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Every one of the values needed to save the planet from religious and secular war madness and from environmental disaster was formulated, expressed and promoted by the hippie movement of the '60's. No other generation in the history of the world made such a radical social change as did the hippies who were the first American generation to actually stop a war. Because social change is always hard to accomplish due to social inertia keeping outdated, outmoded, dysfunctional social institutions alive when they should be composted, the hippie movement failed to transform American society although much of the reforms in environmental protection can be laid at the feet of hippie activists. It's too bad the hippie religious transformation failed to overthrow traditional Christianity because had it done so, we would never have gotten ourselves into the mess we have with Muslims by letting Jews and Christians make foreign policy for the U.S. to our detriment.
I'm really impartial I feel...hippies **** me off. They are the laziest, hypercritical, pseudo zealots I've ever seen. All they do is get all up in arms over some moot issue just to feel like they are making a difference. On top of that they are the poster children of hypocrisy. FYI hippie idiots...REI, north face, and Patagonia's "bloodsucker" CEOs just love the fact that you're making a difference against corporate America while decked out in their 125 dollar hoodie.
Every one of the values needed to save the planet from religious and secular war madness and from environmental disaster was formulated, expressed and promoted by the hippie movement of the '60's. No other generation in the history of the world made such a radical social change as did the hippies who were the first American generation to actually stop a war. Because social change is always hard to accomplish due to social inertia keeping outdated, outmoded, dysfunctional social institutions alive when they should be composted, the hippie movement failed to transform American society although much of the reforms in environmental protection can be laid at the feet of hippie activists. It's too bad the hippie religious transformation failed to overthrow traditional Christianity because had it done so, we would never have gotten ourselves into the mess we have with Muslims by letting Jews and Christians make foreign policy for the U.S. to our detriment.
Blah Blahh freakin BALHHHH
You make me wanna puke...
If you never would have been there Oldsmobile would have put their 700 HP Hemi in the good old Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme...
GM would have never had to build the pathetic cars they did (that bankrupted them) that YOU mandated...
Every one of the values needed to save the planet from religious and secular war madness and from environmental disaster was formulated, expressed and promoted by the hippie movement of the '60's. No other generation in the history of the world made such a radical social change as did the hippies who were the first American generation to actually stop a war. Because social change is always hard to accomplish due to social inertia keeping outdated, outmoded, dysfunctional social institutions alive when they should be composted, the hippie movement failed to transform American society although much of the reforms in environmental protection can be laid at the feet of hippie activists. It's too bad the hippie religious transformation failed to overthrow traditional Christianity because had it done so, we would never have gotten ourselves into the mess we have with Muslims by letting Jews and Christians make foreign policy for the U.S. to our detriment.
And, the hippies are now politician's, policy wonks, government bureaucrats, professors, denizens of think tanks, influence peddlers and lawyers. In other words...the CREATORS OF THE NANNY STATE!
Where, why and how did they turn from the unstructured idealism of their youth into regressive, big-government insiders?
The best thing which will happen to America is when we Boomers die off. We've screwed up the whole place.
Hippie culture included many cultural and political elements. It was also part of a larger boomer culture. People entered into hippie culture with varying degrees of commitment. There were different strands and it changed over time. Earlier hippies would have had a lot in common with the Beats. Many Beats, such as Allen Ginsberg became completely part of Hippie culture. Hippie culture involved drugs, especially marijuana and psychedelics, rejection of status, wealth and power. It rejected conventional work ethics, but hippies did work on things they considered to be important - such as communes, urban cooperatives, farms, music, social activism, crafts, and personal growth. It rejected the obsessive cleaning of 1950s culture, nine to five jobs, the "man in the grey flannel suit" the "rat race". It certainly rejected violence of war, aggressive sports, of personal life.
It accepted that men could embrace traditionally "feminine" qualities. They could wear long hair, jewelry, flowery shirts, flowers, sandals etc. Generally hippie culture was less macho. Women, could embrace some traditionally masculine behaviors - wearing pants and jeans. (It may surprise people under 50 that girls weren't allowed to wear pants in high school in the early sixties.) Part of the bargain was that men would be less violent and macho, while women would be more sexual, so in some ways women were expressing something considered more masculine. Hippies were open to certain non-US cultures and religions, especially Native American, Buddhist, Hindu, Asian and, to some extent, African varieties. Hippies generally rejected nationalism and patriotism. They were children of the universe.
Hippies emerged among young people after the Civil Rights movement and almost always rejected racism. Hippie culture attracted many people who would learn its norms and not necessarily accept all of them. So, racist people, southern or otherwise might carry their racism with them into their local variants of the Hippie scene. Hippies rejected racism well before most Americans, and like everyone else they had many lessons to learn about unconscious bad attitudes, yet over time, they tended to overcome subtler prejudices. Many Vietnam soldiers and veterans adopted Hippie culture, because it was attractive, because it rejected many of the things they didn't like about military life and because it symbolized the freedom they sought after leaving the military. Hippies certainly embraced individual freedom and yet they embraced communalism as well.
