The Hippies Were Right!
Green homes? Organic food? Nature is good? Time To Give The Ol’ Tie-Dyers Some Respect
Go ahead, name your movement. Name something good and positive and pro-environment and eco-friendly that’s happening right now in the newly “greening” America and don’t say more guns in Texas or fewer reproductive choices for women or endless vile unwinnable BushCo wars in the Middle East lasting until roughly 2075 because that would defeat the whole point of this perky little column and destroy its naive tone of happy rose-colored sardonic optimism. OK?
I’m talking about, say, energy-efficient light bulbs. I’m looking at organic foods going mainstream. I mean chemical-free cleaning products widely available at Target and I’m talking saving the whales and protecting the dolphins and I mean yoga studios flourishing in every small town, giant boxes of organic cereal at Costco and non-phthalates dildos at Good Vibes and the Toyota Prius becoming the nation’s oddest status symbol. You know, good things.
Look around: we have entire industries devoted to recycled paper, a new generation of cheap solar-power technology and an Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth” and even the soulless corporate monsters over at famously heartless joints like Wal-Mart are now claiming that they really, really care about saving the environment because, well, “it’s the right thing to do” (read: It’s purely economic and all about their bottom line because if they don’t start caring they’ll soon be totally screwed on manufacturing and shipping costs at/from all their brutal Chinese sweatshops).
There is but one conclusion you can draw from the astonishing (albeit fitful, bittersweet) pro-environment sea change now happening in the culture and (reluctantly, nervously) in the halls of power in D.C., one thing we must all acknowledge in our wary, jaded, globally warmed universe: The hippies had it right all along. Oh yes they did.
You know it’s true. All this hot enthusiasm for healing the planet and eating whole foods and avoiding chemicals and working with nature and developing the self? Came from the hippies. Alternative health? Hippies. Green cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMA seeds? It came from the granola types (who, of course, absorbed much of it from ancient cultures), from the alternative worldviews, from the underground and the sidelines and from far off the goddamn grid and it’s about time the media, the politicians, the culture as a whole sent out a big, wet, hemp-covered apology.
Here’s a suggestion, from one of my more astute ex-hippie readers: Instead of issuing carbon credits so industrial polluters can clear their collective corporate conscience, maybe, to help offset all the savage damage they’ve done to the soul of the planet all these years, these commercial cretins should instead buy some karma credits from the former hippies themselves. You know, from those who’ve been working for the health of the planet, quite thanklessly, for the past 50 years and who have, as a result, built up quite a storehouse of good karma. You think?
Of course, you can easily argue that much of the “authentic” hippie ethos — the anti-corporate ideology, the sexual liberation, the anarchy, the push for civil rights, the experimentation — has been totally leeched out of all these new movements, that corporations have forcibly co-opted and diluted every single technology and humble pro-environment idea and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cone and Odwalla smoothie to make them both palatable and profitable. But does this somehow make the organic oils in that body lotion any more harmful? Verily, it does not.
You might also just as easily claim that much of the nation’s reluctant turn toward environmental health has little to do with the hippies per se, that it’s taking the threat of global meltdown combined with the notion of really, really expensive ski tickets to slap the nation’s incredibly obese ass into gear and force consumers to begin to wake up to the savage gluttony and wastefulness of American culture as everyone starts wondering, oh my God, what’s going to happen to swimming pools and NASCAR and free shipping from Amazon? Of course, without the ’60s groundwork, without all the radical ideas and seeds of change planted nearly five decades ago, what we’d be turning to in our time of need would be a great deal more hopeless indeed.
But if you’re really bitter and shortsighted, you could say the entire hippie movement overall was just incredibly overrated, gets far too much cultural credit for far too little actual impact, was pretty much a giant excuse to slack off and enjoy dirty lazy responsibility-free sex romps and do a ton of drugs and avoid Vietnam and not bathe for a month and name your child Sunflower or Shiva Moon or Chakra Lennon Sapphire Bumblebee. This is what’s called the reactionary simpleton’s view. It blithely ignores history, perspective, the evolution of culture as a whole. You know, just like America.
But, you know, whatever. The proofs are easy enough to trace. The core values and environmental groundwork laid by the ’60s counterculture are still so intact and potent even the stiffest neocon Republican has to acknowledge their extant power. It’s all right there: Treehugger.com is the new ’60s underground hippy zine. Ecstasy is the new LSD. Visible tattoos are the new longhairs. And bands as diverse as Pearl Jam to Bright Eyes to NIN to the Dixie Chicks are writing savage anti-Bush, anti-war songs for a new, ultra-jaded generation.
And oh yes, speaking of good ol’ MDMA (Ecstasy), even drug culture is getting some new respect. Staid old Time mag just ran a rather snide little story about the new studies being conducted by Harvard and the National Institute of Mental Health into the astonishing psychospiritual benefits of goodly entheogens such as LSD, psilocybin and MDMA. Unfortunately, the piece basically backhands Timothy Leary and the entire “excessive,” “naive” drug culture of yore in favor of much more “sane” and “careful” scientific analysis happening now, as if the only valid methods for attaining knowledge and an understanding of spirit were through control groups and clinical, mysticism-free examination. Please.
Still, the fact that serious scientific research into entheogens is being conducted even in the face of the most anti-science, pro-pharmaceutical, ultra-conservative presidential regime in recent history is proof enough that all the hoary old hippie mantras about expanding the mind and touching God through drugs were onto something after all (yes, duh). Tim Leary is probably smiling wildly right now — though that might be due to all the mushrooms he’s been sharing with Kerouac and Einstein and Mary Magdalene. Mmm, heaven.
Of course, true hippie values mean you’re not really supposed to care about or attach to any of this, you don’t give a damn for the hollow ego stroke of being right all along, for slapping the culture upside the head and saying, See? Do you see? It was never about the long hair and the folk music and Woodstock and taking so much acid you see Jesus and Shiva and Buddha tongue kissing in a hammock on the Dog Star, nimrods.
It was, always and forever, about connectedness. It was about how we are all in this together. It was about resisting the status quo and fighting tyrannical corporate/political power and it was about opening your consciousness and seeing new possibilities of how we can all live with something resembling actual respect for the planet, for alternative cultures, for each other. You know, all that typical hippie crap no one believes in anymore. Right?
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him. Mark Morford’s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle.
© The San Francisco Chronicle
Yes, the hippies were/are right. What was most missed about the hippie movement was the struggle for authenticity — honesty to ones self and others and being real as well as the rejection of social oppressions ranging from racism and sexism to imperialism and captialist materialism. In the final analysis, cooperative global society can save our species.
The real original hippies ( and their jazz musician precursors ) were indeed an evolutionary progressive leap. Unfortunately, the baby boomers judased each other, and the older boomers increasingly begrudged us younger boomers the fruits of the revolution. By the time the eighties came, the boomers were becoming business majors and drug counselors, playing right into the hands of the corporate false conciousness status quo, and we lost it all.
Except here in our hearts-and nobody asks what’s in our hearts.
Jaded….
Hear! Hear! Actually, CAN anybody hear anymore?
Thirty years ago (and before, Chico) the priority for the “sub-culture” was for authenticity and Freedom of thought and deed. Now the leashes and muzzles have been slowly put in place due to fear, ambivalence, and a “follower mentality”.
I firmly believe that unless the Kuciniches and Gravels can start to be considered “Mainstream” leaders, this country’s people are doomed never again to be conidered GENUINE”!
http://www.kucinich.us
No No No No No No No!
The hippie legacy also includes reducing humans to promiscuous copulating with each other as if they were so many ferrile minks and “turning on, tuning in, and dropping out” to all manner of halucinogenic drugs.
In a curious way Bushco and the mass media culture have continued the hippie culture and allowed it to mastacize into a virulent societal cancer seeking to devour the souls of our offspring. Or do you really think our leadership in Washington are sober and able to restrain themselves their baser urges?
Celebrating hippie culture is like celebrating Hitler because he put Germany back to work and boosted the national morale while ignoring that he did it by slaughtering millions of innocents and starting WWII.
Add in to that the “back-to-the-land” movement, which was an idea that informed a life for many of us. Become part of a place, grow a garden, join community efforts, help your neighbor. Drive less, want less. Radical!
