Okay, I was born in 1966. What was wrong with hippies??

[tinkerbell41]

All I have heard over the weekend is apologies for being one, to boldly proclaiming they went to Woodstock but they weren't a pot smoking hippie. My current knowledge is because hippies were associated with protesting the status quo, they were shredded in the public eye and Reefer Madness came out.

[Skittles]

1. nothing

it's the usual ill-informed, stereotyping assholes chiming in

[Haole Girl]

2. Flame bait? nt

[tinkerbell41]

9. No serious question.

I wish i had been born earlier. I missed out. GREED was not good.

[gateley]

3. Nothing! I think we helped change the world! nt

[Merlot]

4. Didn't Reefer Madness come out in the 50's?

[FormerDittoHead]

8. More like the 40's. It made a come back to art houses as a laugh fest. n/t

[DefenseLawyer]

41. Reefer Madness came out in 1936

Marijuana was criminalized by the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

[donco6]

5. Hippies did a lot of things in the 60s.

Not all were . . . great. But overall, they were committed to overturning this 1950s phony charade that swept racism, classism, and all the other negative -ism's under a rug. The status quo, therefore, absolutely DESPISED them.

[GreenArrow]

40. "the status quo, therefore, absolutely DESPISED them"

and still does. How do you ever the word hippie spoken in the media, either news or entertainment (if it's possible to still tell the difference) with a positive connotation? Not often.

[donco6]

45. True.

I mean, how often do we hear "God damn Hippie!" to peals of laughter?

[annabanana]

6. Well you won't hear ME apologizing..n/t

[mudplanet]

7. Define "hippy"

[Gemini Cat]

55. I've ask that question before.

I know what some say a hippie is but I don't have a clear definition. All I know is someone like Manson was most certainly not a hippie.

[Cleita]

10. Well there were the original hippies or hipsters also known as the beat

generation. The younger kids latched on to their philosophy and became what we know as hippies today. The real hippies were into smoking pot, poetry, jazz, free sex, no bigotry and basically being cool. The baby boomers that followed them were many of the activists of the sixties and nut cases like Manson and just kids who wanted to be free. Woodstock was sort of a moment in history like destroying the Berlin Wall, but most people weren't there.

[mitchum]

36. I have an old beat friend who despises the hippies...

because so many of them were suburban kids "just gettin' down with the latest thing"
Also, he was able to smoke marijuana on the street before they took it up and raised its profile. After that, everyone knew what it smelled like.

[Cleita]

48. Yes I know many did.

Many also felt responsible for them and tried to feed them and help them out.

[bluestateguy]

11. Hippies were apolitical

Their whole motto was "drop out", "tune out", etc. The real political activists of the 1960's and 1970's regarded the hippies as time wasters and losers ("if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem").

[John Q. Citizen]

29. I would have to disagree. While H Rap Brown wasn't a hippy, saying hippies were apolitical would

suggest that you never listened to the words of the songs from say the Jefferson Airplane, who I assure you were hippies.

H. Rap Brown gave the quote about 'part of the problem part of the solution' and Tim Leary said "Tune in turn on drop out." But he wasn't apolitical.

It is like any self identified group. Some are more political and some are less political. But it's hard to define individuals from the group.

And of course people's politics aren't uniform either. I mean Eldridge Cleaver ended up selling a line of clothing and Jerry Rubin went into stock brokering. Does that mean that political activists are capitalists? i wouldn't go that far. But some are.

[panader0]

12. I was born in'50

I was/am a hippie, although now I deal more with the establishment (work related).
Let's see; peace, love, weed, organic gardens, environmentally friendly, weed, back to nature, weed. Hippies were great.
I almost went to Woodstock. I was in DC for the summer, and my buddies girlfriend went, but she came back the next day and
said she couldn't get anywhere near the site--too much traffic. In retrospect, I wish I had gone.

[tinkerbell41]

20. OKAY

I see nothing wrong. Sounds good to me. Except the weed, I love it, it doesn't love me. PARANOIA!!

[Chemisse]

23. I had planned to go to Woodstock

But in those days I didn't keep track of dates.

