Silk Road forums
Discussion => Philosophy, Economics and Justice => Topic started by: pkizenko98 on April 12, 2013, 08:43 am
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I have always connected with the hippie movement and consider myself a neo-hippie even tho I missed it by a few years, so I want to get some opinions about the culture. The 60s in the U.S. were a remarkable time in my opinion, where people started to reject the everyday bullshit so common in society. The youth, with the help of an assortment of easily available drugs began to reconnect with the earth and the universe which opened their eyes to what was really going on in this life, what it really was about. Mine own upbringing and life has led me to this same path and I knew the spirit of the 60's was still alive, but what I hope to get from this post is a better understanding of what happened after the 60's. If anyone can share their stories of hippiness and what they have done in their lives to keep this spirit alive, please do so!
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Hippies never really left, but the whole movement has changed/morphed/evolved.
The circumstances of the modern youth are radically different than what they were back in the late 50's early 60's. All you have to do is go to a rainbow gathering to know that the "movement" really isn't dead. I think a lot of people get nostalgic for the early days of the hippies but those days are gone forever. I think its up to the modern movement to define who they are and to move forward. There have always been subcultures but the hippie movement was the United States first really overt one.
I myself don't consider myself a hippie and you probably won't find to many here. Although the people here, like myself, encounter them quite often. I would recommend looking into getting to know local Rainbow Gathering events and family. They are probably much more suited to answer your questions and interact with you on that level.
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My $0.02 is that I find hippies more or less incomprehensible. Pretty much the same as my view of the Occupy crowd. I don't dislike them or anything, I just don't really identify with their philosophy. Even when there is some crossover, I don't associate those intersecting ideas as being hippie-related. A fair majority of the things they were concerned about seem to be irrational, which doesn't appeal to me at all. e.g. the religious/astrology/spiritualism aspects.
I think you probably had to be there at the time, which of course isn't really possible for 9/10 of people in the forum since that would most likely make them 60 - 80 years old if they were teenagers or in their twenties when it all went down.
FWIW, I think the movement probably was a delayed side affect of the Second World War. When entire generations go through a bunch of really horrible shit, the experience + demographic changes probably produce a generation with the urge to disassociate themselves from that world as far as humanly possible. Seems fair enough if you ask me! It's this kind of flexibility that allows humankind to adapt and renew itself.
Secondly, the Communists deliberately used the hippie movement to further their ideals, if you read the literature from intelligence agencies back then you'll see they were enthusiastic about co-opting such social movements as a way of screwing with the American government. I don't think this had the desired affect, but the pro-socialism alignment many hippies identified with wasn't entirely organic, it was partly cynically manufactured by think-tanks behind the Iron Curtain (you see a tiny echo of this in the way the Occupy movement is being co-opted by Marxists/Labor movements today). However I don't think this could ultimately work. Socialists are almost as leery of Communism as Capitalism when you get right down to it. The hippies were as pleased as everybody else when the Wall fall, it was their victory too. That western culture allows such things as artifacts as blue jeans, punk hairstyles and rock and roll really matters, ask any former resident of the Soviet Union and they'll tell you the same thing. The hippie movement was not pro-Capitalist, but it was not anti-Western even if they experimented with Eastern philosophies. In fact the conflict between conservatism and liberalism is a staple of Western thought and always has been. This is entirely unlike something like Confucianism, which would never tolerate a hippie movement. Some, but not all of popular Eastern thought is seriously authoritarian.
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I think that the concepts of Cypherpunk e.g. BTC, PGP, SR and so forth are likely to go viral in a very big way, that's starting to happen right now. I know that Cypherpunk is perceived as being extremely cool by unanimous verdict of my younger associates (because it is!). We have a young population growing up who've spent their teenage years under various sorts of surveillance, whose parents regularly get urine tests for drugs, who are aware of their being tracked by various mechanisms like credit cards, internet browsing history. Hackers who subvert the system are universally respected for their know-how in youth culture today. Once the average teenager reaches the correct level of sophistication and paranoia in their computer use, it's almost certain many of them will revolt in some way against the system. Crypto-anarchy fits the bill for both liberal ideals and practical financial reasons. The right mix of political circumstances will plan straight into our cryptopaws. Anonymous are just the first such rebellion I think, this shall be a recurring theme in the years to come. Hacktivism is being misinterpreted as nation state political activism spreading into cyberspace, but this isn't as important as it's being made out to be. The vast, vast majority of hackers couldn't give a fuck about nationalism, at least not of the classical cheer-leading sort anyway.
That anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-socialism emphasize the Non-Aggression-Principal is probably strengthened by previous peacenik movements such as the hippies. Admittedly NAP does not mean pacifism, but still. The only real ideological requirement to become a Cypherpunk is to be a libertarian, you could be left or right wing, it doesn't matter which since this is a common ground between us. Here and now the State is the biggest problem there is. Get rid of State power and the majority of monopolies and oligarchies shall fall too, it's a win-win situation from the libertarian perspective.
Lest we forget, PGP itself was invented by Phil Zimmerman, whose motivation at the time was to help anti-nuclear protesters. So, the hippie movement and cypherpunk are definitely linked, even if I don't "get" the first one.
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+1 to you pine. I always respect and enjoy your post! You hit so many great points and I love the use of historical examples. I will be bookmarking the thread.
I think you find hippies incomprehensible because their ideas were not fully formed. I do think they played an important role in history because of the press they received globally. Every generation rebels, buy I would say until the hippie movement none had rebelled in such a way that captured peoples attention and imagination in the U.S. and the world. As a movement they were doomed. The ideals and leadership of the movement were weak and of course this allowed for many other factions to use them in whatever ways they wanted too.
The first reply poster mentioned that the movement has evolved and I am of this opinion myself! I see the links as you do pine, with the cypherpunk movement and the hippie movement. In this day and age this is the "cool" rebellious thing to be apart of. I can only hope that this time lessons have been taken from past rebellious generations like the hippies and we go about creating change in an intelligent manner.
Thanks for the replies!
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The Hippies and the movement never really left. You'll still find hippie out there and it's just nowadays the movement has evolved and branched off into different subcultures with different principles and philosophy.
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the term hippie is mostly cliche. I do harbor the hippie spirit; but my definition of a hippie is likely completely different than the next guy. I am a thinking hippie, likened to advanced thinkers like alex grey, paul laffoley, and ananda bossman. I have a deep respect for eastern and western practices.. the spirit within the hippie movement isn't dead at all, it just advanced past the interest and understanding of most people. The psuedo hippies are a huge turn off to me; they seem largely hollywood created drug addicts.
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Well i'm 60+ yrs. old
:o
Peace,
ChemCat
O0
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the term hippie is mostly cliche. I do harbor the hippie spirit; but my definition of a hippie is likely completely different than the next guy. I am a thinking hippie, likened to advanced thinkers like alex grey, paul laffoley, and ananda bossman. I have a deep respect for eastern and western practices.. the spirit within the hippie movement isn't dead at all, it just advanced past the interest and understanding of most people. The psuedo hippies are a huge turn off to me; they seem largely hollywood created drug addicts.
I use the term hippie because it is easily recognized. It's impossible to be an actual hippie as that time is over. I hope that everyone understands what I mean. I think that movement birth or at least helped raised other movements of the like.
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But Lucius' term makes sense- he/she is a person who is open to experience and has a worldview that hopes for mutual compassion, and is also into the 'hippie' aesthetic (so I infer from the post). 'Hippie' IS an aesthetic now, particularly for people who think beyond the terms of caricatures (I contend most do), one that I too value and identify with. I spend my time seeing Phish and Furthur, I take LSD, I play in jam bands, I have a wild mane of unkempt hair. It's a good time and fairly little politics are involved, or at least the lack of involvement is more overt now. 99% of the kids wearing tie dye in the 60s/70s were the same type of those 99% who now wear large glasses and condom-like toques, in that they wear what everyone who shops at the same mall wears.
