The entire thing is indicative of the failure of the hippy project to even contemplate enacting real change. You wanna change the world? Nah, take LSD instead, “don’t you know it’s gonna be alright?”.
The idea that any of these people genuinely believed they were doing anything other than assisting in the maintenance of the status quo is laughable.
Of course I’m not saying I thought rock stars represented the ideological pinnacle of the movement, but I’d claim that this sort of thought is indicative of the wider milieu.
I think it was more untreated bipolar that got Phil in the end.
Before he killed himself he was writing an album about the last year of his life where he was having a psychotic break, due to the loss of his voice and increasing paranoia, and going under the persona of John/Luke Train, and it genuinely sounds like his voice was healing in this recording 4 months before he killed himself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFQBASpfKk (2 years after the mugging) in comparison to this from the year before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy26mFpn3eo (1 year after the mugging).
Personally, I think he was in a particularly depressive and paranoid state and he made a rash decision. Ultimately though, I don’t know exactly what happened but either way it’s a sad fucking state of affairs and the lack of proper mental health care is disastrous.
“He was planning an album that would be an unflinching narrative of his psychosis over the past year and had at least ten songs in various states. Five of those songs are represented here. The working title for the album was Duel In The Sun. Soon after the New Year Phil started to come around less until he eventually moved in with his sister Sonny in Far Rockaway. We would talk on the phone but I would never see him again.” - from the description of the last recording.