WE ARE THE PEOPLE OUR PARENTS WARNED US AGAINST -
NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN
It starts with a description of Haight-Ashbury circa 1967 by which point in time the nascent hippy scene is already in a state of near chaos brought about by the mass influx of young people into the city. Apparently it's a freak show populated by 'poisoners, killers, burn artists, sadists, beggars and thieves'. It's a description of the decline and fall of the American Empire for better or for worse where San Francisco is the new centre of production for LSD where it's cheapest to purchase and where it's most plentiful, leading to the growth and trade of other drugs around it.
The hippies flocking to the Haight come in all shapes and sizes, of all religions and of all political persuasions but their unifying factor, the one thing they all have in common, is drugs. The monthly LSD market there shows 200,000 doses selling at not less than fifty cents apiece but there aren't that many hippies in the world so where is it all going? At the same time, sales of Vitamin C tablets are going through the roof as they're bought in bulk to use as blotting agents for liquid acid. Alongside this a whole industry of drug/hippy-related businesses have cropped up dealing in pipes, jewelry, mandalas, posters, music and publications.
We Are The People Our Parents Warned Us Against is a front-line report from the culture wars of America, written by Nicholas von Hoffman and first published in 1968. It's a picture of the world turned inside-out and reflected in on itself. A mirror image of Western democracy and twentieth-century capitalism distorted and cracked through the entry into the market of hallucinatory drugs. It's von Hoffman describing for the benefit of a readership confused, appalled and concerned at where America is heading as they cling to the promise of the American Dream like passengers on a sinking ship. It's a litany of observations and testaments from those aware there's something wrong with society but unable to quite put their finger on it.
Haight-Ashbury is the flame to which those of a more youthful nature are drawn, hoping to find some kind of answer or at least to share in the company of others of a similar disposition. Although von Hoffman paints a squalid picture he does also highlight a lot of the positive and interesting projects born from the hippy dream such as The Diggers and their free food program, the free information outlets such as Switchboard, the free press, and the free clinics. 'The Haight-Ashbury scene is the last hope of the country,' says a guy called Barthol who's a friend of The Grateful Dead, and perhaps at that moment he's actually right because after all, the alternative was the Vietnam War.
A depressing thing about von Hoffman's observations and the debates he's party to is that they're all so very familiar to anyone who has ever partaken in any form of 'alternative' scene. It's the same endless discussions that for the most part end up going round in circles and ultimately going nowhere except a retreat into drugs. It's the same bricolage of opinions and points of view coming from all angles and all places with no hint of consensus and with only an illusion of being together as a common thread. And yes, it is an illusion because whilst a shared liking of the same music, the same clothes and the same drugs can indeed constitute a sense of togetherness, scratch the surface and underneath the differences can be vast and manifold. Sharing the same tastes does not a movement make and neither is it enough to change the world, and therein is one of the reasons for the failure of the hippy dream and likewise for the punk dream, the techno dream and whatever other dream you might care to think of.
At the heart of all these teenage dreams and so-called social movements are the questions of capital and class that for the most part tend to remain unquestioned and unchallenged therefore allowing them to become ever more entrenched, robust and unassailable. They are the pillars supporting the structure and the engines driving the machine, so much so in fact that they now seem to have become the structure and have become the machine itself.
An interesting observation that von Hoffman makes of Haight-Ashbury and its influx of new inhabitants is its relationship to Detroit and the black inhabitants of the ghettoes there that at the time was being wracked with riots. Von Hoffman suggests that for the majority of black people living in such places as Detroit it's incomprehensible that the white hippies should build a new ghetto albeit in San Francisco and lock themselves up in it to take dope. So much so that for von Hoffman to see these sons and daughters of white collar America making a virtue of dirt, shiftlessness, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, and irresponsibility - all the so-called sins laid upon black people and subsequently used against them to exclude and cast them as 'other' - it is an affront and a put-down to black people.
'So rich, so precious, so secure,' von Hoffman writes of the hippies 'so much to the manor born, they can despise the money, the cleanliness, the comfort, the balanced diet, the vitamins, and the living room carpets black people have been willing to die for.'
It's a debatable point, of course, but an important one. The problem being, however, that it again fails to mention the two elephants in the room - capital and class - and so ultimately ends up chasing its own tail whilst the structure remains intact and the machine rumbles on.
Von Hoffman is out to understand what the hippies of Haight-Ashbury are up to and you can tell he's trying to be impartial but his own personal background betrays him and prejudices his overview. He just can't let go of the safety and security of his own personal raft that he sits on but then why should he for he'd only be cast overboard and be put at risk of drowning? And for what? Utopian dreaming? Middle class conceit? Idle naivety?
He ponders the politics of it all and somewhat surprisingly concludes that the entrance into the political arena of ardent idealists of the kind that can be found in Haight-Ashbury could potentially tax the system of government and provoke serious and even revolutionary crises. He sees that historical demands for such things as the abolishment of slavery and votes for women have after much consternation and disruption been met via formal changes in laws and institutions, allowing the system to recover and continue. It's when the system faces demands, however, that is not in the power of government to meet that a whole other battleground opens up and exposes the system's Achilles heel .
'Be reasonable, demand the impossible' as the Situationists of Paris '68 advised, suggesting this is more than just a clever slogan fit only for daubing on the Sorbonne walls.
'The Haight is like one great, enormous Rorschach card,' a doctor of Behavioural Sciences is quoted as saying and it's one of the most accurate summations in the whole book. On the subject of drugs the same doctor says 'People all through history have wanted to intoxicate themselves. Even little children spin themselves on a swing to get a little dizzy high.' He errs on the side of caution as to whether marijuana should be legalised, however, because he wonders if there is any need for another intoxicating drug in society. The only thing he neglects to ask is which are the most harmful drugs? The legal ones such as alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine and the many pills doctors dispense or the illegal ones?
And then finally there's the owner of The Psychedelic Shop in Haight-Ashbury, a guy called Ron Thelin who on announcing the closure of what is America's first ever headshop gives an explanation as to why, summed up by a stack of cards on the counter inviting everybody to the funeral of 'Hippie' to be held at sunrise at a local park. 'It's the mass media that changed us from men into hippies.' Thelin explains 'We wanted to be free men and build a free community. The word 'hippy' turned everybody off. Well, the hippies are dead and the funeral's next week.'
It's a point of view endorsed by others: 'There never were any flower children,' declares a local dope dealer and social commentator by the name of Teddybear. 'It was the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the American public. This wasn't a 'Summer of Love', this was a summer of bullshit. The so-called flower children came here to find something because the media told 'em to, and there was nothing to find.'
The funeral was apparently well attended and was followed by a procession in which the body of 'Hippy' was carried through the community in a coffin before being burned. It's another familiar story and one that every youth cult seems to go through where it at first burns brightly before turning to rust and becoming just another cheap product for the consumer's head. Such is the way of the world it would seem and such is the conclusion of Nicholas von Hoffman's book.
John Serpico.
