Idiot Hippies

The BBQ Pit
101

Well, I was not in the first wave of hippiedom (I started first grade in August of the Summer of Love), I was definitely a pot-smokin’, Grateful Dead followin’ freak flag flyin’ granola cruncher in my day.
I’m not denigrating the counter-culture of the day, but I’m not going to let you play revisionist historian without a rebuttal. And let’s be honest here–hippies didn’t call themselves hippies, but “freaks.” They dug on love and peace and for a moment the movement was beautiful–to groove to Bird on a cloud of lysergic love, to see the universe in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour. Sure, there were attempts to live in egalitarian harmony, like the Diggers and the Family Dog did.

But by the time the Human Be-In kicked off the Summer of Love in '67, all that was dying. Speed and heroin moved in, loser kids from around the country stareted to emulate the trappings but not the ethos of the freaks, and it all went south very fast.

What’s worse, the groovy love and cosmic groove of the hippie transformed into the superstitious New Wave garbage infesting popular culture. All of the chakra/atrology/crystal nutjobbery is your lot’s doing. You’re also responsbile for inflciting toneless New Age music on the world. Your generation spawned Yanni and Windham Hill, and for that alone you should be embarrassed.

Cry me a river, grandpa. Hippiedom didn’t do dick to affect the civil rights movement or the peace movement, and it was positively retrograde in regard to feminism and gay rights. That’s not stereotypes, that’s history.

OTOH, you did give us the Dead, so all is forgive.

102

And Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention had something to say on the topic on their Sgt. Pepper parody, We’re Only In It For The Money,
“I’m completely stone/I’m hippy and I’m trippy/I’m a gypsy on my own/I’ll stay a week and get the crabs and take a bus back home”.

103

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that 1) I still play that CD and 2) I know all the words.
And I forget which counter-culture figure said “All I got from the hippies was bad dope and the clap.”

That said, I was young and impressionable and in Berkely in the early 70’s and there was still a wee bit of magic in the air.
For me, it was extremely liberating knowing that I had alternatives-that I didn’t have to want the life that my parents had so carefully constructed.

104

I take it you regard yourself as much improved, now.

Oh, you most certainly are.

This part you got right. But you blame the originators for the sins of the imitators.

Who?

I neither want, nor need, your forgiveness, puppy. Don’t forget, in your self-righteous froth, that stereotypes are truth to those believe them, much as history is in the eye of the interpreter. Blaming all New Agey weirdness on “hippies”, about whom you know squat, is like blaming rap music on Shakespeare.

But if your ignorance gives you comfort, you are welcome to it, who has done so much for the cause of truth and justice, who better to judge?

105

Boy, I think I have never seen you in full-on Outraged Dignity mode. “Self-righteous froth”? Now that’s projection as a defense mechanism if I ever saw it. Sorry, gramps, but I got your number and you know it. You can live in denial if you wish, but New Agey spaciness descends directly from the 60s counterculture. Your lot’s legacy of superstition and alternate religion were responsible in a large part for the anti-rational streak in 21st century America. Still, the societal experiments you conducted back in the day were worth exploring. Moreover, you missed the bit where I praised the original angel-headed hipsters.

“They dug on love and peace and for a moment the movement was beautiful–to groove to Bird on a cloud of lysergic love, to see the universe in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour. Sure, there were attempts to live in egalitarian harmony, like the Diggers and the Family Dog did.”

Certainly, the love and peace vibe generated by the hippies influenced the culture at the time and has left an enduring legacy in our culture and language. Note my use of “vibe,” a word coined by the hippies. But the truth remains that hippies were spectators, not participants, in the pivotal events of the day, well, except rock concerts. Woodstock was a perfect example of hippie behavior. A for-profit event was hijacked by a mob of ticketless freeloaders, and the two men who financed the event lost their total investments.

Although I will give you the Levitation of the Pentagon. That was cool.

106

I feel responsible because I started the thread.