As I sit here eating my organic salad of spinach, lettuce, and radishes from my garden, I can’t help thinking “WE were right.” I am still one of those old hippies - and not an EX -hippie by any means.
And here are some more great “old hippie” items that continue to gain traction:
Many, many of my friends, family, and acquaintances grow some of their own food. There are about 10 people in my department, and at least 6 of them have vegetable gardens of some kind. Growing your own is recognized as a very good thing.
More women in my acquaintance are nursing their babies. That was the norm among my old hippie friends, but not the general population back in the 70s.
People get together and play music - great music meant only for each other. What a wonderful way to connect! That’s always been there, but it seems more prevalent than it used to be, and it’s still possible to change the world with song.
When I was growing up and my dad was an artist, it was a rare thing. Now there are amateur painters, potters, and craftpersons all over. “Amateur” as in “one who loves,” and not “amateur” as in “not as good as a professional.” Art is really about connecting to something greater than ourselves, and people are really understanding that now.
Exploration of spirituality is now an accepted activity, and one that was considered out of the norm when we hippies were doing it back in the 60s.
Diversity is increasingly common. Every year, all the employees in our school system have to attend diversity training. It’s usually pretty stupid and inconsequential, but there’s surprisingly little complaining or poking fun. We hippies were right about that too - that conformity is not the best possible human state.
In spite of continuing inequality between the genders, women are more and more accepted in all walks of life. Even cop shows like the Law and Order and CSI franchises have nearly equal numbers of men and women starring with equally important roles. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a big success. And at the poker table, women are treated just like the men. The guys I play with are just as thrilled to put me out as any of the men. Or to compliment me on my play if I do well.
I was at Woodstock when I was 22 years old. I remember all of us thinking that this was the beginning of something big. For a long time, it seemed like it was the end instead. But the seeds were planted, and now perhaps they are beginning to bud, if not bloom. Maybe we can “save the world” after all.
Poet - were you actually there? Because I was, and promiscuous copulating was the least of the movement. The hippies were concerned about doing with less, caring about other people, becoming connected to the essential joys of life, exploring individuality, and doing no harm.
This is about as far from the Bush culture as one can get. Bushies and neo-cons are all about “me first” and seeing who can get away with the most virulant power grab. Hippies had no desire for power and rejected the capitalistic scrabble for wealth. The entire rightwing culture of stepping on other human beings, as well as the entire well-being of the earth has nothing to do with hippie promiscuity.
The free sex part of hippie life is overblown, and it was much more about sharing than lack of self control. And some of it was a reaction to the excessive prudery of the 50s when married couples on sitcoms had separate beds and I Dream of Jeannie couldn’t show her navel. Comparing hippies to Hitler is absurd and beneath contempt.
Oh, and the word is “metastasize,” not “mastacize.”
From One Old Hippie to Another, “I Hope So.”
But don’t hold your breath . . . One more thing if you will take notice. Raceism seems to be on its way out. Not there yet but certainly the seeds of change have been planted . . . May they all bear fruit. Just don’t read the article “Russia Suspects US Plans To Monopolize Fuel From Moon” . . . This doesn’t fit into this discussion.
Some imagination is still needed…
There is no such thing as an “ex-hippie”, just a Old Hippie, like me. We have been reduced to “sex, drugs and rock n roll” by the generations that followed us because we let it happen. Shame on us!
Some of us were co=opted into the system. Some of us used our hippie values and went into the system. My dearest friend, now deceased, went to work for a paper recycling company, back when in was called scrap paper. He never gave up this “hippie” ideal.
But the hippie ideal depended, unfortunately, on economics, living off of nothing is impossible. I say that hippies were only totally coopted if they abandoned what they believed, what their core values were when faced with economic responsibilty.
How do one know full co-option? Outside the workplace, where you may be in control, are you teaching what you believed? What are you teaching your children? How are you conducting your relationships? Do you still believe that respect for the other individuals is a stronger core value than “What’s in it for me?”
In closing, I hear my neo-con 32 year old son refer to his mother and I was “hippies”, with the tonality of an epithet. I say to him, without hippies like us, you would n’t be here, nor could you have and acquire what you have. Hippies, like the Beats and the Liberals before them have allowed neo-cons like you to have a platform and be heard, and respected in arguments. Can you say that your generation, your philosphy, your politics would allow the same for old hippies? I think not.
Peace.
Yes! Hippies never go away, they age like fine wine. When PBS did a film on Woodstock and the reunion of Woodstock, the towns people were interviewed and they said in the 60’s the kids were all about love, music, food, drink and pot, but that at the 30 year reunion they set the stage on fire, set a truck on fire, and the port-a-pottys as well. Almost took the town apart, they wondered why and what were they so mad about? When the kids whom did this were asked they said for the fun of it. They felt that they could so should did not see a problem with what they did. The film asked the question Where did these kids come from? There was never an answer as far as I know, but they were not the Hippies kids, these kids were the rich ones. They all said they could pay the fines it did not matter to them. All had degrees from big name schools, I remember thinking they had everything why would they feel they had to burn anything let alone the town that was hosting the event for them.
Hippies: when morality returned to America
fighting racism, militarism, and ecocide
Don’t believe the hype, don’t believe the reframing of this time as “the time when america lost it’s way”
The drug damage of the 70s was not a result of psychedelics, but by the piggybacking of the herion/cocaine black market infrastructure on the marijuana black market. If marijuana had been legal then the other markets would have penetrated less.
A big thank you to Pacifica Radio for their part in making the movement what it was/is.
Great article. About time.
COINTELPRO, police persecution and conservative smear destroyed the movement. Some young, innocent hippie imitators were victims of peddlers of hard drugs, pimps, rip off artists, cultists and other conservatives. The original hippies were like Jesus impersonators who dressed, looked, lived, loved and preached peace like he did and were also demonized, stigmatized and destroyed by the money-power.
The hippies were grassroots democratic people who refused to work for “the man”, took mind expanding entheogens instead of hard drugs and alcohol, helped their fellow man, consumed little, lived naturally, made the best music, arts and crafts and had the most fun. They therefore became a threat to the social order and had to be eliminated.
BaltoCaveMan: “economic responsibilty” is a debt imposed by modern civilization which is, at best, suicidal. We do it all for survival, but in the end, that is not the direction we are heading. Consider the lillies of the field. The hippies had it right. Where they had it wrong was that it was their “spiritual responsibility” to heal the “civilization” cancer before it destroyed humanity. We can still do it.
And I Get On My Knees and Pray… We Don’t Get Fooled Again!
Yes, we grew our hair long to show we would not bow to social pressure and all have butch or crew cuts.
Protests were infiltrated with idiot troublemakers I guarantee were plants to make us look bad. Big Money created foundations to disseminate negative images and discredit our message.
This is all repeating itself to this old hippy.
Drugs? LSD and the CIA? They thought drugs would totally discredit us! We learned something we can’t teach because it’s taboo.
Quite simply, you might see god (not cap.) but you won’t find him in that bottle, joint pill etc. It’s habits that control your life that are bad. Don’t let anything rob you of your self-esteem and ability to grow. This transfers to ANY HABIT! Ex-addicts have had a crash course in this.
The punishment for youths caught with drugs should be working with the health dept. rehabbing junkies and alcoholics, let them see corpses and hear stories. Heroin scared me back in high school because good friends that did it changed overnight into people who think nothing of lying and ripping you off. By separating the two every generation will be clueless to addiction, which is ideal for CORPORATE MARKETING.
Wow, I really got off the subject didn’t I?
The focus should be we had a vision that was in conflict with the people who want to market the earth to us when it was ours all along.
The Literate cultures freed from European Occupation have lost their way in the last Centuty. A money hungry and technologically poison filled Century. The hippies have shed new light on the old ways. It is places like CommonDreams that give hope the feeling of Connectedness.
I thought we grew our hair long because it looked good, and it did.
There are lots of old hippies here in Alaska living off the land, making candles, music, and pottery. It’s a beautiful life that allows for Life.
And yes, we were right. Or the eternal, respectful values we held were right.