[SPedigrees]

32. Same here. Born in 1950 and almost went to Woodstock. :-)

Hubby went, with a couple friends of ours. Since I dislike camping w/o creature comforts I opted to stay home, went shopping with girlfriends, and missed the mudfest/chance to participate in the most historic event of the 1960s. But over the years I've found "almost went" a pretty good substitute for actually being there.

[Stinky The Clown]

13. Reefer Madness predates hippies by at least a decade

[Doc_Technical]

24. "Tell your Children" aka" Reefer Madness"

1936

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028346/

[eShirl]

14. they were radical liberals with poor grooming habits and weird music

anti-war, pro-free love
wanted to put LSD in the water supply and wouldn't keep off the grass

that's what I heard


(P.S. 40 years ago I was preparing to enter kindergarten)

[Cleita]

19. Many of them were itinerant at the time so bathing wasn't a priority.

I knew many of them at the time, but mostly they were kids running away from parents and a society who told them to get off the grass and who did their level best to make sure they never developed a personality of their own. The boys were avoiding the draft, which you couldn't blame them, and the girls followed along with them.

[Chemisse]

25. Wow - you can tell you were on the outside looking in n/t

[Cleita]

28. Oh you think you know me so well.

I was older and I offered them places to crash and my shower to use. When I turned thirty they had a party because I couldn't be trusted anymore. All good times. I have remained friends with many of them over the years, who did get jobs, got married and now have grandchildren.

[Chemisse]

35. Here is where I take offense

"did their level best to make sure they never developed a personality of their own."

I was a young teen then. I ran away from home before I even knew what pot was! I did not follow along with guys who were draft dodgers. I was (and still am) very independent, and preferred to travel alone.

As far as developing a personality, I spent my time within the counterculture evaluating every single thing I had ever been taught and deciding - for myself - what I believed and what was crap. I let nobody tell me what to do and what to think. I would not be the person I am now if I had not left home and joined the hippie movement, and had that opportunity to direct my own path to adulthood.

So to say we had no personality is just rude.

[mitchum]

39. I think you misinterpreted what Cleita wrote...

I took it to mean that society "did their level best to make sure they never developed a personality of their own."

[donco6]

46. Yes, that's how I read it, too.

The nasty poster needs to re-read Cleita's message.

[Chemisse]

61. OMG - I reread her post and I see you are right!

Oops! Sorry.

[Cleita]

50. Well you have proved you did have a personality and weren't going to let

any establishment (that word) church, school or community take that away from you. Good for you. I don't think there was any hippie who would have disagreed with you. I never said you had no personality. I said many of the kids I knew ran away from home, not because they were beaten or starved, but because establishment (remember that word) was trying to do it's best to stifle their personalities. Peace.

[Chemisse]

60. Actually THAT I agree with

I ran away from home at age 13 because I felt oppressed by an overprotective mother. I wanted to be 'free.'

[tinkerbell41]

26. Ahhh.. I see

Too bad keeping off the grass is the least of our worries now. I'd like to go back. NOT to the draft.

[eShirl]

27. and long beautiful hair (shining gleaming streaming flaxen waxen...)

She asks me why
I'm just a hairy guy
I'm hairy noon and night
Hair that's a fright
I'm hairy high and low
Don't ask me why
Don't know
It's not for lack of break
Like the Grateful Dead
Darling

Gimme head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming,
Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair

Let it fly in the breeze
And get caught in the trees
Give a home to the fleas in my hair
A home for fleas
A hive for bees
A nest for birds
There ain't no words
For the beauty, the splendor, the wonder
Of my...

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair

I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy
Snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty
Oily, greasy, fleecy
Shining, gleaming, streaming
Flaxen, waxen
Knotted, polka-dotted
Twisted, beaded, braided
Powdered, flowered, and confettied
Bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghettied!

Oh say can you see
My eyes if you can
Then my hair's too short

Down to here
Down to there
Down to where
It stops by itself

They'll be ga ga at the go go
When they see me in my toga
My toga made of blond
Brilliantined
Biblical hair

My hair like Jesus wore it
Hallelujah I adore it
Hallelujah Mary loved her son
Why don't my mother love me?

