The 1960s Was A Reaction To The 1950s 

This channel is pure treasure. Thank you for bringing these stories to a wider audience.

David Hoffman, your small excerpts are providing a really expansive collage. A collage of humaneness, of curiosity and concern and engagement. Very good.

I was just watching this on RU-vid and literally felt compelled to get up off the couch to get my phone up a flight of stairs in order to write this appreciatory response in "reaction" to your video...I'm 29 have always been transfixed by the social/cultural/political phenomenon of the 1960s. My parents were baby boomers and growing up in the 90s, your generation was already romanticized by the with Oliver Stone's platoon, JFK, and especially The Doors. I have seen every scrap of video footage, and heard a plethora of interviews from everyone from Ray Manzarek to Jack Kerouac. This is one of the most starkly articulate and eloquent synopsis of that era that I have ever heard, right up there with Jim Morrison and Hunter S Thompson. How you describe it makes it look easy, as tho effortlessly mirroring a complex, confusing and tulmoltuous time like the 60s is just as easy as describing the details of a stick figure. You belong on the history Chanel Sir. It's been a real pleasure. I mean it. Thanks for the post. Peace :)

The MOST concise yet articulate answer to the 60's that I've ever heard. Bravo!!

Crazy How Different the 50s and 60s Were from each other !

It's interesting that we are living in a repressive society now that basically tells what to think and say and the reaction is already started and explains one of the reasons Trump was elected. Now, conservatives and traditionalists are the counterculture but we may have to redefine the labels soon. What are the forces pulling against each other?

Mr. Hoffman, your own perspective is as equally insightful as all the others. My father was a Vietnam vet and my mom a hippie that went to Woodstock. I was an 80's baby, 90's kid, and went to Afghanistan as a Marine after 9/11. I also have a bs in finance and a ms in education. Your comment of "They made me." really hits me in my core. I just kept reacting to each crazy situation put in front of me as best I could. The rules and pressure to fit in, and your comment of how no one fits it, but everyone thinks it's just them, is a lesson that took me most of my life to figure out. Your videos are a national treasure.

The thing about a lot of life is that we didn’t know the right way to do everything and are still working towards it. The conditions of the 1950s never existed before that decade and never existed since that time. Every decade has been an unprecedented experiment in life.

The 1960s were an OVERREACTION to the 1950s. Threw out a lot of good things with the bad.

It's was a regionally constrained urban thing. Those of us in most of America, particularly rural areas, never really figured out what you were so excited about. We mostly concluded you were all a bit odd. I suspect we were right.

WOW David you haven't changed all that much:) Thank You for sharing your experience living though the 50s and 60s.☮

I remember I mocked a cigarette ad while in History Class. I thought the teacher was going to frog walk me right to the principal's office. We were discussing how in the Soviet Union, loudspeakers were spewing out the propaganda on all the street corners. "Take a Puff it's Springtime".

Toward the end, a fascinating idea is touched on: To a great extent, we end up being defined by what we're rebelling against. In fact, I just turned 68, and now I'm all about a certain range of things that are triggering me, and I'm reacting against. And I never have felt more real.

Duck and cover drills drove us all nuts

Listening to you speak about this is somehow more interesting than a lot of the high-profile speakers you recorded for this same 6-part series.

Thank you. Now I can understand why my parents were a little strict. They must have hated all the rules.

Dear David, I'm enjoying these clips immensely... Enjoying Life was perceived during these different times

All those rules were still in play when I was in school in the 90’s

Conformity. It was a rebellion against conformity, which eventually became a a type of conformity in and of itself.

The sixties was an outgrowth of the 50s. Much work done in the 50s came to fruition in the 60s. All of the self-actualization psychologies and therapies that blossomed in the 60s were developed in the 50s, leading to a new positive understanding of human beings. Much of this got destroyed with a regressive return to Freud and Skinner in the 80s, which is much why things are so screwed up today. Because young people came into their own understanding of better ways to live and be, they were comprehensively targeted in the 60s and 70s to ensure that the youth of today cannot think for themselves. Parents during the 60s were a reaction to the positivity of teenagers, as they never got beyond the 60s, but the youth and their culture were an emergence like how lotus flowers emerge out of dirty water to shine pristinely. John Lennon said before Elvis there was nothing, so he wasn't reacting to Elvis. The 50s was also a time when many negative things were put into place that are taking their toll now. The military industrial complex that the US economy is based on and wants to take over the world was put together in the 50s, and was fully out of control by the time Eisenhower admitted to it. The generation gap was obvious around James Deans time, and continued in the 60s. The reaction to the Vietnam War was a purely 60s phenomenon.

