Well, you’re about my age, so the time your talking about was already in the middle of the whole hippie phenomenon. I’m trying to think of the period slightly before. My recollection was that the people of my parents generation were quite happy, what with not having to deal with a depression or WWII and all. But a lot of younger people were saying, “Well, is that all there is?” While there was a lot going on, there weren’t many options for those who didn’t quite want to conform. Nowadays there all sorts of things that people can do to indulge their individuality, but the 50s and early 60s were much more conformist. I mean, people who exercised every day were considered a bit nuts, for heaven’s sake. Vegetarians were candidates for the looney bin.
As for myself, I’m more like you, in that I wasn’t all that angsty(though as for the Playboy lifestyle, meh), so I wasn’t good fodder for being a hippie.
I’m just trying to guess at why it came about, and it is a guess. Maybe it had more to do with nukes and the cold war making kids say, “Oh, what the hell?” A lot of people say the pill was the biggest factor. Who knows?
One thing I was wondering: sentiment against the Vietnam war seems to have been even higher than the current Iraq war. Massive protests everywhere, sometimes 50,000 strong, and ending in riots with dozens of people being thrown in jail. Looking back at documentaries and news articles, it doesn’t seem like too many people were actually FOR the Vietnam war. Yet despite the unpopularity of it, the government didn’t pull out until the mid 70’s. Was wondering if the “hippie” movement was just poorly organized or were most people were just more interested in the drugs and sex or what was the deal.
Some people seemed to think the war in Iraq would end because it’s so unpopular (especially back when it first started), and I’ve tried to point back to the Vietnam war, which seemed to have far more protests and no one really “for” it and still did not convince the government to pull out.
Also, the whole “be an individual” and “stick it to the man” seemed to fail pretty badly IMO. I was too little to understand much in the 70’s, but the 80’s seemed to me as corporate and conformist of a decade as anything else. What happened to all the freedom and love, and how did it give way to the corporate decade? Some of the documentaries I’ve seen blame the drugs, some seem to insinuate that the hippies became disillusioned with the notion that they could actually change the world.
I am a child of the sixties. I was in Chicago for the Convention in 1968, and have a slight scar on my left cheek from a nightstick swung by one of Mayor Daley’s finest. (I was fifteen)
Yeah, there was sex, drugs, rock and roll. There was even more in the way of radical politics.
One evening, my wife and I went to parent teacher conferences for our older daughter, who was in tenth grade. When it was my turn with the social studies teacher, I extended my hand and introduced myself. He looked at me, with shoulder length grey hair, a Grateful Dead tie dyed Tee shirt and sandals and said “Oh! It all makes sense now.” The project my daughter had just turned in for an “A” was a report on the Kent State shootings in May of 1970
First, there was a draft back then and a lot of the protesters were in the pool to be drafted. That’s why I stayed in college, to stay out of Vietnam. We’d never been through anything like it before, and we were pretty much outraged that our parents – the “Greatest Generation” – were belittling us for not stepping up to fight for God and country. They didn’t believe that the U.S. could be involved in something as stupid as Vietnam turned out to be, didn’t understand why we weren’t willing to sign up to fight the commies the way they fought the Nazis. We protested in rage and felt personally threatened by Selective Service; people today are more jaded at the constant fuck-ups happening in Washington, and the only ones threatened are the few who have loved ones in the military.
Second, just because the war is unpopular doesn’t mean it can end tomorrow. Just like our current morasse in Iraq, once you’re in it’s not enough to wish yourself out. For one thing, you’ve stupidly and stubbornly gotten yourself into a place you were warned not to go (both Johnson and Bush). But once your Texas balls have gotten you into the mess, you canot just pack up and leave – it’s physiceally, politically and diplomatically impossible. Like Johnson, Bush will be forever remembered as a president who could have done great things (Johnson with his Great Society, Bush with the temporary defeat of the Taliban.) Unfortunately, both sacrificed the good they could have done by over-reaching.