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair

[Cleita]

30. That was a great musical. n/t

[create.peace]

52. don't believe half of what you see and none of what you hear....

how many different duers there are that's the variety of hippies. not all who wandered were lost....

there were alot of wannabes though. there for the free love and the dope. but in the long run, IMHO, the hippies who are still hippies, are living a less materialistic, less moneyed life. they are helping people without being applauded. they are quietly living simpler lives, have lost some hearing, and share. but you can't tell by looking. although heels are not usually worn by us hippie chicks.

i wasn't a druggy hippie, though i sampled, and think most all drugs should be legal. i was the designated driver of the 70s i like to say, but please don't throw up in my back seat. and yes i'll watch your kids so you can party. and i will put dinner in the blender so you can eat with everyone since your jaw is wired shut because your girlfriend's hubby broke it. thanks for playing your guitar for my kids, they really enjoyed it. oh, i think he is in san francisco getting his sister out of rehab, he'll be back soon.

i wouldn't have had it any other way, and in fact i still don't. the only inconsistency now in my life is my laptop and internet connection. i wonder if we would have had that time if this timewasting pseudo community existed. most of us didn't even have phones. we had a grapevine though.

if someone says they used to be a hippie, they weren't. that's my belief and i am sticking to it.
peace, and all that.

[BlooInBloo]

15. The only ones I take issue with are the Richard Cohen types...

Who turn around 20 years later, and rip on all of the good things they stood for back in the day.

I don't know exactly why all the hippie-apathy here at DU. My guess is that they're kids (i.e., stupid).

[Schema Thing]

16. I was born in 63, and I've been wondering the same thing

[no_hypocrisy]

17. IMO, hippies had bad PR.

They scared the bejezus out of my old man. He saw them as anti-establishment, smoked "dope", long hair, wanted to fuck his daughters, didn't want to work, wanted to get high and beg for change to eat, stuff like that. And of course all hippies were against the war which meant that they HAD TO be anti-American pinko communists . . .

Even the pics in Life Magazine showing hippy families in communes didn't change their image.

I miss hippies.

[Cleita]

22. They did. They were ordinary kids who decided to scare the oldsters

by not following the rules, like haircuts, clothes and mostly adornment. But none of them wanted to kill anyone or hurt them. They just wanted to change things. Now days I guess the rebellion is body piercing and tattoos. They scared your old man because they didn't queue up with their heads hanging down like they were supposed to.

[no_hypocrisy]

34. This ABC Movie of The Week was the general image of hippies.

allowing for theme and variation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHVKtvYsTbc

That's Sally Fields btw.

[mitchum]

42. I re watched that just last week...

it's wonderfully bad

[mitchum]

delete: double post...man

[create.peace]

53. come sit by me......i are one..nt

[KittyWampus]

18. Nothing. IMO the flaming threads on DU were aimed at the exceptional nature bestowed upon Woodstock

As someone born in 1962, I find the romanticization of Woodstock unhelpful.

[rug]

31. Sure, that's all it was.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6311753#6316672

[no_hypocrisy]

21. IMO, hippies had bad PR.

They scared the bejezus out of my old man. He saw them as anti-establishment, smoked "dope", long hair, wanted to fuck his daughters, didn't want to work, wanted to get high and beg for change to eat, stuff like that. And of course all hippies were against the war which meant that they HAD TO be anti-American pinko communists . . .

Even the pics in Life Magazine showing hippy families in communes didn't change their image.

I miss hippies.

[SPedigrees]

33. We haven't gone anywhere. We're just 40 years older. eom

[blondeatlast]

37. This ex-post-punker thinks nothing was/is wrong with them.

In fact, one of them turned me on to the best burgundy henna I've ever seen--my hair was GORGEOUS!

[LeftyMom]

38. Nothing. Just ask them.

:eyes:

[RagAss]

44. Amen. Generation Ego ! And their mantra....

"Who cares if men walked on the moon 2 months before Woodstock? We fucked, smoked dope and shit near our food in the muddy fields of upstate New York."

Get Over Yourselves !

[EFerrari]

58. How can you call them Gen Ego when they reinvented communal living?

Be grateful. Without them, you'd be Wally Cleaver. :)

[Odin2005]

43. Nothing wrong with hippies, it's narcissism that sucks.

I'm no fan of New Age fluff, either.