“The focus should be we had a vision that was in conflict with the people who want to market the earth to us when it was ours all along.”
I love that. It’s our inherent, unalienable right to live and to take sustenance directly from the earth. It’s our gift. And the only thing that actually works for everyone is to use it with love, not exploitation.
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.
Living in peace and balance with the Earth requires much more than good intentions and relaxed ambitions. Careful planning is also necessary - like equal sharing of income and labor; and establishing a non-monetary exchange of goods and services; and giving women the right to decide if and when to birth how many or few children, depending on the community’s ability to support them; and agreeing to stop paying people to kill innocent animals by becoming well-informed vegetarians, and…..so much more.
“establishing a non-monetary exchange of goods and services”
why is it better that monetary???
It is interesting how time whitewashes sins, clouds memories, and enables elders to remember a “wonderful” time long gone, but one that never existed.
The “hippie movement” was in trouble in 1967, and dead in 1968. It had become corporatized and a money winner, a consumer product that was being sold wholesale to a gullible and naive population. Please do not kid yourself. Most hippies (present company excepted) went on to study law or corporate executiveness, and formed the solid basis for the “ME” generation of the late 70’s and 80’s.
I am so tired of listening to wannabes claiming to be a hippie or a renegade from the 60’s. Long hair and a fondness for plants does not a hippie make. The movement was largely confined to Berkeley.
I think because it is more direct eurobelle - you have a direct relationship with the person you are exchanging with. That breeds responsibility - something our multinational economy is desperately lacking.
I love hippies, I must admit! And I absolutely believe that they were right! I was born in 1960, so I’m sort of a tail end baby-boomer. But I had four older sisters and watched them closely - and their boyfriends, lol. I think what happened is that some hippies just went underground - not all for sure, for they are represented above. But many went internal and local. They were fundamentally changed by the experience of the 60’s - it didn’t go away by any means. How can you deny it when you come face to face with the truth? It’s just not possible! No, I think the movement just went lower profile and continued to learn and grow just beneath the radar of the cultural norms.
It’s just that the culture wasn’t ready for the revelations revealed by the hippie generation. It would take 30 or so years more of personal work and gestation before it came into its’ own. I hope that the world is ready now - I know that I am. I guess I was deeply affected by that generation - it has made me ready and willing to try a new way.
Check out the book The Cultural Creatives (definitely the hippie generation) and Mother Earth News. The hippies have indeed aged well. I salute them!
I was not the stereotyped hippie, but I certainly subscribed to most of the values such as lack of desire for material goods [my ex (a yuppy from a family of yuppies) divorced me for that one], a love and identification with nature and its interrelatedness, a rejection of unquestioned authority, and an interconnectedness among all living beings. I did not do drugs. Having said all that, I think, like many others in this message board, that I have kept alive the zeitgeist of the time and am trying to rekindle it as it becomes ever more obvious that we need to do some serious changing back to those ideals if we want to have a functioning world to pass onto our descendants. We built the foundations that will save the world if it is to be saved.
I remember a real sense of liberation, that we openly acknowledged and exposed the unspoken realities of poverty, racism, sexism, injustice of all kinds, and that nothing could be the same. Everything was going to change, because our generation saw these things for what they were and would never passively allow them to continue. That was the spirit of the times that I remember, anyway.
I think I have said this before in this forum, but it bears repeating. I believe that the generation that came of age after World War II (it only ended 15-20 years prior to the 60s) was very much influenced by the lessons of the Nazi period. We did not want to passively allow injustices to occur, we did not want to be complicit, like the “good Germans,” in the face of injustices within our own society and nation. I think the awareness of the evil that lurks beneath the “normal” had a lot to do with “hippie” consciousness.
I also remember the influence of existentialist philosophy with its emphasis on individual choice, commitment and engagement with the world (not the atomistic individualism of capitalism, but a sense of freedom to choose NOT to participate in evil or injustice). There was a strong sense of not wanting to “cop out,” to be true to own’s own choices and principles, which meant not simply conforming mindlessly to social dictates but to live consciously with respect to one’s own actions.
Damn those were good times.
The egalitarian ideals of the 60’s led to a burst of spiritual exploration in the 70’s, but in the 80’s so much of publishing got co-opted by Republican corporations who always worship money as their bottom line that the message got muted and polluted. MANY of my friends, hippes and genuine spiritual seekers fell for the CON that it’s ALL an inside job. As a lot of intelligent people began to look inward, society got sold out and those who had the present coup in mind began positioning themselves in lobbies, media, thinktanks, local politics, and huge mega-church groups (right wing). Like a gigantic chessboard, while people of conscience worked on themselves, the society fell to those who would dismantle its social programs, create things to fear, and largely deconstruct the American dream. We cannot underestimate how powerful the voice of media. When hundreds responded to gun violence a week or so ago, I pondered why it is that our nation has so much more expressed violence than other lands with guns. I think it’s the fact that MEDIA has been a presence in every home for over 50 years now. It is the voice that shapes culture, and since violence is so profound in “entertainment” that subliminal message is one we take in. How about news usually broadcast when people are eating breakfast, lunch or dinner? They are literally becoming what they (hear while they) eat. I believe individuals do have a responsibility to contribute to society and a moral imperative to work on themselves; however, when the society all around them supports the worst traits in human nature, personal growth becomes the impossible dream. Societies should be built not on the pursuit of empty profit, but on the investment in the best in their citizens, starting with young people grooming their aptitudes and creative talents. Contrast that with standardized testing, one size fits all, everything urging towards uniformity and by convenient extension our much esteemed (NOT) unitary executive.
Totally lost me until the very last paragraph. Yes: we’re in this together whether we realize it or not. We’re each environmentalists whether we see ourselves that way or not.
The exclusionary practices of the media/culture has done a quad-whammy job of beating the fucking ethos out of most mainstream Americans.
I never saw myself as a hippy. Short hair, house in the burbs, the whole nine yards. But never once have I stopped practicing the values: organic food, recycling, no TV, bike whenever possible and never ever shop at Wal-Mart; never support corporations whenever possible. Buy local only.
As for organic food, don’t believe it. There’s NO way all those newly organic farms have kept up with demand for organics. I won’t name brands. I’ll let Organic Consumer.org do that.
This thread is beautiful, man. It’s like a self-studying anthropological discussion. We are dissecting ourselves in an honest dialog, without rancor, without j’accuse and with the feeling and gentleness that was hippies.
We are not a unified bunch, we are anarchists. The “man” was not so much a hippie term as a black term, we were afraid of the “system”. We saw, and again see it, as the source of the problem. Even The Great Pretender in the White House (The Man …lol!!!) could not be there if there wasn’t inherent problems in the system.
As hippies, did we change the system? I can’t say, and I suppose where you are today will be your paradigm. Some things were changed, for better or for worse, but in all there is still a system that has not been fixed. The Great Pretender (now what was HE on in the 60’s and 70’s…or did he have three 1950’s and go straight to 1990?) is trying to unravel what liberals, the last vociferous ones, the hippes, put out. I cannot say I ever met a conservative hippie, although many of the people who were hippies now are…we all know that.
When did the Hippies die? Were they Madison Avenued, and main streamed? The simple folk would say that Flower Power ended when Cocaine Karma replaced it. Somewhere between Woodstock and Altamont. And it happened so slowly and quietly we never saw it. Because of who we were, it just went away, man. Tricky Dick was replaced by a Ford Edsel, who was upstaged by an actor, who knew how to use the national stage and media better than a rag tag bunch of aging anarchist 20 year olds.
The Actor had the tools of the system to work with, and I refer of course to money. And he had the way to make sure his message put the hippies out to pasture. Abbie’s YIPPIE Party tried to get back, but with the co-option of much of the Chicago 7 (Jesus Christ - a networking corporation?) those symbolic leaders died.
The music of the generation was diluted into sterotype and surrounded by hype. The system took what was free, or cheap, and found out they could make money off it, and make it expensive.
A couple of years ago I went to see the remnants of the Moody Blues in concert. I was amazed at the number of AARP cards used for identification as they patted up down.