The boomer generation in the 60s was the embodiment of Sayre’s Law which essentially states that, “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.” The nation literally crawled out from under twenty plus years of famine, depression, and a world war which threatened to end civilization as we knew it and these kids rebelled under expectations of masculinity and femininity. In their parents minds I’m sure they thought their kids should be SO LUCKY as to only have to worry about getting married at 21 or having a certain muscle tone and posture. It’s funny though... you see other Hoffman interviews where he is talking to the parents of the boomers and they feel like they were too lenient and there weren’t enough expectations or guidelines which is what caused the 60s! Too funny, these videos are great. I think there was just too much of a gap between the greatest generation and their kids. Their experiences were so vastly different that they were essentially foreigners to each other 🤷‍♂️.

Incredible interview!

Excellent interview. Nice! Sharing this on my Facebook groups.

It's great to hear you David. You're so forthright and articulate. I think I'm a few years younger than you but I too am a reaction to what was America up to the 60's and you expressed so well the reasons for what was behind the social changes inthe 60's. I still feel those currents pushing my buttons mostly in positive ways. Thanks

I protested in the 80s about nurses having to wear tights / stockings in the summer. They then were allowed to wear popsocks. I was born in the 50s.

The fifties were overly socially conservative. The sixties reacted to the fifties and were overly socially liberal. The seventies reacted to the sixties and became socially conservative again. The eighties rejected the seventies and.....the rest is history.

This was amazing and insightful.

So were the 1950s parents' rules and restrictions a reaction to a lack of parental guidance from their childhood?

Interesting. And I guess you could add that a lot if these 'rules' came out of Hollywood, television and advertising. A stereotype female and macho male image were pushed hard from the beginning of mass media i.e. from early 1900's onward

Speaking of subtle...few ppl realize the introduction of mirrors became easily AFFORDABLE and they started popping up everywhere and ppl started to become mesmerized with themselves, self focused. Me rather then We.

Very insightful and interesting.

Rather than introducing some new elements into western society, the sixties gave it a death blow.

The 1960s marked the end of the classic era and the beginning of the modern era (till today)

I was thinking this guy is basically like interviewing david hoffman. Then I saw your notes.

all the truth✊ thankyou. you speak the truth

If you can't have your girlfriend stand on your stomach, you're either too weak or your girlfriend is too heavy.

wow!

Amen brother!

Today, a similar thing is coming around (minus the behavioral aspect, since that has been in practice since the '60s), and it seems to be transcending age barriers. We're a modern 1980s, but we're much better than just that. I think that times are actually changing for the better, because we are finally reaching another point of reconstruction - another societal turning point. I think that, in another 10-30 years, we'll hopefully all have become united once again, and the results will not be those which were seen after the 1960s; we're smarter than to do this at the expense of societal integrity, unlike we were in the '60s.