They were "hip" so they wanted to learn about and adopt new cultural phenomena, if they could connect them with their countercultural outlook. At the same time they rejected modern capitalist and bureaucratic culture. They tended to be anti-materialist and yet they certainly had a material culture. They embraced both folk music and electric guitars. Natural marijuana, mushrooms, and peyote, and laboratory made LSD. Sometimes their fashions were trendy and subject to commercial advertising, and sometimes they rejected commercial culture by making their own clothes, and buying in second hand, or military surplus stores. Some of their fashion was colorful, fashionable and expensive - especially for performers, but some was self-effacingly drab - hiking boots, jeans, blue collar shirts and army jackets. Hitch-hiking, travel and spending time with nature was part of it, so many people had backpacks, "thirsty boots" and camping gear. Some evolved into wilderness adventurers.
Some hippies really were activists, mainly against the Vietnam War, but also against militarism in general, for the environment, against both capitalism and government bureaucracy. Hippies supported Civil Rights and some of the early white Civil Rights organizers could blend into hippie culture. However, by the late sixties the Black Power movement tended to seek independent black organization, and tended to be fairly friendly to the hippies while keeping them at arms length. - But not completely. There were plenty of black hippies, and hippies usually got along better with the black people around them (fellow students, workers, neighbors, etc.) than "straight" white people. Black culture had long been more accepting of certain drugs, especially marijuana, than white culture, plus hippies almost always rejected racism. Also, both hippies and African Americans were outsider cultures, critical of the pretensions of wealthy, powerful white people. Hippies tended to get along with any outsider group better than the straight white culture, but not all outsider groups understand or get along with each other.
Hippies certainly embraced and advanced the sexual revolution. They generally adopted a more equal role for women, long before mainstream society. They would have been far more likely to identify as feminists, although a stream of feminism (not the only one) that became predominant for awhile, rejected some of the sexual permissiveness of the hippies, calling it "objectifying". Yet many more recent feminists have insisted again that sexual freedom should be part of women's liberation. Bohemian cultures, including the hippies, provided havens and cover for people outside the mainstream for centuries. Hippies particularly offered relative safety for gay people, especially gay youth. A gay male teenager could wear long hair, and pretty clothes, avoid sports and be more feminine while among the hippies. Lesbians could wear jeans and work boots among the hippies as well. After awhile most gay men and lesbians sought specifically gay and lesbian communities. Some maintained hippie qualities, but often they would see the hippie culture as representing a kind of molting stage when they weren't sure who they were. So they were often eager to adopt specifically gay or lesbian markers and to reject their rather unformed hippie intermediate markers. Often heterosexual male hippies, for their part, were eager to show that they could be strong in a non-traditional, but still masculine way. At a certain point, hippie men were all wearing beards and mustaches, and learning manly trades like farming and carpentry.
There was a point when some hippies became "freaks" - Hippies who would fight. Many became tired of being harassed without fighting back. The Civil Rights and anti-war movements had become less pacifistic and less gentle people became attracted to the counterculture. Also cocaine, meth and other drugs were less conducive to pacifism.
Probably the end of the draft and the Vietnam War made young people less disaffected with mainstream culture. Elements of hippie culture become coopted into mainstream culture and other elements were rejected. Also like many youth cultures, new generations of young people sought their own ways and rejected what young people did before them. Glam, Punk, Disco, Heavy Metal, and other youth/countercultures displaced the hippies, but owed enormous debts to them.
Did hippies become Yuppies? Maybe some. Probably when the Yuppies came along they were younger than the proper Hippies who by then were in their thirties and forties. Even at the Yuppie period (eighties and nineties?) there were countercurrents of young people - punk and heavy metal - that rejected them. When twenty year old hippies became thirty and forty year olds they had children, established more permanent relationships, and figured out careers for themselves.
Probably the most negative long term fall out from the hippies was how many of them embraced conservative Christian religion. Hippies had a sort of apocalyptic view that a countercultural revolution would sweep America and the world, and that everything would be peaceful, unprejudiced, creative, sexually free, loving, etc. When that didn't happen, many sought a replacement in evangelical religion. A fair number of hippies found themselves in trouble with drugs or poverty, and religion promised a way back to a more orderly life.
The activists were more likely to remain non-religious, and many of the cultural hippies found New Age religious or semi-religious experiences. Seems to me that most hippies sought non-traditional careers, in music, crafts, arts, education, or helping professions. The political activists especially became scholars and joined helping professions (social workers, teachers, psychologists, etc.).
Were the hippies right? On hard drugs no. They were more trusting than was realistic in their own ability to win over the world by kindness, alone. They were taken advantage of by crueler, more aggressive, organized and exploitative people. They could have compromised a bit with conventional cleaning standards. It remains a tricky business to find a balance between disciplined work and enjoying life while you have it. I wonder if the internet and computers have allowed individualism to become debilitating loneliness that gives the workplace too much power to be the impetus that forces us to engage others. It forces human interaction - which is good - but in a hierarchical authoritarian institution. Like the rest of America, the hippies could have gotten more exercise. On anti-war, anti-racism, anti-materialism, anti-capitalism, anti-bureaucracy, freer gender roles, more creative life, less obsession about cleaning, more open sexuality, combining individual freedom with caring for a larger community, environmentalism, openness to the world community, yes, they were right.
True. Except for the various cancers associated with the use of tobacco products. So, yes, except for horrible pain and death, nothing wrong with tobacco.
You don't need to be a hippie to realize it's logical that we should protect our environment, not get involved in pointless wars, and that prohibition doesn't work. You just need half a brain and a 10th graders understanding of history.
In short-yes. They were seen as a strong threat to the system, and anti-war activists were a big reason Nixon launched the colossal failure known today as the War on "Drugs".
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