I would also like to point out the roots of the hippie aesthetic in the Romanticism period of the Western canon. It's nothing too new, the sentiment of the experiences are the same. The outcome wasn't too different either, the lifestyle appealed to bourgeois "decadents" and the pendulum swung back in favour of rationalism.
edit: And I'm sure that, if we broaden the query, we can extend the roots as far back as evidence allows.
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But Lucius' term makes sense- he/she is a person who is open to experience and has a worldview that hopes for mutual compassion, and is also into the 'hippie' aesthetic (so I infer from the post). 'Hippie' IS an aesthetic now, particularly for people who think beyond the terms of caricatures (I contend most do), one that I too value and identify with. I spend my time seeing Phish and Furthur, I take LSD, I play in jam bands, I have a wild mane of unkempt hair. It's a good time and fairly little politics are involved, or at least the lack of involvement is more overt now. 99% of the kids wearing tie dye in the 60s/70s were the same type of those 99% who now wear large glasses and condom-like toques, in that they wear what everyone who shops at the same mall wears.
I would also like to point out the roots of the hippie aesthetic in the Romanticism period of the Western canon. It's nothing too new, the sentiment of the experiences are the same. The outcome wasn't too different either, the lifestyle appealed to bourgeois "decadents" and the pendulum swung back in favour of rationalism.
edit: And I'm sure that, if we broaden the query, we can extend the roots as far back as evidence allows.
I absolutely agree! I am of the belief that nothing is new, that everything is recycled. So the "hippie" can be traced as you say as far back as possible, going by another name!
I will disagree with the hippie aesthetic now, I think it is much more than this. I am much like you I will say, the hair, LSD consumption and all. I see life as one organic thing or being or whatever the hell it is. More than see, I know it is. Possibly I have lost my mind, but I came to the realization that everything plays out as it should. I really don't know as yet how to explain this, but I know what matters is life, enjoying it, cherishing your loved ones, and simply experiencing everything you can possibly experience in this life. Nothing is wrong or right, it just is. I have felt this way since before trying drugs. Drugs just take me deeper into my thoughts and connect me to this one overall being that is life. It's as if every time I do drugs, specifically psychedelics, a veil is removed and I step deeper into a more spiritual but real world, where everything is connected. Drugs are not even needed for this process, they just speed it up. I would call it enlightenment, and the example I would use are Buddhist monks who strive to reach this level by strict asceticism. Once again just another path all leading to one thing. So to go back to my original post I asked that question, but honestly I know the answer, so really I just wanted to discuss it! :D
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Possibly I have lost my mind, but I came to the realization that everything plays out as it should. I really don't know as yet how to explain this, but I know what matters is life, enjoying it, cherishing your loved ones, and simply experiencing everything you can possibly experience in this life. Nothing is wrong or right, it just is. I have felt this way since before trying drugs.
Drugs just take me deeper into my thoughts and connect me to this one overall being that is life. It's as if every time I do drugs, specifically psychedelics, a veil is removed and I step deeper into a more spiritual but real world, where everything is connected.
Drugs are not even needed for this process, they just speed it up. I would call it enlightenment, and the example I would use are Buddhist monks who strive to reach this level by strict asceticism.
Fully concur with this. The only problem with psychedelics is that I can take less into the real world from a trip than I wish. ::)
This may be because my experiences with DMT involve a kind of nonverbal holistic thinking. But since my 1st DMT breakthrough I understand the concept of the multiverse.
2c-b in high doses has certainly sped up my thinking. But this i an experience I would not recommend for people without psychedelic experience beforehand.
As A. Shulgin said about 2c-b: "Was it comfortable? No! Will I go there again? Yes"
Psychedelics are not so much for LMAO but to explore those corners of my brain that would otherwise be locked away from myself.
As for the hippie movement...sorry I can't see it anymore. Hanging out with a bong is fun, but it does not change the world if you do nothing else.
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connoisseur, what do you mean by you can take less into the real world from a trip than you wish?
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connoisseur, what do you mean by you can take less into the real world from a trip than you wish?
DMT creates a kind of perception for me where I can see energies in the comedown phase.
2c-b is an existentially earthshattering experience. All the people I know who took it say that is was mostly a mentally very exhausting experience but that it helps tremedously in fear management.