Bravo

I wasn't alive in the 50s (I was born in 1968) but from some of the people I talked to there seems to be a consensus then in a lot of respects the 1950s were a better time in terms of civility. Now, perhaps that's a bit exaggerated (we tend to remember times as better than they really were), but a part of me suspects they're right. I think what it ultimately boils down to is this - it's a yin yang thing - you need a certain amount of structure in balance with a certain degree of creativity and innovation. Civilization is a delicate balancing act - if you have too much stasis and order things never progress and things get stifling and boring, on the other hand you can certainly have too much freedom as well - I'll call it the "Goldilocks effect" - you need just the right proportion of order and rebellion, not only that but it needs to come at the appropriate time. From an artistic standpoint the 1960s was clearly a watershed moment - The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, The Rolling Stones,The Doors, and Frank Zappa (just to name a few). These artists opened up whole new musical worlds. But from a sociological standpoint I think a strong case can be made that in certain respects the 1960s was a disaster. For instance, I think some of the more strident forms of feminism that we're witnessing today are an outgrowth of some of the more radical thinking from the 60s. I think the idea that sex can be divorced from emotions and human psychology can be traced back to the 1960s which in turn paved the way for things such as the "hookup culture" and the consensus seems to be that this was a disaster - the evidence suggests that overall this is psychologically unfulfilling and harmful. I also think that certain strains of feminism from that time period denigrated the concept of femininity. I see this attitude to a certain extent reflected in the attitudes and behavior of today's women - there seems to be a bumper crop of women nowadays who are macho and want to be just like "one of the boys", which I personally find very unattractive. Again, it's a Yin Yang thing - you need the feminine balanced with the masculine, but unfortunately it's instilled in women nowadays (and not always explicitly, sometimes it's implicit) that femininity is a bad thing, that it means your some weak, passive, Donna Reed, June Cleaver type of woman. In my opinion an example of this way of thinking is reflected in the remark Hilary Clinton made during the first Clinton campaign in 92 - "I don't bake cookies." In other words, if you're a stay at home mother and not in some high powered, macho field like business, politics, or law you're not a true feminist. And I'm not saying that women should not be in those fields, just that it's not essential to demonstrate that you're a "true" feminist. I also suspect that to a certain extent that some of the shitty behavior we're witnessing in the school system nowadays has its lineage from some of the misguided thinking of various social scientists and other intellectuals from back then. I worked in the school system for 10 years and worked with kids that were accused of sexually harassing kids, destruction of property, kids that threw chairs and desks, kids that trashed classrooms, and other wonderful things. I remember one kid telling me "fuck you" and people don't bat an eye over that sort of stuff nowadays, whereas If that happened in the 50s I'm sure the kid would have been expelled. So yeah, I get the idea behind "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit", and there were obviously a lot of problems in terms of race relations and other things along those lines, but I also think the 60s were largely responsible for some pernicious ideas that have come back to bite us in the ass big time.

I think we have a society where it is too difficult to live up to expectations. I guess there is not enough respect for authority for anyone to rebel against

That’s why I wanted to grow up to be a beatnik. 🤣

I can see this in my own family. The WW2 generation of the 40s, 50s early 60s, they were strongly aimed into the right ways to... boys to cut and style their hair, tuck their shirt in. grandparents recalled elaborate dating rules, the man must open the car door, let her choose her seat, pull out the chair. I suppose that generation came out of the military era so they transposed that into civilian life. I can see where the next generation, the 'boomers', where they swerved out of that. In my family you see all that age have these slick, gelled (grease?) all the boys have this coifed perfect hair in photos and then around 1966 they have 'Mop Tops' and by 72 era photos they go hard 'opposite' with crazy long hippy-style hair, beards, afros. I can well see how that was a 'counter' rebellion in that sense.

I WANT TO KNOW WHAT THESE RULES ARE

And now he drives a Lexus

people "rebeling" these days, but everything has been done before

The 1960's was about rebelling against traditional values, which is continuing today.

Don't you think the Cold War gave us a sense of fatalism?

Jiminy Christmas, it’s called a culture. If you go to Spain, you’ll notice that the men stand and walk differently than Americans. Their expected role is different. They even hold their cigarettes differently. Why did those kind of commonalities have to be perceived as repression? So many cultural legacies were dropped by that generation, it’s depressing. It wasn’t just these superficial things. And the self righteous goals of stopping war and promoting racial harmony, the ones that gave them the moral dictate to reject their own heritage, how are those things going?

This is so real.

Am I watching a younger David Hoffman or a younger brother?

