Humans like to think of themselves as the “Crown of Creation.” In 1968, Jefferson Airplane captured the irony of the human tendency to presume that we had achieved the pinnacle of the evolutionary process in the song, “Crown of Creation”:
You are the crown of creation.
You are the crown of creation,
And you’ve got no place to go.Soon you’ll attain the stability you strive for,
In the only way that it’s granted:
In a place among the fossils of our time.In loyalty to their kind
They cannot tolerate our minds.
In loyalty to our kind
We cannot tolerate their obstruction!Life is change.
How it differs from the rocks.
I’ve seen their ways too often for my liking.
New worlds to gain.
My life is to survive and be alive
for you.
That song was released in 1968. I was in the Army and stationed in Vietnam the first time I heard it. At the time, I was more concerned with getting back home than I was with the political implications of the music. The late 1960s, much like today, were a time of unrest and political upheaval. We (young people at the time) were, however, very hopeful. In the late 1960s and early 1970s many of the young people, “hippies,” thought that “free love” and communal living would eliminate the problems caused by “outmoded” political structures. A song that expressed the heart of the counter-culture, “Share the Land,” by the Canadian Group, Guess Who, was a hopeful expression of anticipated change:
Have you been around?
Have you done your share of comin’ down
On different things that people do?
Have you been aware?
You got brothers and sisters who care
About what’s gonna happen to you
In a year from nowMaybe I’ll be there to shake your hand (Shake your hand)
Maybe I’ll be there to share the land (Share the land)
That they’ll be givin’ away
When we all live together, we’re talkin’ ’bout together, nowSee full lyrics.
While some of the communes established in the 1970s still exist, most have long since disappeared. In the late 1960s, the Haight Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco was a center for the hippie movement and the home for revolutionaries and famous singers (including the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin). A quick drive across the Oakland Bay Bridge, led to Berkeley California, home of the Free Speech Movement. Young people at the time (and I was one of them) were angry at “the establishment” and hopeful for significant social change. The 1967 song by Scott McKenzie captured the feelings of the time:
In 1974, I was comfortably back in the States completing my education when Stevie Wonder released, “Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away”:
They say that heaven is 10 zillion light years away
And just the pure at heart will walk her righteous streets someday
They say that heaven is 10 zillion light years away
But if there is a God, we need Him now
“Where is your God”
That’s what my friends ask me
And I say it’s taken Him so long
‘Cause we’ve got so far to come…Tell me people
Why can’t they say that hate is 10 zillion light years away
Why can’t the light of good shine God’s love in every soul
Why must my color black make me a lesser man
I thought this world was made for every man
He loves us all, that’s what my God tells me
And I say it’s taken Him so long
‘Cause we’ve got so far to come…But in my heart I can feel it, yeah,
Feel His spirit wow oh woo…
Feel it, yeah, feel His spirit…
See full lyrics.
While the song is more upbeat and hopeful than “Crown of Creation,” the theme is essentially the same: humans are struggling to live up to their potential and are a long way from “sharing the land.” The hopeful sentiments of “Share the Land” and “If You’re Going to San Francisco” evaporated in the ongoing realities of US and global politics. Some progress was being made, of course, but hopes and dreams became increasingly modest, and for every gain there seemed to be a corresponding loss.
Debra’s article this month highlights the human inability to save others and the need to let things unfold naturally. I am not sure that’s possible for humans, nor am I sure that it is even desirable. I agree with her Pema Chödrön quotation that everything is a path to awakening, but that is only true if we are open to awakening. A closed heart has a difficult time letting possibilities in.
The philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Remembering the past is, of course, the first step in learning from it. If we can’t remember it, we can’t learn from it. Even if we can remember it, however, we have to have a sense of what we are to learn. I am still sufficiently a child of the ’60s to think that we need more peace, good, and brotherhood:
Look over yonder
What do you see?
The sun is a-risin’
Most definitely
A new day is comin’, whoo-hoo
People are changin’
Ain’t it beautiful, whoo-hoo
Crystal blue persuasionBetter get ready
Gonna see the light
Love, love is the answer, whoo-hoo
And that’s all right
So don’t you give up now, whoo-hoo
It’s so easy to find
Just look to your soul (Look to your soul)
And open your mindCrystal blue persuasion
Mm-hmm
It’s a new vibration
Crystal blue persuasion
Crystal
Blue persuasionSee full lyrics.
“Crystal Blue Persuasion,” like “Crown of Creation,” was released in 1968. Its feeling, however, is very different. “Crown of Creation” feels “dark.” In comparison, “Crystal Blue Persuasion” is “sweetness and light.” A lot of people mistakenly thought that the song was about drugs. That’s not the case, however. The song is about Tommy James’ vision of the New Jerusalem, a powerful metaphor for life as it could be.