As you said drugs help accelerate thinking, it gets to the point where thoughts are too manifold and one cannot carry the special ways of thinking over to 'normal' life.
As for LSD, thanks for this forum, because it made me find out that my last couple of trips were 25i-NBOME. But LSD was my first drug ever.
The road enables me to get some good acid for this summer.
But this is now off topic. :)
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Well i'm 60+ yrs. old
Did you go to Woodstock? I bet you traveled around on Ken Kesey's bus and gave people the electric kool-aid acid test.
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my head swoons with memories LOL
:P
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connoisseur, what do you mean by you can take less into the real world from a trip than you wish?
DMT creates a kind of perception for me where I can see energies in the comedown phase.
2c-b is an existentially earthshattering experience. All the people I know who took it say that is was mostly a mentally very exhausting experience but that it helps tremedously in fear management.
As you said drugs help accelerate thinking, it gets to the point where thoughts are too manifold and one cannot carry the special ways of thinking over to 'normal' life.
As for LSD, thanks for this forum, because it made me find out that my last couple of trips were 25i-NBOME. But LSD was my first drug ever.
The road enables me to get some good acid for this summer.
But this is now off topic. :)
I think I understand what you mean now. You mean that its hard to bring all of those wonderful thoughts from a trip back into this "real" world. I am going through the same thing currently, but I am doing my best to hold onto the thoughts. I find if you continue to analyze your thoughts and experience when on drugs, again specifically psychedelics it becomes easier to keep them in the real world. Its like dreams, read any dream book and the advise is to record the dream right after you awake. This enables you to remember more and more dreams in more detail.
I have not had the pleasure to try DMT, I am currently in pursuit, researching vendors and their product. I believe fully that DMT is my next natural step to take after carefully exploring other drugs and psychedelics. 2c-b will probably follow DMT for me. You say it would be an earth shattering experience, at least from your friends experiences. I hope not and I doubt, because I believe my earth has been shattered already and I am at a level beyond, but we will see. lol Fear management is something I grapple with all day long, I can gladly say that I am winning that fight as of right now.
I wanna thank you, +1 you, and co sign on your thank you to the road. It provided me with my first experience with LSD. I am also a connoisseur and I believe I absolutely got the real thing. Acquired it from a trusted vendor in the top 1% and my experience testing it all pointed to it being genuine.
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There was a famous book or collection of materials during this time. It was like a collection of hacks, guides, stuff like self sufficiency and other exotic ideas, but I forget the name of it. Does this sound familiar?
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possibly not..but, the anarchists cookbook?
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possibly not..but, the anarchists cookbook?
No. It had some elaborate name.
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possibly not..but, the anarchists cookbook?
No. It had some elaborate name.
Holy shit, YOU'RE back?! Thought you were gone for good...
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possibly not..but, the anarchists cookbook?
No. It had some elaborate name.
Holy shit, YOU'RE back?! Thought you were gone for good...
You can never get rid of a Greater Weevil.
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possibly not..but, the anarchists cookbook?
No. It had some elaborate name.
Holy shit, YOU'RE back?! Thought you were gone for good...
You can never get rid of a Greater Weevil.
Damn, you must have taken a few months off then (I just took one month off myself). I swear time goes by 10x as fast on here... anyways, it's nice to see an "old timer"come back from the dead!
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possibly not..but, the anarchists cookbook?
No. It had some elaborate name.
Holy shit, YOU'RE back?! Thought you were gone for good...
You can never get rid of a Greater Weevil.
Damn, you must have taken a few months off then (I just took one month off myself). I swear time goes by 10x as fast on here... anyways, it's nice to see an "old timer"come back from the dead!
Thanks. You too, welcome back Mr/Mrs Weevil.
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pkizenko98: I highly recommend This Is Your Country On Drugs; The Secret History of Getting High in America by Ryan Grim. Of course, the author's thesis is that movements like the '60's hippies are inextricably linked with drug use/culture, and so you can see it as a bit of only-tool-is-a-hammer syndrome, but he makes some compelling insights and arguments.
