The 1960's, a lesson I will never forget

[kirtland r.m.]

As a boy, I was young enough to see things turn south in the 1960's. Many who where a little older than me started the drug wave along with a moral breakdown that began to sweep across or country. Oh how things got worse between the Beatles in 1964, and the next three or four years. In Phoenix our next door neighbor was arrested by the F.B.I.. T.V. and music began to change. So did the way people began to dress and act, and I mean in a big way.
Many of these young people went to universities to avoid the draft. Now some who have not changed much are running our government, schools, Hollywood, ect.. Hillary Clinton went from a "Goldwater Girl" to a Saul Alinskyite. http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/brea ... organizer/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I once read a description of John Lennon's later music as being written in a "Drug induced stupor", for any younger , here is an example of how things changed from "she loves you", to "I am a walrus".
I Am the Walrus
The Beatles
I am he as you are he as you are me
And we are all together
See how they run like pigs from a gun
See how they fly
I'm crying
Sitting on a cornflake
Waiting for the van to come
Corporation T-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday
Man you've been a naughty boy
You let your face grow long
I am the eggman
They are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g' joob
Mr. City policeman sitting
Pretty little policemen in a row
See how they fly like Lucy in the sky
See how they run
I'm crying
I'm crying, I'm crying, I'm crying
Yellow matter custard
Dripping from a dead dog's eye
Crabalocker fishwife
Pornographic priestess
Boy, you've been a naughty girl
You let your knickers down
I am the eggman
They are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g' joob
Sitting in an English garden
Waiting for the sun
If…
Now with much of a lost(some of it at least) generation running things and youth being subject to the false doctrine day and night taught and modeled by the lost, to them no wonder the slide continues. Satan's forces are now well entrenched, numerous, and committed. However we have the Father, and our Savior on our side. There is no question about who will win. No question!

[gclayjr]

How about ...

Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds....

Regards,

George Clay

[Matchmaker]

I was a young teenager during the middle to late 60's. After Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963, the world, as I knew it became a darker place. The Vietnam War was killing off our friends and brothers. The big shift in society came because I think we were all just looking for a way to escape our painful reality. We found it through sex, drugs, and psychedelic music.

In February of 1964, the Beatles came to America. Their good looks and fun music was nectar to a depressed society that had just lost its President. Anything British became popular - hairstyles, clothing, music, entertainment, etc.

Drugs flooded our town and high schools, and almost everyone experimented with something. In the beginning, some drug use was not even against the law. Cigarettes were legal for teens to smoke, and many did. LSD was legal until 1966. Speed, or Meth, was legal until 1970!

The birth control pill was legalized for use by married women in 1965. Within a few years, it was available to almost any single woman who wanted it. It's use revolutionized American society. Without the fear of pregnancy, promiscuity abounded.

What is a lesson that I will never forget from the 60's? I learned that drugs (legal or otherwise) are toxic and can damage the spirit as easily as they can damage the body. When under their influence, one can do horrible things they would never do if sober.

[tribrac]

Thank you for sharing history as you experienced it. The young people need to know how we got here, and that it wasn't always this way.

[gclayjr]

A Movie that I think demonstrates this very well, if you understand the context, was the movie "American Graffiti". This was a movie about a bunch of kids doing what we used to call in Southern Utah "Dragging the Main". Driving up and down the street listening to "Wolf man Jack" on the radio and engaged in harmless pranks. What a lot of people don't realize is that the tag line to this movie was "Where were you in 62?". The other key to this was that the movie was filmed in 1972.

This was a nostalgia film, about how innocent and simpler things were back in 1962,... from the viewpoint of just 10 years later on 1972. I often ask people, do you think anybody thought in 1982, about how innocent and simpler things were back in 1972, or people in 1992, about how much simpler and innocent things were in 1982...etc.

The 60s changed everything, especially the direction we have been on since, and nobody who didn't live through the 60s can understand just how dramatic that change was.

Regards,

George Clay

[eddie]

Look up " Mothers little helper," by Mick Jagger.

[tribrac]

Look up " Mothers little helper," by Mick Jagger.

i had to ggoogle it. Catchy little tune. But I couldn't help noticing it doesn't align with the current LDS narrative of women as angels and victims.

[skmo]

...I learned that drugs (legal or otherwise) are toxic and can damage the spirit as easily as they can damage the body. When under their influence, one can do horrible things they would never do if sober.

As an excommunicated member, please allow me to add my somber testimony to the truthfulness to this. There were almost no restraints on the choices I made when I was loaded with Percocet, Vicodin, and sometimes both. After almost twenty years of faithful and loving temple-sealed marriage with a way above average physical relationship with my loving wife, caution was thrown to the wind with almost no regard.

[Matchmaker]

...I learned that drugs (legal or otherwise) are toxic and can damage the spirit as easily as they can damage the body. When under their influence, one can do horrible things they would never do if sober.

As an excommunicated member, please allow me to add my somber testimony to the truthfulness to this. There were almost no restraints on the choices I made when I was loaded with Percocet, Vicodin, and sometimes both. After almost twenty years of faithful and loving temple-sealed marriage with a way above average physical relationship with my loving wife, caution was thrown to the wind with almost no regard.

I'm so sorry for your loss, skmo. Damn those drugs and alcohol! In 12 step meetings they tell us that if you weren't sober when you did it, YOU didn't do it. There might be some truth to that statement. I was ex'd 30 years ago as a result of making bad choices. I made it back into the Church several years later but my temple marriage never recovered, and I did serious harm to many others along the way that I can't repair in this life.

[Dave62]

Skmo and Matchmaker. Co-incidentally, I'm working about 45 minutes drive from my home. I'm listening to the Book of Mormon while I drive. It's been a couple of years since I have done this and once again the Book has struck me with the blinding force and power of the Atonement. I have never been through the excommunication process but a close friend of mine has. In a phrase, "it is hard". I have witnessed your suffering.

The 60's was the decade of Post-Modernism and it's legacy is the bitter fruit we suffer today. A lot of things needed to change and in some ways there have been improvements in society over the past number of decades, but along with these changes have come a "Trojan Horse" of evil.

[dlbww]

Perhaps this stuff is cyclical and we will again learn that "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history." As a Canadian watching the circus which is the USA presidential election it appears that we might again see that "when the wicked rule the people mourn." (D&C 98:9). The parallels between what Moroni saw of our day and what happened to the Nephites were so similar that he included them in his abridgement as a warning, i.e. "For as their laws and their governments were established by the voice of the people, and they who chose evil were more numerous than they who chose good, therefore they were ripening for destruction, for the laws had become corrupted." (Helaman 5:2)

I was also very young in the 1960's and witnessed first hand the new morality taking hold, it was a time of great turning/deception: "And he beheld Satan; and he had a great chain in his hand, and it veiled the whole face of the earth with darkness; and he looked up and laughed, and his angels rejoiced." (Moses 7:26).