Kids Raised In The 60s And 70s Grew Up In A World No Generation Will Ever Experience Again
Fortgens Photography | Shutterstock Kids lucky enough to have been raised in the 60s and 70s got to grow up in a world no generation will ever experience again. Research helped explain how this era marked a shift in attitudes on various family issues.
For the kids growing up at the time, their world was like the whipped cream that’s left over at the bottom of your milkshake after you sucked all the ice cream out. It was all that was left, and when you finished, it was poof — gone for good.
Kids raised in the 60s and 70s grew up in a world no generation will ever experience again
Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash
Kids raised in the 60s and 70s knew their world was sweet, but they knew it wouldn't last
For my age group, there were inklings that maybe we got the last of the milkshake. Some of us ignored that, thinking that there would always be more milkshakes. A lot of us knew there wouldn’t be.
A lot of us tried to help, to change things, to make a difference, but ultimately, nothing we did would stop the juggernaut of destruction that was already well underway before we were even born. I won’t lie to you, being raised in the 60s and 70s was magical. There’s no way around that.
Photo by Bruno Moscon Imperial on Unsplash
Even into the 1980s, there was still some magic left around
My then-wife and I worked about 15 to 20 hours each week as servers in a diner, and we had an apartment three blocks from the beach in Santa Monica that cost us $135.00 per month.
The other people we worked with were writers, musicians, and actors who could work part-time and make enough money to support themselves while they pursued their dreams. A lot of them made it. You could still do that, then.
We got to take a ride on a worn-out, broken-down roller coaster that was collapsing almost before we got off, but it was still operational.
Having the magic was like holding a handful of sand on a windy day. All you could do was watch while it blew away.
Photo by Florida Memory on Unsplash
But now the magic of the 60s and 70s is gone
I used to go up on a hill near my house in Los Angeles and look across the valley and try to imagine what it must have looked like before the occupiers came, what the Indigenous population must have seen from the spot where I stood, but it was unimaginable.
The destruction of that world was so complete, so merciless, that even the idea of it was gone forever. It was gone in the space of a heartbeat. The dying gasp of a spoiled world.
Cormac McCarthy described it well in All the Pretty Horses: “He stood at the window of the empty café and watched the activities in the square, and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting, or else they’d have no heart to start at all.”
I think that maybe young people today might not be able to imagine what it was like for us because our world, and theirs, has been so mercilessly destroyed that it could never again be brought to life.
I feel horrible that young people won’t ever get to know what that was like. I feel horrible that young people will never know what waking up to a day of promise and possibility was like. I feel horrible that my daughter will never get to see the world I got to see.
As Amelia B. Edwards wrote in Barbara's History in 1863: "Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground, and the last time someone says his name." Just as the world will have two deaths: The one we are seeing now and the one when no one can remember what it was like before we destroyed it.
Michael Campi is a writer, observer, and commentator. His writing has been published in Muscle and Fitness, Breaking Muscle, The Whole Earth Times, and on his Substack.