I’ve said repeatedly that it is the “idiot” half of “idiot hippie” that pissed me off. Once again, if you can find an alternative way of doing something that works better, fantastic. More power to you. However, I can’t stand people who preach a philosophy when they themselves have not researched it thoroughly. That goes for hippie, pubbie, Christian, or martial arts fanatic.

I shall provide an example (this is the same example I posted on another thread):

I work at a veterinary clinic. One day we had a client who had covered his cat in EUCALYPTUS OIL to get rid of fleas because he heard it was a more natural alternative to the very safe chemical products on the market. After we stoped his cat’s seizures, we carefully explained how everything is made of chemicals and just because you can get it out of a plant doesn’t make it safe to eat. We also had to explain how cats are different from people and things safe for people are not always safe for cats.

That man was an idiot. Instead of asking someone with training and experience, he allowed himself to be mislead by other idiots. He and his cat are better now, but his behavior at that moment is exactly the sort of behavior that pisses me off.

Am I clear now?
If you and Gobear want to keep debating the '60’s go ahead. I’m happy that my thread has started a discussion.

And thanks Gobear for taking up elucidator’s challenge.

107

Challenge, schmallenge. Its all viewpoint on a phenomenon that can’t even be defined, much less debated. I was there, I saw some stuff, I’ll tell you or I won’t, don’t mean shit to a tree. Gobear rented a video of Hair, so he knows all about hippies, I kinda like Elton John music and John Wayne movies, so I know from gays. Its all apples and orangutans.

(Yeah, John Wayne. You didn’t know?..)

108

AW, poor widdle Elucidator’s upset. Hey, pal, you’re not the only granola guy who’s lived the hippie lifestyle. I did it a generation later than you, that’s all. And you’re not challenging my facts, you;re just yupset that i mentioned them.

Getting high while watching Yellow Submarine in 68 did not make you a revolutionary, Cinque. Or are you a Weatherman still on the run?

109

No problem, aeropl; folks who can cope with Lexington Ave are always welcome :D.

gobear, chill. You’re stereotyping out the ass, and it’s not good.

Daniel

110

That’s cool; those of us who understand language will keep mocking you, you ignoramus, for thinking that a word may have only one definition.

Daniel

111

See, that’s just what I mean. You toss around a couple of cliches like “Cinque” and “Weathermen” like you know something. Those Symbionese meatheads had squat to do with hippies, radical militants hated hippies more than Nixon did. It’s like lumping Rasputin with Lenin because they’re both Russian.

But look, clearly, you need a boost, ego is ouching, maybe the Rogaine ain’t doing it, dunno. So, here, just for you…

Ooooh, such a stinging rejoinder, I’m cut to the quick by the sharp invective, writhing in pain on the floor, clutching my sides in, ah, agony. Agony, agony, agony.

There. Good deed for the day, didn’t cost me a thing.

112

Explain how laying out historical facts is stereotyping. Hippies did not lead the civil rights movements or the anti-war movements, the two important areas of politocal struggle in the 1960s. They got a lot of press, but they played no significant role in the real activism of the day. I grow very tired of **“Luci” acting as if he and his aged cohorts were politically significant and that activism died when Woodstock ended.

113

Of course you’d disavow the SLA because they don’t fit the image you’d like to keep. Still, touche on the Weathermen.

Aw, I can feel the warm fuzzies.

114

The Students for a Democratic Society didn’t lead the anti-war movement? Or they weren’t hippies? I don’t get it.

And as for the civil-rights movement: yes, of course they didn’t lead it, as hippiedom was a predominantly white social movement. Do men lead the feminist movement?

But a helluva lot of them were involved–such as my own parents, who worked in a Black Panther daycare center in the sixties.

Daniel

115

They weren’t hippies.

116

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
The Students for a Democratic Society didn’t lead the anti-war movement? Or they weren’t hippies? I don’t get it.
They weren’t hippies. The Yippies were hippies, though. Alas for Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman.