When the Moody’s took the stage, there was no pyrotechnics, no Madonna/Spears bumping and grinding, just music. Those of the crowd who didn’t have AARP cards got bored real quickly. The music didn’t mean anything. It didn’t hold their attention, it wasn’t loud, obscene and multi tasked. It took concentration and meditation, and absorbtion, all the things done without clowns, elephants and fireworks. That is what hippies did…we got absorbed, some say over absoorbed in what we were doing, how we were doing it and what it was doing to those around us, so distraction was…a distraction.
And then, I will stop, because I would prefer to be sitting down with you people, with some wine, some grass, in a nice comfortable house, like hippies did, and listen to your opinions and argue with you, and then hug you and go on my way. I don’t need a distraction for my music, I need the concentration we all brought to the Movement as hippies.
One last thing: I feel that a late nail was hammered in the coffin of the hippies when Mercedes-Benz hijacked Janis.
Peace
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder’s jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Not sure anyone will be able to describe it better than that. HST RIP
The “hippie” movement was by no means largely confined to Berkeley, although it certainly originated there. It swept UC Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and other campuses throughout California. It was not even people from Berkeley who attended Woodstock on the other side of the country, either, a defining event of the era.
And most people did not sell out - they went on to become nurses, doctors, teachers, social workers, organic farmers, veterinarians, wildlife rehabbers, and various other service-oriented professionals. It was a cultural revolution that has yet to die despite the hard beating it has taken from the far more aggressive materialistic and exploitive faction of our society.
Not to mention all the hippies that went on to become potters and woodworkers and stainedglass artists. I still encounter these people everywhere. And a lot of them did move to the country and become homesteaders, raising goats and chickens and growing their own stuff. They have given up their tiedye, yes, and most of them have trimmed hair these days. But the values are still there, and there’s a lot of them out there.
I loved reading all the opinions about one of the best times of my life. We had some fun, there was some great music and there was hope for the future. Then we got Raygun and things started being ’serious and not fun’…and this country has pretty much been that way since as far as I am concerned. I can be pretty smug about my decision to be married without kids and do have compassion for those of you with them. Hopefully the good times will come around on the guitar again for the world, til then I am doing my best to have them for myself and the people around me. ’bout all I can do, no es verdad?
eurobelle,
“why is it better than monetary???” -
because money is a volatile and corrupting influence that defies adequate accounting. Some use individual labor sheets, but I think a better system is simply to know each other so well that laziness or theft is attended as a problem, not a crime. Expulsion is the last resort, and in a community where everyone is closely associated and friendships are deeply felt, expulsion can be devastating. Normally, a person would not think of stealing from a close friend, unless money was involved, and that’s why some communitarians calculate value without it. Each community is free to manage their own affairs, but some common arrangement is needed for trade, and that is barter, which is accounted without cash. There are a lot of community experiments going on, and many are presented on the Internet. One that I know of is “Madison Hours”.
“jp May 2nd, 2007 5:53 pm
I remember a real sense of liberation, that we openly acknowledged and exposed the unspoken realities of poverty, racism, sexism, injustice of all kinds, and that nothing could be the same. Everything was going to change, because our generation saw these things for what they were and would never passively allow them to continue. That was the spirit of the times that I remember, anyway.”
These words others on this thread brought tears to my eyes. The hopes and dreams of the sixties, dashed in later decades, to this day remain the sweetest memories to us who lived in this magic time. We have suffered in the hands of conservatives since then, more so because we saw what living in peace, love and freedom was like. And we regret that today’s generation can’t see beyond their materialism.
I still regret that my boyfriend, a few years older than me, went to Woodstock (I could have gone), but I was afraid my father would disown me! Other concerts were not woodstock, but they definitely exuded the spirit of the times. I see that cycle as a short Renaissance when the seeds of love, rather than everything being commodified were planted. While present times seem the antithesis, it’s interesting to acknowledge that ocean waves roll UNDER themselves before they can acquire forward momentum. It may be this way with historical cycles… they seem to regress, until the wave builds with such vehemence as to overpower all recidivistic trends and press forward. Obviously we are in the dark underbelly of that wave right now. Hail the sunshine!
It’ interesting to read all the comments from people who did not do drugs, did not have long hair, and generally did not conform to the media stereotype “hippie” but who acknowledged the values of non-materialism and rejected the values of high consumption corporate culture, value closeness to nature, wanted a better, peaceful world. It was really a spirit of the times that gets lost in the sex, drugs, and rock and roll media hype designed to obscure the larger issues of peace, social justice and general resistance to oppression that was so much a part of our consciousness then.
Viet Nam and the Civil Rights struggle opened a lot of peoples’ eyes to the realities of what Amerika was all about. The war was a galvanizing event for many people and served as a real focal point for dissent and resistance. Once the war ended, I think the social justice movements really started to splinter. I miss the sense of common struggle.
Hey Old Hippies!
You’ve forgotten one of your most important contributions to this country: your children!
As the 24 year old daughter of two hippies and the niece of another, I am sure this has had some influence on why I am a vegetarian, an environmental research assistant, and a peace activist. It’s probably why I helped organize organic dinners in college and lived in a cabin in the woods for a little while.
When I was little, my parents raised bees and made their own yogurt. My aunt took me on swamp hikes and sent me many wonders she found in the woods. My parents have since traded in their low impact lifestyle for SUVs and an insane amount of air miles, but my mom first exposed me to organic foods. My aunt owns a lovely little organic farm. You are influencing the next generation. We may not necessarily look like the first generation of hippies but the values are there, combatting the constant message of consumerism blasted at us since we could sit in high chairs in front of the TV. Ex-hippies, ditch the SUVs and come back- the world needs you. Old hippies-keep up the good work. You are more admired than you realize by the younger generation.
Just want to say thanks for the start of a revolution.
It was a wise movement. And many of us have benefited from it. I didn’t realize all that it had meant until much later; when I needed information, it was there waiting for me because of you all. I had wanted to be a vegetarian at age 6; I got to be one at age 48.
Also grateful at the sense that so many of you are close by, still here and trying to guide us.
Had more of us paid more attention sooner I don’t think we’d be facing Global Warming now, disappearing frogs and bees and the threat to the planet.
I think we need all of you more than ever now.
Thank you again.
“why is it better than monetary???” -
because money is a volatile and corrupting influence that defies adequate accounting. Some use individual labor sheets, but I think a better system is simply to know each other so well that laziness or theft is attended as a problem, not a crime. Expulsion is the last resort, and in a community where everyone is closely associated and friendships are deeply felt, expulsion can be devastating. Normally, a person would not think of stealing from a close friend, unless money was involved, and that’s why some communitarians calculate value without it. Each community is free to manage their own affairs, but some common arrangement is needed for trade, and that is barter, which is accounted without cash. There are a lot of community experiments going on, and many are presented on the Internet. One that I know of is “Madison Hours”.
communitarian,
Sorry, this is BS.
Wow. I think we’ve forgotten how hippies helped change things. They just wove their counterculture into the larger American fabric.
I was called a “stupid hippy” not long ago by a co-worker since I mentioned that I an anti-war. Imagine that. I’m a 33 year old bald metalhead. We’re supposed to be hippy haters. I remember being a teenager in the late 80’s and throwing the horns in jest at the 60’s retro kids when they flashed their peace signs at me. I still don’t like 60’s music.
I cringe everytime I hear “Spirit In The Sky”. It’s silly to me. I’m sorry but it is. I prefer Judas Priest’s version of “Diamonds and Rust”. I do. Shoot me.
Maybe that meathead I work with is right. Although, peace and love? I dunno. I don’t think you can have that until you have justice, and while some progress has been made, we still have a long, hard road ahead. I prefer righteous, productive anger anyway. Besides, devil horns and power chords are far more threatening to Republicans than peace signs and jingly jangling acoustic strumming.
But hey, I’ll go along with all the organics and tree hugging and acceptance (the word ‘tolerance’ makes diversity seem like a virus imo). We all need to, or else there won’t be anymore trees to hug let alone people. Home-grown veggies are better than what you get in the stores anyway. I loved grandma’s tomatoes which she grew in her litle concrete backyard.