For my part, I don't think you can take (historical) hippies out of context, and that context was (anti-)war.
And of course there is hippie fashion, which comes and goes. But you don't need new age trappings to be a hippie. It's a value system (though one you might expect to see reflected in recognizable ways). In a time of war and environmental degradation (ie: now), it's not surprising to see more people at least superficially considering hippie values.
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Holy shit, YOU'RE back?! Thought you were gone for good...
The Great Old Ones are waking.
I would not like to be eaten last.
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pkizenko98: I highly recommend This Is Your Country On Drugs; The Secret History of Getting High in America by Ryan Grim. Of course, the author's thesis is that movements like the '60's hippies are inextricably linked with drug use/culture, and so you can see it as a bit of only-tool-is-a-hammer syndrome, but he makes some compelling insights and arguments.
For my part, I don't think you can take (historical) hippies out of context, and that context was (anti-)war.
And of course there is hippie fashion, which comes and goes. But you don't need new age trappings to be a hippie. It's a value system (though one you might expect to see reflected in recognizable ways). In a time of war and environmental degradation (ie: now), it's not surprising to see more people at least superficially considering hippie values.
thanks +1
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I have not had the pleasure to try DMT, I am currently in pursuit, researching vendors and their product. I believe fully that DMT is my next natural step to take after carefully exploring other drugs and psychedelics.
Go for DMT freebase as it is easier to smoke a breakthrough dose (50mg) in one draw.
LSD is a one-off trip.
DMT will become a journey. It is the most impressive drug I know and I call it the king of psychedelics. While LSD can be very confusing, DMT produces a diamond clear high.
Smoke a 20 mg dose first to get a feel for it. To me, the higher the dose, the more colourful the experience.
Now that I write about it this drug 'invites' me to do it again today.
Once you had DMT it will call you for the next part of this journey.
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I have not had the pleasure to try DMT, I am currently in pursuit, researching vendors and their product. I believe fully that DMT is my next natural step to take after carefully exploring other drugs and psychedelics.
Go for DMT freebase as it is easier to smoke a breakthrough dose (50mg) in one draw.
LSD is a one-off trip.
DMT will become a journey. It is the most impressive drug I know and I call it the king of psychedelics. While LSD can be very confusing, DMT produces a diamond clear high.
Smoke a 20 mg dose first to get a feel for it. To me, the higher the dose, the more colourful the experience.
Now that I write about it this drug 'invites' me to do it again today.
Once you had DMT it will call you for the next part of this journey.
Thanks +1 I hope to acquire soon and be able to get back to you on the journey!
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I have not had the pleasure to try DMT, I am currently in pursuit, researching vendors and their product. I believe fully that DMT is my next natural step to take after carefully exploring other drugs and psychedelics.
Go for DMT freebase as it is easier to smoke a breakthrough dose (50mg) in one draw.
LSD is a one-off trip.
DMT will become a journey. It is the most impressive drug I know and I call it the king of psychedelics. While LSD can be very confusing, DMT produces a diamond clear high.
Smoke a 20 mg dose first to get a feel for it. To me, the higher the dose, the more colourful the experience.
Now that I write about it this drug 'invites' me to do it again today.
Once you had DMT it will call you for the next part of this journey.
one-off trip? maybe if you're taking too low of a dose! no doubt that dmt is the king of the psychedelics, but to say it always produces a "diamond clear high" is not true. the experience is quite powerful and earth-shattering and can be much more confusing than your average lsd trip. what it really comes down to is dosage and brain chemistry.
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There was a famous book or collection of materials during this time. It was like a collection of hacks, guides, stuff like self sufficiency and other exotic ideas, but I forget the name of it. Does this sound familiar?
fuck, its killing me that I can't name this book or come up with the proper search terms to identify it. It was made by some guys out in california who were geeks "before it was cool" to be a geek. i remember someone in a documentary once referring to it as something like the precursor to the internet.