There was a lot of this near the beginning of the war, but it diminished over time. Probably the biggest factor was that people’s children were at risk. I remember a number of parents being very hawkish right up until their sons turned 18, at which time they suddenly became doves. The Nixon administration responded with the lottery, which got, initially, about half the kids out of danger (a number above 180 or so, IIRC, was considered safe). Also, I recall being told that they made it easier to get a 4-F. But public feeling toward the war kept diminishing. Things like Walter Cronkite saying on air that the war was unwinnable (1968), Kent State (1970), the bombing of Cambodia (started 1969, but kept secret) and the Pentagon Papers (1971) just kept stacking up. In the end, most of the country was fed up with the whole stupid mess.
Why yes, Apocalypso, yes I was. So much so that I was a parody of myself: folksinger, demonstrator, hitchhiker, barefoot, longhaired, Zen spouting freak, briefly enamored of The Farm Commune. :shudders:
Today I still wear floaty dresses and dangly earrings and I listen to some of the same music, but for the most part I’m straighter than a plumb bob. Other than the usual nostalgia, my only real tie to my psychedelic past is that for the last 20 years or so, I’ve become a student of the literature that came out of the war in Vietnam and feel passionately motivated to understand it.
Were?? End??
Born in the 70’s so I’d say I’m a modern hippie. I’m not aware of the hippie movement ending, but I am aware of those who were around in the 60’s 70’s as being hippies have simply evolved into hippies of modern day. I can bring you to countless areas in the US where “the movement” is alive and well.
Okay, y’all are gonna disown me for this one, but today’s Cathy just gave me a giggle. Warning: link leads to *Cathy *comic. Nuff said.
And no, these aren’t the “hippies of today” that **Philosphr **and I are talking about. (Okay, they’re *some *of the hippies of today, but we make fun of them, too.)
I came pretty close at one point. Long hair, beard, and getting powerfully stoned on sinsemilla – while the campus security guard stopped by to chat with us. Of course he was cool, but it was still funny in retrospect.
Heh. I bought my current (and last) wispy floral dress at a street fair from a twenty-something kid in dreadlocks. We shared an ironic and amusing former earth mother/current slacker moment.
Were? WERE!
Swap lunch for a little black square I had clipped to my induction physical paperwork because I was a card carrying member of SDS.
Trade some of next month’s food stamp allotment for a hit of acid.
How about using this laptop at the airport’s …
A Hippie is a bum. Someone who lives off society. Someone who knows where to get a free meal (Daily Bread @ 11:30 AM; Salvation Army @ 4PM; Coalition for the Homeless @ 7PM). A truly despicable type.
I am truly surprised that you would have the effrontery to ask.
My granddad welded a bit of chain to an iron rod just the right size for a young kid. I carried it everywhere and whenever I saw a man with long hair I’d yell “Mommy where’s my hippie-whip?”
Hippies were lazy druggies that listened to crappy music and wanted a free ride.
That was what I thought back then. Compared to disco the hippies weren’t so bad.
I never used the term "hippie" as appellative for self or other, but yes, I am and was a part of the counter culture that seemed to crest in the late '60s, though its beginnings predate Boomers by at least one generation.
Still working on a definition.It isn't so much rebelliousness, more considered non-conformity.I've lost close relationships among peers over the Iraq war, being in opposition from the git-go. During 'Nam most of my generation were against U.S. involvement, as was I, though I tried to enlist in the U.S.N.
Politics of the era were too violently polarised under/over 30, a schism I don't see today.Not to conflate the Anti-war Movement with "hippies", though they made a bloc.
"Back to the land" seemed part of the mantra, and I've done that with success, though more akin to Scott Nearing's work ethic than his lefty views (and without the adoring free labour student visitors).
The End of the Hippies came about in part when Mom and Dad stopped paying the bills and all the Free Drugs, Sex, and Rock n' Roll actually had to be paid for. Many of the "hippies" I knew are now corporate Limbaugh quoters.