[madamesilverspurs]

47. From what I remember,

there were hippies and then there were "hippies". Some of it was good, some of it wasn't, all of it was interesting. I think that phase of my life was probably the most colorful, and I learned so much about people and politics and the world, much more than I learned in K-12. And I graduated HS in 1966. No regrets, no apologies.

[create.peace]

54. me, too, 66, and there was such a difference between us and 5 years each way!

[saltpoint]

49. "The hippies" helped reverse the negative brain energy that

sanctioned the war in Southeast Asia.

At the barber shops and beauty parlors, hippies were scorned for their long hair and scruffy jeans and predisposition for marijuana and rock music.

But if a nation's war machine is committed to visiting military violence upon another nation, some critical mass has to be achieved to reverse that energy, to rescind that commitment.

Eugene McCarthy and Robert Bly and Bobby Kennedy among many, many others helped politically, but "the hippies" were in the mix in a dedicated way and helped constitute the critical mass that drove Johnson from office and turned public opinion against the war.

[happyslug]

51. Most had served in the Military?? Remember the draft did NOT end till 1972

While the US had the largest number of Draft age Children during Vietnam (The baby boomer's came of age during that time period), the "Shortage" of draft age males during the 1950s were still fresh in the minds of the Military so while draft rates DROPPED, a huge number of 18 years olds had been drafted BEFORE their became hippies and those that had no served knew people who had.

Background is important, when Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers (Patco Strike) I was only 22 and going to Collage, and did not see the need for a Nation wide strike, I would have supported such a strike if it was one day but no longer. My father, age 61 and looking to retirement, stated at that time that the head of the AFL-CIO (George Meany) should call a Nation Wide Strike to support those Strikers. My Father said labor should have stayed out till Reagan gave in. Labor needed to protect its right to strike at all cost. I am now 50 and I can see what he had seen. The Biggest mistake of Labor was NOT calling a Nation Wide Strike in support of PATCO's right to strike. All strikes were at one time or another Illegal, until the Courts and Congress accepted that people had to recognize the ability of workers to unite and strike. That was a hard fought battle and one Labor needed to protect at all costs. Senior Leadership provides the experience needed for such long views and its failure during PATCO is why Labor in the US has gone down hill since 1980.

I bring this up for the Draft brought with it a huge increase in 22 + collage males who had been on their own since 18. It was this leadership that could create the social structure for something like the Hippies to be created and exist. With the abolishment of the Draft such senior Freshmen became rarer and rarer on the Collage campus (Most people who joined the Military in the 1970s enlisted for training in a career, which was the pushed used by recruiters). The result of the end of the Draft you ended up with less former enlistees on Campuses for most people who could looked to collage in the 1970s had access to grants and loans (The Grants were ended by Reagan but that is another story). Thus you had a different generation in the Collages of the 1970s, less ex-enlistees and more fresh out of High School.

You have to remember the GI Bill did NOT pay the Collages tuition it was a grant of MONEY to the Ex-enlistee while he went to collage, some of that money could pay his tuition but the rest was his to spend as he saw fit. Thew Collage Grants went straight to the Collages with none left over for the Collage Students, who had to find other work to pay for food, clothing and other items someone on the GI Bill could use hid GI Bill Grant for.

The significance of this is simple, during the 1960s you had a core of students who did NOT have to work to pay for living while going to Collage. This was your core group of Hippies, not all, probably not even the majority of the Males, but the essential core of the Hippies. Being ex-military this core were also used to living in a group and working together as a group. In the 1970s this core group was gone. While the GI Bill was NOT abolished right a way, it was slowly killed off by Nixon and Ford to minimize the cost of the All Voluntary Military (Military pay went up, bonuses were offered to enlistees, but often at the cost of cutting back what rights an enlistee had to Collage and other benefits, for example the prices of the Commissary and PX went up do to cuts in the subsidies to both by Congress in the 1970s).

Thus by the mid 1970s the Core of the Hippie movement had been pushed out of collages. The older ex-GIs had used up all of their GI Bills, the newer ex-GIs did NOT have access to such funds (If you enlisted AFTER 1974, you were NOT entitled to the GI Bills Collage program, you had to pay for collage on your own AND what benefits you could get was no longer the month to month pay check while you were in Collage). Thus the Core group had to go on with their lives and moved on, but they was no one to replace them so the Hippies dissolved.

