with the drain on the welfare state the baby boomers are going to make in the short and medium term? In short, I don't see how bearing more children now would help other than in the long term and in the short-and-medium term would be a large drain.
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
The "root cause," as liberals are wont to say, of the demographic crisis is social insurance. Before Bismarck's invention of social insurance -- before FDR's establishment of Social Security -- having a family of some size was one's source of security in old age. Habits change slowly. Social Security was introduced in the late 1930s. It was not until the baby boomers matured (if that word could ever be used to describe my generation) that the birth rate dropped precipitously. If Social Security is repealed or simply fades away under the weight of the demographic implosion, there will be a reversal of our patterns of conduct with regard to bearing and rearing children.
May '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
I disagree. There was once a cultural sense that all human beings have an inherent moral duty to marry and have children. Children were a religious and social obligation. Government actions facilitated erosion of such tenets of traditional wordviews, but removing government sanctions is far from sufficient to restore common perceptions of basic humanity and life.
Eliminating entitlements would indeed help heal our culture and restore expectations of self-responsibility, but would not be a catalyst for the restoration of the American family.
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Thanks to all for these comments. Hang on, I agree that it's too late to do much about taking care of the baby boomers in their old age, except through immigration, which has its own problems. Paul, I certainly agree that the welfare state is key here, and I think the invention of the pill as well. We are talking about a complex and interlocking set of causes, but I do think a crisis could bring back childbearing as a source of care in old age. In the piece I linked, I also speculate that last-ditch efforts to shore up the new system without a resort to traditional habits could bring forth "Brave New World" style innovations. In a post-welfare-state world, we either move back to tradition, or forward to radical experiments in human reproduction, or both.
Sep '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Please don't forget the arms race that is public teacher's union monopolized education funded by property taxes that create a constant drive to move into newer neighborhoods with high property taxes and newer schools. I believe that one's been covered in City Journal. Add in the sterility of modernist and post modernist architecture and some Adornoized urban planning and you have the current mess.
Nov '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Aaron Miller
Eliminating entitlements would indeed help heal our culture and restore expectations of self-responsibility, but would not be a catalyst for the restoration of the American family. · Mar 2 at 1:11pm
I'm not sure if entitlements can be eliminated. I think what's not being sufficiently acknowledged in this discussion is the character of the American people. It is substantially different today than it was a generation ago, and certainly vastly different from what it was two generations ago. The key word is dependency. The majority of Tea Partiers don't want any changes to their Medicare and Social Security. Bottom line: You can always build on dependency ("pass it [Obamacare] to find out what's in it"). Liberals know this in a way conservatives seem not to understand.
Dec '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
To paraphrase a well known Author, "The Left you will always have with you..."
Leftist ideology is just so seductive. From the author of leftist religion, "your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad." Hippies believe in top-down imposition of the social order, as long as the "right" people are in charge. This battle has been going on since The Garden and will go on until the new Messianic Age (First or Second, take your pick).
May '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Robert Lux
I think what's not being sufficiently acknowledged in this discussion is the character of the American people. It is substantially different today than it was a generation ago, and certainly vastly different from what it was two generations ago.
Agreed. The core problem of modern American government is that American culture no longer reflects the values represented in the Constitution.
If anyone is aware of a historical example of a nation returning to its traditional values without disruption of government, I'm all ears.
Nov '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Keep in mind also the West's insistence that everyone have a college degree, or a master's. Many women put off marriage and children until well into their late twenties or thirties. That's fine, it just makes for less children overall.
On a related tangent, consensus opinion seems to be that people in their late teens or early twenties are "too young to get married." IMHO, marriage takes work, sacrifice, and commitment, no matter the age of its participants. These factors, and not people's age at the beginning, determine the success of a marriage.
Oct '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Hungary is trying to boost its birth rate, with tax policy and giving extra votes to families with kids. It's kindof interesting; first EU nation to wake up to its demographic hell, I think.
Jul '10
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Ideas are like roaches, and the Nazis are a good example of that. Here in the US, the ACLU works hard to assure their protected species status, while in Europe, where they are responsible for horrors unbounded and outlawed as a party they still scurry to and fro in their fashion industry and leather working jobs and are found under the occasional rock or in the haute couture dives of Paris.
Every generation has to take the baton on this, there is no total victory unless one is willing, like the Arabs, to force all their Jews into a deathtrap called Israel and then pounce. (1948, though as master plans go it failed miserably. Nice guys.)
Edited on Mar 2, 2011 at 4:53pmMar '11
Re: The 60's Won't Be Over Till the Last Hippie Dies
Sisyphus
...found under the occasional rock or in the haute couture dives of Paris.
I read about the Dior guy in the NYT sometime during last night's insomnia. Thanks for bringing that up. I have no idea why it's important but I'll believe you.
Sisyphus
Every generation has to take the baton on this, there is no total victory
Exactly! That's what I'm saying. If we're going to wait for the "last hippie" to die, we'll be disappointed. That's why I hope Kurtz isn't putting too much money on his "last hippie" idea.
Your take on the '48 war is original. But I can't bring myself to believe that the Arabs could have had so much foresight and strategic thinking as to create a deathtrap for Jews and lure them in. I can't come up with any examples of foresight and strategic thinking in the Arab/Muslim world today. How could they be capable of such feats in 1948 and then limit themselves to schoolyard "strategies," like "the enemy of my enemy is my friend?" or "first my brother, then my cousin, then my tribe, then my etc etc?"