2:00 You say when you got the chance. What gave you the chance? That's a question I'm trying to nail down. How come this revolution happened in the 60's and not all the previous decades? Or did it? It doesn't seem like it did, because there seemed to be a lot of consistency in the "rules" as you call them, social norms, whatever. Did it fall apart? What exactly happened? Was it weakened? Who weakened it? Was it not enforced? Kids today don't have the power to weaken societal rules, except really damaged people today like criminals and mental patients. It doesn't make sense to me that kids were able to write the rules suddenly in one generation. But it seems like it happened, so what caused it? I think the real question is what causes people to go along with social rules, and what allows them or forces them to abandon them/not follow them. Is it a lack of purpose? Lack of opportunity for the benefits of following them? I'm spitballing. I'm curious to know what your opinion is based on your experience/interviews? I have a feeling that something gave kids more freedom. Maybe it was a freedom that parents felt because they had become successful and didnt need to push their kids to follow certain paths, and instead follow their dreams. And kids dreams are childish by definition, and that's why nothing concrete came out of the 60's besides more materialism today and destruction or rules/institutions that people needed t obelong to before because of safety. They didn't need to anymore because they had money. The social safety net of church and religion and conservative values anymore didn't afford safety anymore because money provided a new paradigm of success that overpowered traditional values that used to lead to success in life. That's what I think is the more foundational path of thinking. Manliness and femininity were values in a more brutal world where families and communities needed to build up to be strong against other communities. And that's why Americans didnt support unnecessary wars like vietnam. It wasn't needed anymore and everyone knew it, so it wasn't valued and bad generals got into power because survival wasn't necessary. We survived even when we kept losing in vietnam. We should just focus on the economy. So what took over was money and childish cult and free love do whatever you want, there's no war for survival purpose ideas. It's either all about making money or being canon fodder or the third option of finding your own meaning in a world that didn't make meaning for you anymore. Which failed completely in building anything lasting, but succeeded in tearing down societal structures that had stood strong for centuries, and are still being worn down/losing support/faith in them.

*The best description I've ever heard of my childhood (born in '52).*

wow

Deep down the administration knew that "penny" protest was great. And hilarious. They feigned ire at school but had a gut-busting laugh at home, I'm sure.

Good video.

These rules are not defunct lmao

This culture is a lot like a safety glass windshield after a crash. It's riven with a million cracks, but never completely blows out.

You have to look far back to see when this train began,.. I say train because each era is a reflex to the era before,.. Essentialism began to be openly questioned in the 1800s with existentialism when it was made okay to think evolution as noble,... thereby opening the door to "counterism" each decade a little more was thrust into what the world had previously never thought of by people who used this as a stepping stone to begin stirring dissension just for the sake of stirring it,.. the scope monkey trials were a classic example,.. EVERYONE, including the judge KNEW it was a farce just for the sake of pushing the judicial system into a corner forcing their hand to HAVE to judicially handle the case,.. Then in the fifties, while the nation was attempting to set basic courtesies for how people should be with each other,( a little too overbearing too) Elvis countered by introducing his hip swinging music to forever successfully change the nation into mass counter culture and enlightening the young to see that they COULD rebel,.. and rebel they did in the sixties, and if they didn't have enough to rebel against from the fifties,...Then the Vietnam war fixed that, where by the late sixties it had become an audacious free for all with Woodstock as the pinnacle to crown the era,.. with the door now wide open to dissension, they began to introduce constant counter aspects such as Roe versus Wade,.. Now I contend those who so pushed Roe verses Wade DIDN'T give a hoot about women, OR their health,.... but simply used it as the scope monkey trial pushers did to throw in the "monkey wrenches" JUST to see what would happen, then sit back and giggle among themselves at their handiwork,... Another daily happening began when every night Dan Rather would open his nightly "opinion" news with the same format,.. he'd lay out the common way an issue was seen by the majority of people, add in his twist,.. then ask "BUT, is that how it really is"? Then go to the commercial break to then return and then rehash the issue through a full leftist lens,.. most people scoffed at his twist of opinionated propaganda but there were no OTHERS in those years giving any dissenting opposition and so was aired unchallenged for the nearly two decades,.. He was instrumental in helping fling open the doors to the lunacy that has become what we see here in 2019. where today,.. if you believe in ANYTHING someone will make it their goal to rebut you for no other reason than to counter against what you stand FOR.

Another thing y` all are missing is that the 1960s was a reaction to LSD #25, lol! Those unwritten social rules were in public service messages and films they showed us in school. They and them is The Man!

The 1960s was a reaction of ingesting one the Sandoz Laboratories finest products .

