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IN The Last Great Dream, the fourth instalment of his survey of post-war counterculture, Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally has arrived at an important junction. Yes, there are field trips to Greenwich Village and Swinging London, but the map is folded most heavily around the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets in San Francisco where, for a fabled moment, the wearing of daisies in one’s (uncut) hair felt like a significant act. The freaks of Haight-Ashbury, McNally writes, “stood by a series of values” at the core of which was the “freedom to question the shadow side of American culture”.
How long ago it seems, how idealistic. What happened? Well, spoiler alert: McNally’s postscript suggests that hippie values found permanent expression in the market for organic food, natural fibres, aromatherapy, herbalism and the personal computer. And if the jury isn’t out on the progressive effects of the computer in the age of Musk, it is at least Googling conspiracy theories and trading insults with imagined enemies.