We came. We saw. We conquered.

We postwar babies still had prewar stability in our parents and schools. The old values still kept a lid on the rebellion that was right around the corner. Drugs, sex, rock and roll, television, increased divorce rates, and the Viet Nam War churned the cauldron of anti-establishment. Kid power raged and won its first medal of dishonor. The seeming innocence of the fifties was traded for the unblushing sixties.

Well, did you come through unscathed? Did your perfect little fifties family survive unchanged through the sixties and seventies? Along with the normal waves of good and bad times, saint and sinner parents, and the flood of '69, were you unaffected by the "If It Feels Good,  Do It Society?"

Have you played "What If?" Imagine your little spot on the map untouched by the effects a society running on empty. What if you could go back to the fifties or late forties? Would you be the first on the bus?

In a Look Magazine article, December 15, 1964, the changing youth culture is polled, quoted and labeled misfit.

"As for the emphasis on sex, rather than love, among initiates of the Twisted Age, 'a cold attitude toward love' . . . is indicative of a person under threat. 'Society is under threat from many directions . . . automation, racial conflicts, nuclear arsenals. It is the threat of a very uncertain future.'
"Now we really don't have norms. A young person has nothing to go back to, and it shakes his security. In rebelling, some young people are actually looking for new norms . . . It is a stunning experience to hear young adults say blandly, 'I don't believe in anything; I don't know what to believe in,' but it happened to LOOK interviewers.
"Family unity is lacking . . . Often there is not a 'unity of love,' but only a kind of loose family 'unity of companionship,' if that. . . In a sense, a number of social chickens are coming home to roost in the Twisted Age.
"In a sense, the people of the Twisted Age are adult dropouts---as frustrated high school youngsters drop out of school, these drop out of the normal responsibilities of life. This is the price we pay as a society, for not solving problems.
"The descriptions of  far-out behavior in this study do not apply to millions of young adults who accept and enjoy what normal life has to offer. But there are enough of the others to constitute a leading element, and to give an off-color stamp and stigma to our age."

 

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