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There was a famous book or collection of materials during this time. It was like a collection of hacks, guides, stuff like self sufficiency and other exotic ideas, but I forget the name of it. Does this sound familiar?
fuck, its killing me that I can't name this book or come up with the proper search terms to identify it. It was made by some guys out in california who were geeks "before it was cool" to be a geek. i remember someone in a documentary once referring to it as something like the precursor to the internet.
Sounds like we're thinking of the same thing. I just can't remember the name.
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Fuck hippies. They are dirty, ignorant, dogmatic, and lazy. Too much love, not enough work. Fuck hippies.
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Myeah, those lazy hippies, digging in the dirt, growing their own food, cooking from scratch, bicycling to work, getting involved in grassroots politics.
It is funny how ignorance and dogmatism is so easy to spot, though... ;)
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There were very few true hippies.... the media got a hold of the idea and created them....
A classic case of uncool people seeing a few cool people and then assuming the persona for themselves...
The Manson family started as hippies.
the term changed as the people did..
I would have rather been a Beatnik.
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Beats:
http://www.allenginsberg.org/uploads/images/0531.jpg
Beatniks:
http://www.plexent.com/Portals/93481/images/beatnik.jpeg
I know who I'd rather hang out with.
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labels don't define us, we define them
cyberpunks, beats, beatniks, bolsheviks, bol weevils, shamans, hippies...
i pray for, suspect and expect the success and triumph of free-thinking inspired people for the better of us all
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And the sign said "Long-haired freaky people need not apply"
So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why
He said "You look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you'll do"
So I took off my hat, I said "Imagine that. Huh! Me workin' for you!"
Whoa-oh-oh
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?
And the sign said anybody caught trespassin' would be shot on sight
So I jumped on the fence and-a yelled at the house, "Hey! What gives you
the
right?"
"To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep mother nature in"
"If God was here he'd tell you to your face, Man, you're some kinda sinner"
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?
Now, hey you, mister, can't you read?
You've got to have a shirt and tie to get a seat
You can't even watch, no you can't eat
You ain't supposed to be here
The sign said you got to have a membership card to get inside
Ugh!
[Lead Guitar]
And the sign said, "Everybody welcome. Come in, kneel down and pray"
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all, I didn't have a
penny to pay
So I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own little sign
I said, "Thank you, Lord, for thinkin' 'bout me. I'm alive and doin' fine."
Wooo!
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?
LOL i love this song :)
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So I read this question and decided to go on a small rant based on various documentaries i've watched and books I've read recently. I haven't read all of the posts, just putting in my 2 cents.
The hippie 'movement' attempted to break away and live outside of the structures of power, in a response to state repression, by focusing on the self.
Corporations and markets responded to this new type of consumer, and invented products that people could buy to express their individuality. This was the beginning of lifestyle marketing, and the way in which we learnt to express ourselves through manufactured objects.
The hippie 'lifestyle' became just another product you could buy, just like the punk 'lifestyle' would years later.
I think it would be extremely difficult for any subculture today to avoid this, unless it remains extremely small (and therefore leads to no change, anyway). Marketing is constantly on the look out for the next big thing, and whenever it comes along, they are never far behind.
I'd like to see something new, something not trying to repeat a nostalgic version of the past, that places individual expression alongside collective action and I'd love for LSD to be involved in some way or another. But I don't think any of that is very likely under current conditions.
TLDR
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So I read this question and decided to go on a small rant based on various documentaries i've watched and books I've read recently. I haven't read all of the posts, just putting in my 2 cents.
The hippie 'movement' attempted to break away and live outside of the structures of power, in a response to state repression, by focusing on the self.
Corporations and markets responded to this new type of consumer, and invented products that people could buy to express their individuality. This was the beginning of lifestyle marketing, and the way in which we learnt to express ourselves through manufactured objects.
The hippie 'lifestyle' became just another product you could buy, just like the punk 'lifestyle' would years later.
I think it would be extremely difficult for any subculture today to avoid this, unless it remains extremely small (and therefore leads to no change, anyway). Marketing is constantly on the look out for the next big thing, and whenever it comes along, they are never far behind.
I'd like to see something new, something not trying to repeat a nostalgic version of the past, that places individual expression alongside collective action and I'd love for LSD to be involved in some way or another. But I don't think any of that is very likely under current conditions.