Thus my point it was the abolishment of the draft and its related GI Bill payment for Collage (And that the payment was direct to the student NOT the Collage) killed off the hippie movement. Without that source of funds to maintain the core of the Hippie movement the movement died, another victim of the abolishment of the draft.

What was wrong with the Hippies? Hippies were independent of society but had the income to not only be heard by Society as a whole, but organize and be heard. Such people could and did rock the boat that is society as a whole. The end of the GI Bill ended this independence, the collage students of the 1970s (Except those who had served before 1974) had NO right to INCOME from the Government while in collages. Such students had to work OR rely on money from their parents. Given the messages on the TV to such parents the result were the same, confirm to what society wanted, do NOT rock the boat.

[mudplanet]

56. Go read

The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, On The Road, Been Down So Long Seems Like Up To Me,

and you still won't know what a hippy was (but you'll have spent some quality time with quality books), because there wasn't any such thing. It's like asking, "What was wrong with Christians?" or, What was wrong with Mexicans? Like you can define any large group monolithically (look, Ma, I'm inventing language).

You could also read the story that comprised the margins of the original Whole Earth Catalogue. That was pretty good. I wish I could find a copy.

I was a wanna be, probably because I began to sense at an early age that I was being lied to wholesale and I ceased believing virtually anything I was being taught at school and in the media. Smoke marijuana and you'll become a heroin addict? Take LSD and you'll jump off a twelve story building (I was actually told that by a judge)? If we don't murder three million more Vietnamese people the whole of Asia will become a Stalinistic gulag? I am not a crook? Unmarried sex is shameful and degenerate? Having my hair cut short and wearing a belt and socks are essential if I am to learn anything in school, otherwise I'll become a garbageman (apparently that was the worst fate they could think of, because I think I was threatened with it a dozen times).

I'll give the Brothers of the Sacred Heart one thing though - they taught us the truth about STDs. I was subjected to a day long seminar, including films and question and answer periods in which sex and the human body was talked about frankly and truthfully. Forty years later I found myself in discussions with adult women that knew less about female anatomy than I did.

Of course, as soon as I discovered that you could avoid pregnancy and STD's by using condoms I immediately took that as license for promiscuity! It's a good thing there weren't any gay people around to recruit me or I'd be a degenerate homosexual today.

[GreenTea]

57. Get real....."The Hippies Were Right!"

"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. :hippie:

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-GMO 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. :smoke:

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. :pals:

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. :hi:

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?" :loveya:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/05/02/notes050207.DTL

Mark Morford's column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate. Contact him here. To get on the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, blogs, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is right here.

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Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/05/02/notes050207.DTL#ixzz0OQDXwrMx

[baldguy]

63. +1

The sooner we realize that the better.

[Mythsaje]

59. I was born in 1966 too...

Some of my earliest memories involve hippies--friends of my father's. Going to concerts at Stanford, bouncing around at backyard parties, listening to The Moody Blues and Jefferson Airplane. A flat rock painted like a flag with a peace sign where the stars would have been. Singing around a campfire at Big Sur in 1971 or '72. Cheerful, happy people who wanted to make a better world where people didn't hate and kill one another. People who judged people by what they did, not where they came from, or what they looked like, or the by the color of their skin.

They wanted to change the world. In some ways they succeeded. In other ways they failed. But no matter how people would like to deny it, they left their indelible mark on our culture. In our liberal tolerance. In our ecological sensitivity. In our passion for social justice. In our egalitarianism. And, yes, in our music.

[Recursion]

62. From those of us a decade or so younger than you...

...our impression was that they had a lot of potential, but squandered it. The more politically active ones (and lest we forget, not all "hippies" were protesting or advocating for anything) squandered their energy on internicine dogmatic disputes ("We are the Judean People's Front!" "I thought we were the People's Front of Judea?"), the less involved ones just kind of tuned out until they resurfaced among the mood rings and cocaine parties of the 1970s.

In a word, the problem with hippies is that they were our parents.