[quote]

And you should be proud of them for their activism.

117

Okay, so lemme get this straight. Hippies weren’t involved in the antiwar movement in any significant fashion. And that’s because you’re defining anyone who was involved in a significant fashion as not a hippie. You’re telling me the folks who coined “Make love, not war” weren’t hippies?

I think you’re working from a mighty different definition from the one I grew up with. If you simply define political activism out of hippiedom, then you’re arguing a tautology.

Daniel

118

OK, I’ll give this a shot. I’m gonna tell you a lie, as a way of telling you the truth. There was never any such thing as “hippies”. Now, that’s not quite true, but its pretty close.

There pretty much has always been a counter-culture, of one form or another. “Bohemians” morphed into “beatniks”. The feature that most distinguished “hippies” from “beatniks” was enthusiasm, being weirdly different not as a statement of rejection, but for the sheer joy of it. Foolish and naive? No, because deliberately foolish, and willing to accept the consequences. To begin with, there were only a few dozen, mostly people in thier late twenties and early thirties who had spent far too much time in graduate school, who knew something was deeply, deeply wrong but had no answer, no agenda. Marxism was as empty as Objectivism, both founded on a ruthless rationalism that invariably fails because it isn’t human, isn’t humane. Some of the worse horrors the world has seen were committed by cold, sane, and rational men.

So…be crazy? But not miserably, mumbling crazy, hounded by voices and nameless demons, but simply irrational. And show it, live it, wear it on your very person. To be a “freak” by choice is to ask the question: what wrong with it?

When the tedia discovered the “hippies”, they invented the hippies. Suddenly people were showing up to see the hippies. That’s how the whole “spare change” trick happened: as long as your going to be bugged by straight people, you might as well get a buck or two, plus it shocks the living shit out of them! Begging horrified straight people, it was like admitting to having some repulsive disease, you half-expected them to pull out a crucifix to ward you off.

But the word got out, and people flocked to see the hippies, and other people flocked to be the hippies, and suddenly a minor social phenomenon bugeoned into a humanitarian disaster on a small scale. People like the Diggers sprang up not to scrounge free food and such for themselves, but for all the stupid fucking teeny-boppers who came flocking in expecting Paradise. Then, of course, suddenly, they were the hippies, because the other guys were too busy trying to take care of them!

But they were nothing like the originals. For one thing, they were younger. A lot younger. For another, they didn’t experiment with drugs, they took drugs to get high, which is so different, I can’t explain it. But the original people would no more take LSD to party on than you would serve canapes on a communion wafer.

And, no, I wasn’t one of them, I saw them, I listened to them, in some cases I admired them, but was far too wise, far too ironic, ever to fling myself into deliberate naivete. And for the life of me, I can’t even tell you if I regret it.

119

I don’t think Gobear said that. He’s arguing that the groups that had the most impact on social movements, particularly the antiwar movements, were not comprised of people who behaved in a hippie fashion. Regardless of how the movement started, a hippie is now largely recognized as someone who:

  1. disdains all things Western usually simply because they are Western
  2. adores all things Eastern usually simply because they are Eastern
  3. Attempts to participate in social movements but is usually overcome with lethargy or is too addlebrained from drugs to do anything
  4. Blames everyone else, particularly “Big corporate guys in suits” for thier failure to succeed in their social movement.
  5. Has an unusual fondness for baggy clothes made from organic fibers and dyes, droning digerido/chime music, incense, smudge, and crystals.
  6. Enjoys spouting off like they are so much smarter than people with different preferences

All six and you’ve got a hippie. Groups like the Students for a Democratic Society were not largely made up of people fitting this structure. The people who coined “Make Love, not War” just didn’t have a big impact on actually stopping the war. The newscastors who brought the war into people’s livingrooms changed public opinion.

About the farthest I’ve seen a realy hippy get is Congress. But some would argue that Neil Abercrombie isn’t a real hippie anymore.

120

That’s exactly what Gobear has been saying from the start!