Joni, Jesus, and the hippies
illusions and disillusions of the boomer generation
I always think of Joni Mitchell — who, in a long interview in 2013 (1:27:00 onwards), gave her take on what became of the 'baby boomers' after the 1960s — as one of the hippiest hippies of the period. But it turns out she wasn't — quite. She wasn't anti- the Vietnam War — or at least not scornful of those who went to fight it, as many were. Nor did she believe in 'free love'. Or free anything. To this day, she denies that she is a feminist. But she was an early voice among popular entertainers to decry environmental devastation. (Remember "Big Yellow Taxi"?)
All the same, her account of what happened after Woodstock makes the point that the idealism and the protest against prosperous conformity didn't last. Hers was, as she says, a "liberated, spoiled, selfish generation" that ended up more greedy and materialistic than its parents.
One can smirk and say "It was always going to be thus. We all want stuff. The boomers took it all for granted and sneered at it but, when the chips were down, would finally trade their nonsense for prosperity." OK, sure. But maybe the point is that, in overturning traditional morality and the religion that underpinned it, the initial airy 'peace and love' simply could not be sustained. After all, why be peaceful if being aggressive makes me better off? Why should 'love' be anything more than code for 'sex' if the consequence is that I have to give and keep giving? In fact, I'm pretty sure Francis Schaeffer said almost exactly this somewhere or other: the hippie generation traded their schtick for personal peace and security.
Indeed, unless I've been reading the Eagles' 1973 song "Desperado" wrong all these years — which is entirely possible!! — the cracks were starting to show early on. Though ostensibly about the Old West, the lyrics apply all too well to those who, even then, were becoming 'aging hippies': "You ain't gettin' no younger.... And freedom? Oh, Freedom — well, that's just some people talking. Your prison is walking through this world all alone." So jack it in: "come to your senses" and take hold of "some fine things" that have "been laid upon your table".
By the end of the decade, almost all had done so.
Was the 'failure of the baby boomers' that Joni Mitchell describes inevitable in the sense that they were only ever chasing the wind? Not entirely. If baby boomers rejected the churches, it was because the latter had been so busy denouncing communism that they had become mere pillars of capitalist consumerism and American patriotism (thereby becoming a perfect example of Marx's description of religion's social function). Then, realising they were losing an entire generation of young people, some of the more daring among them adopted the hippies' music ('Christian rock') and dress style, and argot: Jesus, it turned out, was a cool dude who would help you find your real self. The 'Jesus people' were born. The shift in church styles caused enormous friction at first, but by the 1980s the transition was largely complete.
Though it worked (I am an example of one of those thus reclaimed), it was every bit as fake as the hippies themselves — even if rather more long-lasting. We are living with its aftermath still, with therapy culture posing as Christianity; rock concerts claiming to be worship; self-actualisation as the central plank of many churches; and focus upon the self their instinctive argot.
What the churches should have been doing, both before the 'hippie shift' and after, is tempering the materialist outlook of Christians living in the world's most successful economic system; calling for a life of generosity and of being focused on others; of teaching their flocks to treat the natural world as a trust rather than a disposable asset. Their over-assimilation to the 1950s America that they lived in made them vulnerable to outright rejection by anyone who repudiated that social order — as the baby boomers did. And all that's happened now is that we have over-assimilated again to the world of the baby boomers — that "liberated, spoiled, selfish generation".
Joni Mitchell — that voice, though....