Drugs? Forget it. I’ve seen and known too many people waste their lives away on that junk. Seeing people strung out and high, especially on LSD kinda scares me. You never know what they might do. Not that drugs shouldn’t be legal though. There are too many urban war zones because of it all and too many bad, bad people profiting from prohibition.
Free love? Dude, I can’t even get a date.
Besides, nowadays it gets you an STD and a child support payment.
I only like granola when it’s covered in chocolate.
I tried going vegan for one day in high school. I thought it would clear up my zits. I never craved a bacon cheeseburger more in my entire life. I may go for it again though. I think I’m addicted to meat. Maybe I should have asked Brian Fair how he did it when I caught Shadows Fall in concert not long ago.
Does anybody in this movement is familiar with the history
of communes?
Or a different question:
Is anybody there is familiar with human nature?
These to questions were to communitarian
be peace
be love
be all you are
be free
be one
be true to the way
be happy
be light
be the night silence
be here
be now
be your wildest dream
be life
be spirit
be heaven on earth
mindful of all that has past
be, at last
Fantastic - so this is where all the flowers have gone - to Common Dreams, of course. I should have known. Thanks to Mark Morford for getting this started. It’s great to know so many are still out there.
But as a “grandma,” I have to try to get things organized, it goes with the job, and the truth is, we still have work to do. Two things - save the planet if it’s still possible, or at least make a good try, and more immediately, support the various moves toward impeachment - petitions, letters to congress people, just plain talk to friends and family. And perhaps succeeding at the second task will help us accomplish the first. It will also help to end this stupid, illegal war. That’s basically what we were all about in the 60s, remember - different war, but the bodies were just as dead.
“It will also help to end this stupid, illegal war. That’s basically what we were all about in the 60s, remember - different war, but the bodies were just as dead.”
Frankly, there is a problem. Young people didn’t want to die -
understandable, and they were right. But, frankly, what did
this generation do in addition to taking care of their bodies?
and later - their finances? What is their contribution?
Eurobelle - You have bought into the establishment’s story that hippies, and peace protesters in general, were just trying to avoid the draft. Not so! I really am a grandma, and I was there, and I know that the movement formed because the VV War was immoral and soul-destroying. The early protests were organized by SANE, Vietnam Vets Against the War, Clergy and Laity Against the War, and similar groups. And certainly the Berrigan Brothers weren’t worried about being drafted. Hippies were part of it, but not because they feared being drafted. Because the war was wrong.
Ok.
A certain generation brought the New Deal, another generation
though racism.
What is the boomers in general contribution.
Surveillance in the workplace? 70 hour work week?
47 million of uninsured?
Iraq?
Illiterate Reagan/and post generation?
correction
another generation fought racism
I just believe that many other things are wrong.
Just a few of them:
Exploitation is wrong - no objection here (au contraire)
Homelessness is wrong - no objection here (au contraire - let’s push a colleague into a street)
No health care for 47 million - no objection here (I have a good health care)
etc.
This is a great thread, taking me back to some great times.
I always wondered…was it the music, was it the open friendliness, was it the weed, was it the freedom from materialism, was it those fabulous countries we were visiting, was it the weed, was it being twenty four and so much more?
I have a question.
Energy -efficient bulbs contain mercury, and there is a scary
warning on each of them. They do break, and it’s impossible to clean up if the pieces fall on a rug, for example (I broke twice). Am I already dead?
How dangerous is it?
WOW Wild Orgasmic Wonder. This is the greatest thread I have seen. Just sitting here, reading my screen, has raised by consciousness to another level. I am a child of the 60s and 70s, VN Vet from 68 and a member, briefly, of the VNVAW. There are so many wonderful contributions here, and I am heartened to see that this generation is still alive and vital. I am especially appreciative of glenn’s deep exploration of the corruption of our society in denying the power of our psycho-sexual energy to expand our intelligence and creativity. Stupidity is the inability to grow and expand knowledge into wisdom. As long as we avoid the darkness of our shame-based culture, we will not emerge from the shadows. Here is to the Lightworkers of the world who, in the face of fear and the unknown outcomes of their dream’s journey, leap into the VOID-Vacancy Of Infinite Dimension-trusting that their wings will open and they will soar into their full magnificence.
Peace
st john
Thanks Born2Bwild for be-ing. Hippies started as stated above from Jazz. To be hip is to move and relate from the center of our bodies. Jazz folks were called Beatniks. The root of jazz is the beat of indigenous Africa. On Turtle Island, the beat of the drum calls us to a deeper integrity, our hearts beating, alive, alive. Our confusion arizes because the beat is both sound and silence, socialist and capitalist. The beat is all that we are. Its not what we can invent in our short lives but the energy that we tap into. First Nations have been part of this energy for a long time. Its not really about protesting, but about manifesting the love that we believe in. Reaching out to each other with discussion and planning about our livelihood together can lay a new foundation of both right and left. It takes both wings to fly. The people of the longhouse knew how to live together and gather energies at the individual (spirit quest), family (council), community (production-society), nation (string-shell), confederacies (Great Law of Peace), continent and hemisphere. During the 60’s we had a lot to try and figure out, a lot to integrate, much of this is counter-intuitive to polarized thinking, so we’re still trying and hopefully will find the long roots of the pesce we are looking for. The spirits of all our ancestors, indigenous peoples from around the world who cultivated the immensely productive Orchard-Forest are very much alive and with us. Indigenous from the Latin means, “Self-generating”. Indigenous through the string shell starts with the individual and local but as well reaches out systematically to all of human kind and all of creation. Our ancestors are far more sophisticated than we have ever imagined. Read 1491 by Charles C. Mann to get an idea of what was here before. We are all the earth speaking.
glenn’s exposition on our sexual repression and oppression is too seminal (if you will) to really address. It seems society, from religious proscription, and the deadly advent of STD’s that actually KILL you, has been turned from healthy sex orientation. We are a flock that now diverts itself with violence, and the PTB (powers that be) know it.
I’m too young to be called an ex-hippie, but one thought and amazement I have is this: in their time the hippie movement truly terrified the establishment. Really the torments that are manifested against us are self-agreed upon. In the end no-one can make you DO anything. They can pressure, advertise, extort, cajole, but ultimately they are powerless without your consent. The simple and sublimely brilliant hippie answer to all that way: “Uh, we’re going to go this way instead…” They dropped out, and in so doing, terrified establishment.
How many remember the movie “The Omega Man”? They took a brilliant Richard Matheson story and basically made it into the dirge of late 60’s establishment. Ultra-rightist Chuck Heston is the last man (rightist) left in the world after a plague hits that turns everyone else into vampires, ahem. Er, he sits in a dim theater and re-watches “Woodstock” over and over, trying to mouth the words of stoned hippies. It was an awful and brilliant B movie that really captured the pathetic depression of a rightwing culture that knew it was beat. KNEW IT. What happened?
To Douglas Jack.
Thanks for that wonderful contribution.Not quite as articulate as our Great Decider-but then he’s an Ivy Leaguer.
Sick, sick, sick, sick
Absolute, pure, evil selfishness
“You have bought into the establishment’s story that hippies, and peace protesters in general, were just trying to avoid the draft. Not so! I really am a grandma, and I was there, and I know that the movement formed because the VV War was immoral and soul-destroying.”
Such arrogance. Sure, you know what I bought into.
You were there, but I am now here, and what I see is repulsive.
The 60’s were the best times of my life. I agree with the article that the ideals many of those involved were in rejecting the status quo and have only recently have begun to blossom in some areas. The music was fantastic. It wasn’t largely confined to Berkeley either, or People’s Park. Nobody has said a word about San Fransisco either. Anyway, the one thing that I think that was bad about the 60’s was the over use of some hard drugs, like heroin or cocaine. It caused me years of struggle. But then again, drugs have always been around and I can still recall some wonderful trips I took thanks to LSD.
It was an important time and while it is true that some have moved on to become a part of corporate America, I would also say that an equal number have stayed true to the ideals of those time as best they can.
I’m sorry eurobelle, but I don’t know where your hostility toward this time is coming from.
Thank you all!