TLDR
The question is intended to mean the pure movement, not the posers and what became of it, but the essence of what it was. I think you defined it quite well. As far as nostalgia for the past, I personally believe that nothing is new, just recycled in a different way. I don't believe there is anything wrong with that, I see it as natural and the way things just are.
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Yeah I think that's fair enough! But wouldn't you say the hippie movement itself was kind of new at the time, or if not, what do you think it was recycling?
My thoughts here are what was new about the hippie movement was placing your 'self' at the centre, and self expression as one of the highest ideals. In that sense, that was the pure movement. And the pure movement, or what made it new at least, has been absorbed by business. Self expression is one of the highest ideals in mainstream culture now, it's just that we do it through products, be they clothes, fashion styles, furniture, cars, alternative medicine etc. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but I think it's failed as a vehicle for genuine social change. But hey, maybe that's not everyone's intention anyway I guess, although I think it was with the initial movement.
And don't get me wrong about nostalgia. I have a totally romanticized version of the 60s and that culture in my head, I just think any movement that ends up effect social change now will be quite different to the hippie one. And I don't think the hippie movement totally failed. There's been massive changes in attitude of the populations of western populations to racism, sexism, homophobia, war etc. since the 60s which is amazing. It just didn't really effect the structures of power.
You should just watch the Century of the Self on youtube, that's where a good chunk of my argument is stolen from!
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Yeah I think that's fair enough! But wouldn't you say the hippie movement itself was kind of new at the time, or if not, what do you think it was recycling?
My thoughts here are what was new about the hippie movement was placing your 'self' at the centre, and self expression as one of the highest ideals. In that sense, that was the pure movement. And the pure movement, or what made it new at least, has been absorbed by business. Self expression is one of the highest ideals in mainstream culture now, it's just that we do it through products, be they clothes, fashion styles, furniture, cars, alternative medicine etc. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but I think it's failed as a vehicle for genuine social change. But hey, maybe that's not everyone's intention anyway I guess, although I think it was with the initial movement.
And don't get me wrong about nostalgia. I have a totally romanticized version of the 60s and that culture in my head, I just think any movement that ends up effect social change now will be quite different to the hippie one. And I don't think the hippie movement totally failed. There's been massive changes in attitude of the populations of western populations to racism, sexism, homophobia, war etc. since the 60s which is amazing. It just didn't really effect the structures of power.
You should just watch the Century of the Self on youtube, that's where a good chunk of my argument is stolen from!
I think the hippie movement was new in the sense that America and the world got their first chance to see it in the so called "civilized" world. This is due to many circumstances already detailed in this thread. I think it is recycled because putting oneself at the center and embracing the spiritual world is nothing new, neither is using psychedelics to get to that world. I would say the hippie movement was profound and the ideals were as well because as a civilization we were becoming lost in this material world and caught up in fighting wars and fighting ourselves. I would also say because of all the tension and fighting in the world at the time, the movement was an organic one. People saw the mess the world was in and wanted some sort of answer or escape, and they found it. To find something means that it was already in existence in the first place. I agree with you that self expression has grown and I would credit the 60's for much of this. I would like to see it continue to grow and not become stagnant.
I am a nostalgia junkie so don't worry. I consider myself a student of history and I see connections everywhere. This is why I believe nothing is really new, just expressed in new ways.
I will absolutely watch it, and will recommend to you DMT: The Spirit Molecule, if you have not already seen it.
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Thanks for the recommendation. I've heard mixed reviews and have been meaning to watch it, almost as much as I've been meaning to try DMT.
I don't really disagree with anything you've said there! Although I do actually think the focus on the self as expressed through consumerism is massively problematic, but I don't at all 'blame' hippie culture for that. Anyway, nice chattin to ya man. Hope you enjoy the documentary!
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I feel the same about consumerism as you do! You enjoy DMT as well, the doc and the drug. I'm also in the same boat as you on the DMT, can't wait to try, and the documentary is to blame. Looking for a good vendor, let me know if you find one before I do and I will return the favor. Peace