Blame It On Woodstock by David Gruder, PhD, DCEP
rekindle the fires of social responsibility that had been doused the previous year by the back-to-back assassinations of two leading voices for social responsibility at that time: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. Unfortunately, the Kent State massacre occurred less than a year after Woodstock and Watergate a couple of years after that. With these events, Timothy Leary's injunction to "Turn on, tune in, and drop out"— rather than Woodstock's lessons about social responsibility—finally won out in many circles over wiser voices. Few of us knew it then, but this refocusing toward inner exploration at the expense of social responsibility marked the beginning of the rampant self- centeredness we suffer from today. Despite the huge influence this sequence of events had on me, my fascination with individual freedom remained as strong as my passion to serve the common good. Our Culture Split Into Self- Improvers, Connectors, and Do- Gooders We lacked the collective ability in the 1960s to turn our cultural upheaval into a blessing. Instead, our society fragmented into three groups. Each embraced a different primary focus, and with it
a dangerously incomplete vision of integrity that haunts us and our society to this day. most intrigued with themselves became Self-Improvers , whose primary orientation is self-expression and personal fulfillment. Those Those who became exploring expanded visions of love, collaboration, and companionship became the Connectors , whose main emphasis is on relationships. And those whose primary passion was to make the world a better place became the Do-Gooders .
It was 1969.
My parents were about to send me off to my second year at a wonderful summer camp for the performing arts in the Berkshire mountains in Massachusetts, where I spent my mornings practicing my beloved music and drama and my afternoons on horses and in canoes. They had received a notice from the camp director about an optional three-day field trip to a music and arts festival in upstate New York. “Would I like to go?” “Why not? Sounds like fun.” I was fifteen and rather naïve. So were my parents. Had they known they were sending me to what was to become the infamous Woodstock music festival, they would have come to kidnap me! I arrived at Woodstock a drug- free virgin. I left that way too. Not until years later did I grasp how profoundly my three days at this event has impacted me in other far deeper ways. Woodstock taught me that half a million strangers could truly look out for one another—even with only enough food and toilets for 40,000. It taught me that not only is stewardship possible, but that we can be surprisingly successful at it when those are the standards we set for ourselves.
Self-Improvers
Self-Improvers focus on how important it is for people to be who they truly are. The primary quest of Self-Improvers is authenticity above all else. This includes personal well-being, inner healing, development, self- expression, creativity, success, and individual freedom. Self-Improvers tend to advocate that change only occurs one person at a time, and that the key to change is learning how to manifest our intentions. Believing they cannot have a real impact in making the world a better place, they tend to avoid becoming involved with political or social activism groups. As a result, they tend to not see how focusing primarily on their own personal freedom causes them to neglect their drive for connection with others and their drive to have a positive impact in the world.
For me, and many I knew back then, Woodstock began to
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