In Where have all the hippies gone?, Lenn Pryor asks a seemingly important, though perhaps irrelevant question.

The problem with the question is this: it assumes that the values and culture of the 60s and early 70s are not merely transient ideas whose time has come and gone. Back then there was plenty of talk of free love, of the goodness – or even the God – within everyone, of no absolutes.

Today’s young adults are born out of the unabashed hedonism of the 80s and the reality of AIDS, divorce, teen pregnancy, a wanton disregard for human life in many places. They don’t believe in Utopia. They don’t want to hear fairy tales. Hearing a Bob Dylan or John Lennon song is as likely to give them the seed for a new beat as it is to inspire them to change their world… perhaps even moreso the former. And leaders? Leaders can’t be trusted because they have their own agenda. An agenda that looks good on the surface, but underneath is full of selfishness, greed, spite, malice… and worse.

That’s not to say there are no longer any brave voices of dissent. They’re there, underneath it all. Talk to the young generation of today; it’s not about courage, it’s about hope, it’s about having something they can trust in and believe in. They’re searching desperately for reality, for substance, for someone or something they can depend on, because they have learned they simply can’t depend on anyone or anything. Many give up and live life day to day, wondering all the while what the point is. And, sadly, some decide there really is no point.

So, why can’t there be absolutes? Rights, and wrongs? What if there really is a code of behavior ingrained in all of us that, no matter how we try to numb it with sex, drugs, alcohol, music, friends, parties, being rich, being poor, being “good” or “bad”… what if when all is said and done, we still know that we’ve violated that code and we still feel ashamed? And if this is true, where did that code come from, anyway? What if there is a point, and the point is that we are not our own?