Yep…

1987 I had did 2 things I shared my food with a white guy in a all black school that made me enemy's in both segregated high schools.and 2nd I invited a white girl over my house of black Muslims my mom said get that Caucasian off my couch I pledged atheism. I was raised UN Islam converted to Baptist at 14 then atheist at 16 I caught hell at school and home in 1985-1988.Im a b-boy were of all spectrum's but not in small town America where segregation is very much alive even in 2019 why? Because traditional thinking you can find great grand parents and grandparents still alive with the i raised my children right syndrome meaning raciest and separatist color and class with only a small percentage of multiracial grandkids and acceptable parents my age group 45-55.because of forced integration to keep schools open in the 90s the millinials dont have the traditional hangups of their beastie boys run-dmc Aerosmith parents following behind their back to the future biff mc fly 1955 raciest separatist grandparents. The rebellion of us 1969-1980 both kids in the 80s is Reagan n bush fault of preaching and holding on to separatism and racism from their error. We got shitfaced every weekend watched interacial porn circle jerks cocaine off blonde tits went to rap concerts and loved our sports heroes no matter the color I dont say race we have just the one.Im black here's my favorite 80s stuff.bill lambieer favorite NBA star.Walter payton NFL. Gretzky NHL. Mackinroe tennis.flo jo 1988 Olympics. Chuck Norris stallione Bronson eestwood Arnold Willis Carl weathers Jackie change movies. Kim basinger vanity Susie yamaguci kathlina wit Sharon stone Kim katrel Pam grier some of the crushes can you imagine being me at 19 in 1989 free of my parents home and small town USA the sex the parties no racial hookups just fun till this day I got Russian babes I love Asian women India lollipops Africans Im so worldwide for women and love Im a dieabetic so I dont drink or smoke I watch what I eat except world vagina and Im soooooo happy I could bust.the only thing is out from the senior living homes comes the raciest separatist grandparents and their followers of my generation reinstating old fashion supremacy as to leave earth as top dog no.1 legacy the biggest lie that started the 1960 hippie culture studio 54 of the 70s hip hop of the 80s boy bands of the 90s white rappers of the 2000s and women coloreds and queers running floor president in 2020.quote from bob times they are a changing

I hate how some of you are not understanding how someone CAN FEEL- maybe NOT YOU, but someone can feel this way. I always found a way to fit in but I was an ambitious person of color. I HAD to learn to navigate different groups well in order to get ahead or succeed with my plans. Maybe some of you choose to go into fields of interest that were somewhat easy for you. Perhaps you were always adequate. NOT EVERYONE has that ability. I would have said privilege but now that is a dirty word. NO IT IS NOT. It just means certain things are easier for you than others. I have the privilege of being smarter than the average person. Thus, I can control my group situations better than others. DO this for years and it creates better situations and familiar opportunities. I recognize opportunity easier the older I get and that will translate to my offspring. Anyway, I see the dudes point of few. It is what it is. I think the kids say that. >LOL

To me the 1950s (born in 73) was a horrible time. Society seems to be very callous and shallow. The 80 was better than the 70s, but the 80s had the same friggin rules. For instance if you didn't wear Nike and Levis you were not in the in crowd. And thank God the 90s came along.

I was in history class in 63. We were discussing how in the Soviet Union there were loud speakers on all the street corners spewing out Communist propaganda. I put up my little hand and asked "Teacher, don't we get the same thing in our living rooms? Take a puff it is springtime. He wanted to frog walk me right to the principal's office. I was not voicing an opinion, I was stating a fact that the smoking habit was destroying lives.

Yes but aren't those very rigid and conservative social codes of the 1950's still intact in the white America of the post Vietnam war era ? You come out to white suburban communities like long island N.Y. and it still feels like that , look at my You-Tube profile photo, now iv been walking around the suburbs for about 45 years dressed like this and it is still not accepted, men and woman are supposed to know there place in conservative white society, they still are expected to dress and act in a certain way , non whites and central American immigrants are still considered less then human and outsiders, its still one dominant race, sex and religion as far as the majority of white Americans are concerned . So the 1960's had changed some people like you and i but not mainstream society, for that we will need another more successful revolution .

Bros yapping

I thought there had always been a black middle class. The famous "talented tenth."

Did your generation want all the good things without GOD ?

The 1960s was a reaction to Kennedy's assassination

Rules are for sheep. Never follow other people's rules live free or die

No it wasn’t, it was a response to the society that went way back. These people were just horrible non-conformist

"if you didn't do it that way you got laughed at by your peers." Interesting theory. Or maybe you were just a loser who got laughed at.

Typical

Proof hippies were childish...