This thread has been going for 18 hours…who’d a thunk it? Hippies did not save the world, altho we tried, but we preserved enough of what should and does make the world good so that it can, even now, still be saved. And that’s just it:
We still believe,
we believe there is good everywhere it is just hiding,
we believe that peace is the natural order of things and that wars are fought by those who covet, have greed, or don’t understand this. We still believe that everyone has the right to live life the way they want, (”just as long as you don’t anybody” - Hair).
Hippies still believe that the way an individual lives grants legitimacy to the system in which s/he lives, if we are righteous, kind, compassionate, tolerant, intelligent, just and honest, we can, even now, make the system over the same way.
And among all things, hippies still believe that there is a good and better way to allow the whole earth to survive, so that no one needs go hungry, no one needs die from disease,
because we believe that this creation called man/woman has within itself the power to make this all go away, the only thing lacking is the system to harness it…but we still believe that will also happen one day.
As a “senior Hippie” I will never let go of the ideal of my generation: HOPE. If nothing else, I still hope. And this convocation of hippies help me to continue to do just that.
Peace
“be free, be whoever you want, do whatever you want to do, just as long as you don;t hurt anybody” - Hair
Man, as I get older the typos just get worse!
Peace
Thank you so much for your beliefs, guys.
It’s a pity that the world will probably curse you for your
actions/or inactions
“we believe there is good everywhere it is just hiding”
that’s why you put surveillance cameras in the workplace - looking for good
The establishment was scared and organized, the boomers
just sold out, ask Tom Hayden.
Thank you again, guys.
You’ll be remembered as demagogues who helped to destroy the world
Hey Klever and all,
This discussion software has no Spell-check, is small font for viewing and hence the typos we are all making. The Hippie movement righteous, kind, compassionate, tolerant, intelligent, just and honest grows from the Beat (hence “Beatnik”) generation, where peoples’ music and dance brings people back to their center (re: the ‘hips’). An expression growing from this literal centering of action and feeling, “Hip” came to be identified as someone, “in the know”, or someone with knowing. This movement thus easily adopts Yoga, Zen and other ancient ‘Centering’ techniques. Life is speaking through each of us at all time. We are connected to the whole, so the imperative is not to drop ‘out’, but to drop ‘in’ to that place inside each of us where life is manifest. We can help young and old folks, trying to make sense of our present challenges like the war, global warming, disconnectedness, understand that they can make sense of things by accessing their own centers. We can encourage each other to become
‘indigenous’ (derived from the Latin meaning ‘Self-generating’ people in our time and place and hence join with our First Nation brothers and sisters.
C’mon guys - Woodstock was just a sideshow, and drugs were spectacular and fun, but not the point. The important issue was idealism, and the activists in the 60’s who overthrew racial discrimination - a huge task - let us know that we COULD change the world, and we believed it, and for awhile it worked - women’s and children’s rights, back to the land folks, minimizing one’s ecological “footprint,” strong opposition to the Vietnam war, turning our backs on gross consumerism , and trying to return to more natural ways of living. John Lennon and others were our public voice; the movie about the US Govt. vs Lennon last year makes him look dedicated but perhaps a little naive, and I think we all were, but I’m still enough of a hippie to feel that if we believe anything strongly enough we can do it, though hope is fading.
I’d dearly love to see more idealism in the young now, but maybe it isn’t realistic when the wealth is accumulating in the hands of very few, and it doesn’t seem like we hold the power to change the world anymore; tha only the military industrial complex can do that, so it seems to no wonder the kids are jaded. Hell, they have to do the 9 - 5 to afford any possible health care they may need because of corporate America’s greed.
All you need is love.
Such garbage
The activists of the 60s were mostly of a different generation.
It’s you who reinforce wage slavery
It’s you who’s exporting wonderful wage slavery
It’s you who raised a brain dead generation who wants to be rich, rich, rich (a show of parents real values).
Where are the Kings, or even Robert Kennedies of this generation?
It was a time of brother and sisterhood. What you wore mattered less than the willingness to look the other in the eye and accept common humanity with mutual respect. Violence was unacceptable unless for self-defense.It was the groove, a quiet tide of love and connectedness beneath the noise of street traffic, and carried in the music so that certain times of late-nights, early mornings brought about the suspension of the laws of gravity, in living rooms, and nightclubs, street corners where the music was in the ears of the long hairs, short hairs, afros, whose eyes connected with a smile of recognition that we “can change the world, rearrange the world” and tosee it happening right before our eyes. “Mr Natural Comics”, Janis Joplin albums, that awful smell of patchouli oil, and peace demonstrations that turned deadly. My first bell bottoms came from an army navy surplus store and were the wool hiphugger pants good for the winter with a green field jacket under shoulder-length hair that could earn a traffic stop from cops concerned about the antisocial ideas and prospect of finding joints and hash in your car. Soon, all the dept, stores had stacks of bell-bottoms in cotton, elephant legs, and plaid. See-through shirts, paisley ties, indian lace-up moccasins, cavalry boots, and the books of
Carlos Castanedas in the book section. I switched to regular jeans when the pants legs got shredded and filthy, and denim shirts were practical and cheap. The sweetness went away, internalized. The overnight revolution had to settle down for the long haul. The murder of the Kennedies, Martin Luther King, and the savage destruction in Viet Nam laid out the borders of the raging evil to be fought.
eurobelle, here’s the problem with your posts. You not only don’t express your thoughts with clarity, but your “creative” sentence structure and grammar make your cryptic comments even harder to understand.
Examples: “Does anybody in this movement is familiar with the history of communes?” and this gem “Is anybody there is familiar with human nature?” Shades of The Shrub!
Most of the posters for this article seem interested in finding common ground, exploring their memories, and analyzing the influence hippies had on today’s world and culture. You just seem angry, and your posts don’t contribute much substance to the discussion.
I can’t tell from your writing what your agenda is or what you actually believe aside from the fact that you seem to disagree with what everyone else has to say.
Great reading the viewpoints this morning. I guess one would consider me an old hippie. I sure as hell didn’t sell out nor do I live in California. I did the Back to the Land thing, paid as I went and fellow like minded people here still barter goods and sevices. There was a movement for having your baby at home and my daughter was born in the cabin. Many women around here did the same. The hospital treated women horribly years ago. Drugs pushed on you, strapped down and after the baby was born it was taken away from you for 12 hours to one day. The women revolted and that is why today you will see a much kinder approach to the birth experience.
In 1949, a radio station run by pacifists started in Berkeley. In the 50s, it included voices from the civil rights movement. It hosted the like of Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Alan Watts. It even was fined in 1955 when guests on a show smoked Marijuana on the air. This station became the first of many in the Pacifica network.
To people involved in these stations, the Hippie movement was born long before 1967 and 1968. Such people called themselves hipsters and hippie was a derogatory term for “wannabe hipsters”. The Hippies took the wannabe label with pride in their humility. That is why I have to laugh when I see: “I am so tired of listening to wannabes claiming to be a hippie or a renegade from the 60’s.”
As a Generation Jones’ observer of the 60’s and 70’s, I saw the idealism of the hippies and embraced it. During the Reagan years there were a small bunch of young people that tried to continue the story, but we watched corporatism and “greed is good” become the mantra. Apathy is my generation’s characteristic because it feels so good when you stop beating your head against the wall. And the walls were coming up everywhere. So lots of us retreated to our houses and dreams and tried to keep faith that truth will win out, not might makes right.
The hippies found truths that have always been there - I especially appreciate the idea that corporations try to sell us the world when it already belongs to us.
What is heartening is that the internet has let me find the People again. I don’t feel alone, isolated, and beaten down anymore by willful ignorance and unmitigated greed and meanness.
I feel sorry for people who can’t learn to see that although the hippy ideals seem “silly” or even evil(?), they are those old truths that keep the human race and the world just on this side of extinction. Love, peace, justice, mercy, freedom, connectedness, all the balancing acts that counter the trends of the current age. Easy to say the words, harder to do.
Endeavor to perservere, hippies young and old!
Thanks for coming out!
The questions you quoted are perfectly clear and are addressed to communitarian. When one creates a perfect new world, one should IMHO to check history (history, history? what’s that?, and at least glance at human nature.
