The Go For It, If it Feels Good and Do Your Own Thang Generation Part I!

Subject: What are some of the outcomes (pro and con) of the Go For It, If it Feels Good, Do Your Own Thang Generation, where are they now?

I can still recall when I first heard the expression, ‘go for it’, being expressed. It seemed like all of the sudden everyone that I knew was saying to each other, “well then go for it”, and "if it feels good do it”.

And what these phrases meant was to throw caution, prohibitions and any other protocol to the wind and to go with your feelings.

Now in the event that you were not around towards the end of the 20th century, when the phrase became a part of post-modern America's parlance, during and after the turbulent and free-love 60’s, here is a definition of the phrase. According to the Free Online Dictionary, the phrase ‘go for it’ means, to expend all one's strength and resources toward achievement of an end or purpose.

The way the term was being applied when I first heard it was with a strictly sexual connotation attached to it. To be sure the term had to do with engaging in oral sex, and if one wished to engage in oral sex, the only thing that mattered was what one felt, in other words if you had an urge to do it then do it.

And about that time Americans stopped worrying about what their parents taught or thought about them, what the Bible, the preacher or God had to say about it – people went with their feelings and their impulses.

Soon, go for it and if it feels good do it, went beyond the bedroom. The baby boom generation began to carry the go for it message to college, in the corporate board room and everywhere else that they went. And soon afterward, people in my generation were doing everything. Oral sex became passé, Americans were trying out new drugs, going on drinking binges engaging in high-wire acts such as bungee jumping, tandem jumping from airplanes, and jet setting all over the globe.

So what were the outcomes of Americans throwing caution to the wind, along with other outdated Victorian, religious, parental, legal and other codes that had become passe?

Another phrase was soon added and incorporated into the American lexicon, it was ‘to do your own thing’. And today I am going to examine some of the outcomes that followed, after these three trends, to go for it, if it feels good do it and to do your own thing were practiced!

I will be discussing the breakdown of the American family, socially transmitted diseases (STDs), the abortion rate, addictions, substance abuse, chemical depends, out of wedlock births, the economy, corporate America…, and the impact that going for it had, legally, morally and ethically upon individuals, raising the X Generation and our societiy in general.

Peace & grace
Rev. C. Solomon

to be continued... I can still remember a young black man lying on a bench just outside of Sproul Plaza near Zellerbach Auditorium on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. He was completely out of his head, given his apparent extended ussage of psychedelic drugs. He went for it, and I thought then, as his peers simply walked by him, look where he is now!