Well, being old enough to actually have been through all that stuff and time :( I think that the 60s were simply a period in which we nationally (and in some other countries) shifted gear from the industrial age to an interim or transitional age. Somehow, we had to break the links with the established expectations of the past, or we at least had to let people know that alternatives were out there in all realms -- i.e., work doesn't have to be 9-5, religion doesn't have to be just what one does on Sunday, sexuality, ah well, yes ... Sure, we have been thrashing around ever since trying to find something to replace the comfortable nature of the industrial age, but I think that is the trap for many -- there is no reason to expect a replacement -- a universally acknowledged replacement. Even the communes recreated a conventional mentality -- if you didn't "hang" in a certain way, you weren't one of them. I think the secret of this search is to realize that each of us can -- and has every right to -- create our own version of reality, of work, of sexuality, etc. Now, just don't get me started on superstrings :) http://www.umeais.maine.edu/~hayward

"Breaking links with the established expectations of the past" is an important common experience�of the '60s, as I experienced it too. It was the use of psychedelics, for many and certainly for me, that led to a "higher" perspective, where social mores and mental games and cultural habit patterns became so much more apparent. It was like opening the hood of your car for the first time -- you could actually get in there and make adjustments. The question was how to find out what to adjust and how to adjust it. Some snapped back into traditional upbringings really fast -- some reinvented themselves anew -- and some went right on out and over the cliff. We must be the survivors. But are we living up to what we learned? Or are we defaulting to early programming? All the communes I knew ran into walls and blind alleys. It seems to require an ongoing struggle. And wisdom -- through meditation or some kind of compassionate discipline. So what about superstrings anyway?

It seems that I've not found anything to compare with the euphoria of those first years of sharing ideals that I found on the Farm. Though they may have been founded on the "anything's possible" visions of peak acid exerience, they still ring more true than any of the more practical, grounded, "real" foundations that I find here in normal American society. Two years living on the edge of a Mayan village in Guatemala exposed me to culturally inbred community consciousness that it is impossible for our fragmented and materialistic culture to mimic. Yet, in those people I saw some qualities that made me believe that we weren't off on some wild and crazy quest for a phantom dream. We were looking for something that, once upon a time, our ancestors shared as tribal people for many more generations than these few "free enterprise" generations we know. So, how do we get to the real stuff? I think the basics of Buddhism recognizes the real stuff. I think identifying with more than just the human species is real stuff. Psychedelics were important in breaking my mind free of all that I'd learned to that point in my life. But so was Viet Nam and the assassinations of MLK, JFK, RFK, and the presidency of Nixon and the lunar landing and the Beatles and Hendrix and TV. It's hard to separate them from each other now.

Community consciousness is integral to a spiritual life, I feel -- certainly if you're inclined toward the Buddhist world view. The Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha -- salvation�lies in embracing those Three Jewels. The Sangha is the Community (of the monastery, of Buddhists, of higher-consciousness beings). Buddhists by nature (Mahayana Buddhists) believe in conservation of energy, since the more that is saved, the more there is to be utilized in saving the other sentient beings. That's the world view he planet is in desperate need of. That's why Buddhism is growing so fast in this country -- which is one of the most hopeful signs we have in the foreshadow of an apocalyptic millenium. "Free enterprise" in the sense of getting rich at the expense of others through relentless competition is a complete cop-out and leads to a ravaged world like we have on our hands now. How tragic that Marxism/Communism should have been appropriated by the violent and rapacious. The only answer lies in some form of collectivism, which has been given such a bad name by its ignorant abusers that you can't even call it that anymore. But a free-for-all of competing and explosively populating individualists on this globe of finite dimensions is sheer insanity.

I'm looking for information on the "STP family" in Oregon, late 60ies.