My grammar etc. is creative, for a number of reasons, including
1. English is my 7th language, and I am writing in the 7th -language
2. I am a creative person in general, and despise manipulative memo style.
You’re right that my allusive style in imperfect rendition is probably difficult to understand. I’ll try to simplify.
I would suggest any of you learn at least one foreign languages, including writing, then maybe will communicate
n general, and the world my benefit too.
Sharing memories is fine, unless
1. the world is set on fire
2. those who share helped to set the world on fire
Lofty phrases about love, peace etc are wonderful unless …
-I have been living in New York for more than two decades,
and haven’t seen a single demonstration condemning wage slavery, but countless “genitals” demonstrations
- I don’t know any fundamentalists, but most of the boomers I met in the workplace are repulsive opportinists, who would anything to succeed etc.
I have to finish.
If it’s still unclear, I simplify further:
I despise demagogues, particularly when they set the world on fire.
Let’s me remind you that wonderful sharing takes place on May 1st, or almost.
Enjoy your love of yourself - there is so much love
Correction
I would suggest any of you learn at least one foreign language, including writing, then maybe will communicate better, and the world will benefit too.
Nice manners are nice, nice, nice, unless they they are manners of a slave owner
Enjoy your day.
yes I’ve often thought that some day we’ll get the belated recognition we deserve for the revolution we started …think back though things have changed if we hadn’t spoken up for Gaia then maybe we’d not have such a good knowledge of the pickle we’re in now.
OK so we’re on the brink of a global disaster but we were singing along to ‘look at mother nature on the run in the nineteen seventees’ it’s not as if we haven’t been telling em for a while now. I was and still am proud to be a hippy
We are in the pickle because of you. Talk more about Gaia
eurobelle May 3rd, 2007 9:33 am
Nice manners are nice, nice, nice, unless they they are manners of a slave owner
Enjoy your day.
Hey Eurobelle,
Of course you are right for those who believed being “Hip” means drugs or consumption and the majority of those “half a million” strong at Woodstock abandon the deeper pursuit of justice when they encounter extreme prejudice eapecially in the workplace. We encounter the same prejudice as against any minority non-conforming race. Overall most run and hide when the going gets tough. We have a long way to go. I like where you are taking us with your posts, its part of the reflection we need, but be assured that there are many still personally committed to practices of justice and freedom and putting ourselves on the line. My own hope is that we can raise the question of livelihood in our communities and learn from indigenous peoples how to go about this.
eurobelle, seems you’ve had an opportunity to get your view off your chest. It looks like you’ve known people from that time that influence your outlook. I just want to say there are many people that gained more values, cooperation with others, and respect for the environment from that time period. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest because of the trees.
Jack,
You are correct, I have a problem with a total neglect of
economic aspects of life, betrayal of ideals of economic justice, selfish concentration on personal satisfaction only , and mass collaboration on all levels, particularly in the workplace (mobbing and surveillance is this generation’s fun).
Among other things, “Gaia” is in danger because of that.
eurobelle: I really don’t want to take you on this early in the morning, but I think you are making the mistake of identifying a real movement of resistance with an entire generation. Not everyone in the 60s was a hippie, in fact most people were not. As for the Abbie Hoffmans and Tom Haydens, there are still a lot of folk, many of whom are posting here, who maintained their ideals and still fight the good fight, including the one against wage slavery.
I would argue that the degree of fascism we have today is in part a response to the resistance movements of the 60s. The right learned the importance of gaining control of the media, for example, as a result of the events and social justice movements of the 1960s. The social unrest, demonstrations in the streets, the “airtime” given to articulating the realities of American social injustice and imperialism, all helped to consolidate the right. The right also learned real lessons about grassroots organizing.
sorry if this all sounds like self congratulatory bs, but there was an identifiable movement of resistance that may very well exist today among young people, but media control has rendered it virtually nonexistent or has effectually marginalized it.
nanoo,
You missed something more general.
Why is American workplace a labor camp?
Where are the May day parades? etc.
“there are still a lot of folk, many of whom are posting here, who maintained their ideals and still fight the good fight, including the one against wage slavery.”
I believe it’s true. But it’s also true that they have been marginalized. The left has been destroyed.
But the rest of your post actually reinforces what I said.
Most were idealistic for a day, the right was mobilized,
the “idealists” became non-idealists etc.
Where’s American Mandela? Or Havel?
The best vehicle for widespread change is a political, social, cultural, religious mass-movement. The values I would like to see propagated: non-violence, friendship, value of others, value of life and the natural world, cooperation with those who make a positive impact, non-cooperation with those who are violent or have a negitive impact on the world, tolerance of diversity, and generally more of a cultural focus on the experiencing of life and the sharing of those experiences instead of mindless pursuit of goals that ultimately bring about the destruction of our planet.
The values I would propagate first are very specific:
- human dignity in the workplace
- human rights in the workplace
Then I’ll many lofty words
> eurobelle May 3rd, 2007 10:50 am wrote
> The values I would propagate first are very specific:
> - human dignity in the workplace
> - human rights in the workplace
Translation: “Get a job you filthy hippies.”
Paraphrased: “We need to be a dignified cog, and an empowered cog in the machine that is driving the planet to extinction.”
Why are we speaking about the hippy movement in the past tense? There’s only one part of it that died, and that’s the part that we should be grateful has been cast aside: the shallow pop-culture contrived aspect. The part that the music and fashion industry artificially built up to better market its products.
Sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, the underground/alternative music scene, organic food movement, alternative medicine, outdoor enthusiasm, etc. Most or all of these are on the rise (can’t say for sure about dope). Mainstream music certainly sucks, but the indies, streaming audio internet stations, etc. are growing.
Furthermore, you can argue that the YouTubes are signifying a rebirth of Vaudeville, or perhaps a digital Chautauqua. Forums like this, blogs, etc. are reconnecting people. They don’t connect us physically, though there’s no reason that offline/local groups can’t get together.
So, while I like this article, it should be renamed. “The Hippies ARE Right!”
What about Gen X? While the Hippies showed what was possible they just as quickly sold out. Was not the angst of this generation a reaction to the sell out? If we are having a general discussion of a generation or movement we should stay general, single examples can always be found. What was the general result? Why did the communes not work(in general)? Why did the an alternative to the mainstream not happen? Long before the 60’s were their not movements and even whole societies based on what the hippies realized at least for a day they may want?
Doesn’t a viable alternative society need to deal with all aspects of human society including discipline and conflict resolution? I have heard horror stories about commune life.
What is the result of the last generation(s) on our planet and communities?
“Keep on Truckin’!”
Last I heard, Robert Crumb had moved to Provence.
“Pot will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no pot”.
Look for Gilbert Shelton’s “The Furry Freak Brothers movie”.
eurobelle, this country has always been conservative, if not marginally fascistic, there has never been an organized left here. Lefties have been persecuted, deported, or just killed outright. Just look at the US labor movement. To add to that, the hippie interlude occured at the height of the Cold War, when anti communist rhetoric was at a fever pitch, and “communist” meant anyone who spoke up for social justice. Perhaps if there had been a sustained leftist tradition in the US as there is in Europe, the period would have been more transformative. The changes that did occur, those that Morford cites, for example, have now become commodified symbols of the shallowness of that change, as well as emblems of the underlying self indulgence that I think you are criticizing.
Still, there are still some of us around who still work for a sea change.
“Doesn’t a viable alternative society need to deal with all aspects of human society including discipline and conflict resolution? I have heard horror stories about commune life.
What is the result of the last generation(s) on our planet and communities?”
ml-2:
I lived communally but did not belong to an intentional commune though I subscribed to their mags. Most communes fragmented and people grew away from them and went their separate ways. Nothing lasts forever. We picked up creative, inventive, social, mechanical, farming, construction, political, organizational and other skills hands on.
The most persistent communes were those with a religious center. There was a news story yesterday that even the Kibbutz in Israel are disappearing. Consumerism coopted them too it seems. But in the end, we all belong to one commune, the community of man (and woman).
Since we are liberal and mostly anarchist, I think that the best way to commune now is through our grassroots Green Party. Its the party of hippie values.
