John Lennon on the 60s

by Robert Wilkinson

I just got to see a great movie for the second time. It’s called The US vs John Lennon and goes through the entire sordid mess dumped on John’s head when he was persecuted by Nixon and J Edgar Pig. In it there’s an amazing quote.

By all means, if you can find a copy, watch this movie. It covers the period when he was into making an antiwar statement through “Hair/Peace” and went to bed with Yoko for a week, creating an artistic “press conference” to further his message that “War is over if we want it.”

Some brief Andy Rooney style editorializing: Over the years since then, I’ve heard a lot of criticism about the 60s, and why “we” didn’t do more. Of course, I’ve always wondered why it was put on me and my contemporaries to do more, when we were the ones who stopped a war, got equal rights for women and minorities, got the EPA, Clean Water Act, and Clean Air Act passed, and all those other things that so many take for granted today. Who since then has written anything as powerful as “Blowing In the Wind,” a song that mobilized millions? Who since then has written anything as powerful as “Give Peace A Chance?”

So for those who put down the 60s, and those of us who tried with all our hearts to make a better world of love, peace, and equal rights for all, here’s a quote from The US vs John Lennon where John lays it all out for all the honest world to feel.

"The thing the 60s did was show us the possibility and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibilities."

Some us still carry the Light, the Truth, and the Magic of those times. We may be grey hairs with wrinkles and don’t have as much “get up and go” as we did then, but we still hold those values, the determination to make a better world however we can, and the resolve to carry those values forward until our last breath. We'll NEVER back down. And that’s the way it is…..

© Copyright 2015 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[Jo Garceau]

Google the movie title and you will find three options for streaming it. Thanks, Robert.

[Veronica]

Like...click

[Vetch]

For some weeks now I am attending dhikr with the local Sufis. Last time, before the meditation, we were talking about alternative ways of living, of communes and self-sustaining eco-villages that now are actually thriving in several places.
We agreed that these are flowers and fruits grown from the seeds of the 60ies.
Healthy fruit, it's thriving and spreading. :)

[Sara]

I was born in the sixties (Uranus/pluto conjuction, opposite chirion in pisces). Although I was not old enough to remember those years, I embody the same spirit of those times; making the world a better place, caring for the environment and each other. That's what makes it so difficult today, living in a politically correct, hyper-conservative and money orientated world. I feel like a fish out of water. I can't relate to any of it and refuse to conform. I believe my generation will finish what began in the sixties. That's what we were born to do. It is our destiny and I agree Robert, that's just the way it is.