Folks keep pointing to Woodstock as the important event in hippie culture. I remember, as a heavy-duty hippie back then, that I believed the festival was a rip off by hip capitalists of our alternative culture. The gate crashers took the event away from the people I believed were trying to co-opt our culture.
In my opinion, the really great events of the 60’s were when we shut down Washington and the Pentagon by gathering in great numbers there and blocking the roads. Too bad we cannot support our troops today by blocking the road to Iraq and keeping them out of the fight between Arabs and Persians.
“eurobelle, this country has always been conservative”
JP, I know that.
I have just trouble digesting this self-centered psychobabble in a progressive forum in a country
-without universal health care
-with slavery in the workplace
-which exports slavery and aggression
on May 1st.
I don’t want to be a Hippie anymore, I AM an old Hippie!
It’s gone it’s past!
We need to look for what we have in common NOW! We need a new movement yet unnamed, and for that matter don’t name it, because it will become a target with an anti-slogan like “sex drugs and rock and roll” marketed at it.
We have God in common. Who is God? Good Question, I think it’s this Gaia, Eurobell is referring to. It’s also known as the Great Spirit.
I see God as everything our every sense can touch, and we are given this Earth to realize this. God is in thought and choices, God is not a he or she or it; God is as real as OUR most comprehensive epiphany. We must seek the TRUTH!
Religions have tried to put this into a formula or a book; it can’t be done! The Earth is the messenger and life is the teacher. This is why the Earth is irrelevant to people wanting power and control.
Native Americans’ never had a written language, they had parables explaining what they saw in nature the sky and the stars… and the space beyond. I have read “The Seven Arrows” three time and never got past the first 20 pages! It keeps inspiring me to see the world refreshed each time.
My dad would throw a ball high in the air, and I asked if it touched the sky. Not Yet.
Finally he said, now it did. I was happy for a short time as I thought about it. But thinking a very holy thought I realized; if it touched the sky, what was on the other side of that? I came to realize that both time and space are endless. Scientists now say that our Universe (big bang) is nothing but a bubble in a sea of bubbles, which explains the color spectrum difference Einstein, taught us.
Eurobelle, we should follow no one! We are all leaders. We now have the Internet so Net Neutrality is under attack.
one of the main reasons for the emergence of hippies is this very notion of a cataclysmic
disconnect between the ultimately self-indulgent (and self-destructive) state, and those beings for whom this model was not just wrong, but immoral and unjust and who simply wished to renounce any allegiance to it. of course, you could do what many did and leave (love it or leave it). but you could also begin building in your own way an alternative - and yes that narative could also be viewed through the same prism of self-indulgence. anything can. but it diminishes the sheer audacity of free spirits in the face of a murderous rapacious monster of a society to say they are simply self-serving. when you want to grow your own veggies, you spend time digging the weeds
so they don’t choke the little seedlings you wish to see survive. each one is special. if that’s indulgent, so be it.
I don’t have anything to contribute to this long nostalgic string of comments. I just want to be counted here with my fellow “old hippies,” with whom I share the memory of the last time in human history when we really thought, for a few blissed out years, that a better world was right around the corner, a peaceful world where people stood in awe of the great mysteries, erased the borders and had lots of interracial sex until our grandchildren were all beautiful, gentle, honey-colored people named Chakra Lennon Sapphire Bumblebee. I remember the day the music died and the world, inexplicably, chose to go in another direction. Friggin’ fools.
It’s all about peace and love. Love makes the world go round!
The truth has set us free, and it will set the rest of the nation/world free too.
We must get that good old hippie Dennis Kucinich into the white house!
http://kucinich.us/
eurobelle: if you haven’t moved on to Thursday, I wanted to make one more comment. If the hippie movement and its aftermath is characterized by what you call “self-centered psychobabble,” you should bear in mind that repression in the US, sexual, religious, intellectual, political, economic, was very strong at the time, and helped feed racial and class oppression. There was a fabric of interwoven repression and oppression, if you will, that many in the 60s began to recognize. The self indulgence, open sexuality, drugs, searching into Eastern spirituality, etc were an integral part of resistance to this nexus. Unfortunately, what could have been the beginnings of a sustained progressive movement was undermined, at least to some extent, by the identity politics that succeeded the larger movement. At the same time, these movements articulated other kinds of oppression besides economic that needed to be addressed.
Resistance movements are shaped by the larger historical and cultural context in which they are embedded. In the US, the resistance that started in the 60s took on an individualist, non political cast that has largely undermined its potential as a transformative social movement.
jp,
I am approached all the time by some evangelicals who talk about love (they know better than I), here a number of people
talk about love (they know better than I, or … are paid).
Destroying the world, destroying people and talk, talk, talk about love at this moment is IMHO indecent.
This country needs reforms and new civilized institutions, not their love and not their old, non-functioning genitals.
To be is to do.
“It was, always and forever, about connectedness. It was about how we are all in this together. It was about resisting the status quo and fighting tyrannical corporate/political power and it was about opening your consciousness and seeing new possibilities of how we can all live with something resembling actual respect for the planet, for alternative cultures, for each other. You know, all that typical hippie crap no one believes in anymore. Right?”
Yes siree. that is/was/will be precisely what it’s all about.
thank u fer reminding the johnny/jane come lately’s
right on. right on. write on………
peace!
p.s.
almost everything good and decent and honest and fun and lasting i ever learned, i learned from hippies
the movement was not confined to berkeley! pulleese. it crossed oceans. it transcended borders and boundaries…
and it was a magical, mystical, wondrous time. i often tell my 23 y/o about it. and i only wish i that somehow, someway he could actually taste, experience, feel it, exactly as I did, even if only for a moment. because my words are inadequate, they do not do it justice.
and i’m not waxing sentimental about this either. i was 13 in ‘69, all my memories, recall, and more are intact.
the best way i can describe those days is: it was as if i was living inside a magical, safe, loving, creative, liberating “universe”.
it was among the best of times for me
most especially in the sense that the times themselves seemed to offer so much hope and promise for a better world for every one.
it was the worst of times for many, many millions of others
To Douglas Jack
My heart skipped a small beat when I read your response to my short post.I take this site seriously.That was my attempt at humor regarding our inarticulate sadistic “leader”.Your posts were inspirational.
The Grateful Dead and the community that travelled with them had many similarities to indigenous cultures-that’s why they were so vilified. Anything that slows down the pace of superheated consumption is a threat.
I’m a 65 year old grandfather trying to hold on to slim hopes that we can quickly turn to a non-imperialist nation-else my 9 year old grandson-and all others of his generation-will be dying and killing all over what’s left of our world.
To Eurobelle; You’re very bright 7 languages?-I’m mediocre in one. But how about sharing some of your more constructive nature too?
“But how about sharing some of your more constructive nature too?”
I am very bright in general, but patience is not one of my strengths.
If you think that pushing Orwellian garbage “Peace, love etc.”
is constructive, but pointing out that the time spent on chanting “Peace, love etc.” could have been better spent by introducing universal health care and strengthening the unions, is not constructive, I have nothing to say to you.
annemarie
“it was the worst of times for many, many millions of others
Even worse, it has been the worst of times for many many more millions since that time. You just haven’t noticed those who have died from cancer in the street. Continue chanting.
As a former hippie I humbly accept Mr Morford’s, as well as a grateful world’s, thanks for being part of the solution.
But since I was there, and unlike Hopper remember it fairly well (with a few missing pages), I must remind people that what started as a naive movement soon lost its innocence.
Thanks a lot, Charlie.
Boy, the world is grateful.
Nothing is better that self-promotion.
Eurobelle,
The anger and cynicism may be a reflection of your experience, but don’t match mine. Most of those whose values more or less were coherent with those of the Hippie Movement, at least those I have met and worked with, continue to work for dignity to all in the workplace, and freedom for all from wage slavery. They are not all agreed about how to do so, but those values go back to the Flower Children and the Beats before them.
I was somewhat a latecomer to the values, having embraced suburban values as a young teenager, and only a decade later realizing that the core values which the peaceniks and hippies shared were coherent with my personal values. On the other hand, I watched many of the following generation(s) adopt a me-first, materialistic values system.
There were books published in the late ’70s and early ’80s examining the strengths and weaknesses of various communal movements over the preceding century,