Reply
Sat 27 May, 2006 10:05 pm
Thanks!
Hippies wore flowers in their hair.
I'd like know more about the culture.
besides,thanks for your reply.
Intrepid wrote:Hippies wore flowers in their hair.
It wasn't an option for some Hippies (sans hair)
Here is some info, Anastasia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie
During the early 20th century, especially in the wake of the Great War, Existentialism became very popular amongst intellectuals. Science and Art were seen as alternatives to the traditional Weltanschauung underpinning Western Civilization. F. Scott Fitzegerald's books focused on a "Lost Generation", and Jazz Babies. Young people of substantial families adopted their own lifestyles that often flew in the face of their parent's values. Instead of going into the Family Business, Expatriates flooded the Coffee Houses on the Left Bank, and on the Spanish Steps. Those Expats came into contact with both the avant-garde, and the Bohemian life-style of European intellectuals. "Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse" was almost a motto for a generation escaping the horrors of the First World War, and the materialism prior to Stock Market Crash.
As absurd as the world seemed to the Lost Generation in 1928, it became almost madness thereafter. The Great Depression wrecked the economies of the great nations, and set the stage for a mortal conflict between authoritative dictatorships, like the Fascists in Italy and the Nazi's in Germany, and the Communist Party sponsored by the Soviet Union. Both promised to fix all the ills of the world. They would feed the hungry and right the wrongs that led to mass unemployment, and social injustice. "They made the trains run on time." They provided an answer to the question of why the world was in such lousy shape. The Communists blamed it all on Imperialistic Warmongering Capitalists, mostly led by the Jews. Hitler cut to end of the chase and just blamed the Jews for everything. Intellectuals went off to fight the Fascists in Spain with the Communists.
During World War II there wasn't much time for philosophizing, or for young people to question and/or challenge the status quo. They were too busy being part of a disciplined military, or working in war related industries. Challenges to the system were regarded as unpatriotic, even traitorous. There was a war that had to be won if free representative government was to survive. Once the war was concluded, there was a long sigh of relief.
During the War consumer goods were in limited supply, and the relatively high wages mostly ended up in savings accounts and U.S. Treasury Bonds. People entered the new peace tired of sacrifice and hardship. The social order had changed, and the old class and sex barriers were no longer so rigid. Some young men addicted to risk and speed, formed the Hell's Angels and roamed the countryside. Most, however, used the G.I. Bill and went to college. There they became skilled in the professions that made the economic, productivity, and innovation revolutions possible. Some of those war-weary college students rediscovered Existentialism. They discovered coffee houses where Jazz and poetry were as important, or more important, than a regular paycheck. Rather than become the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, they made a virtue of poverty. They moved to a different beat from the rest of post-war society. They called themselves "Beat", and society called them Beatniks (an allusion to Sputnik, the first satellite to circle earth in space).
All right, are you following this so far?
The Beat Generation was mostly made up of young people who had been old enough to serve during WWII. They were righteously weary of war and tended to be cynical about life in general. If life were to have meaning, it would be found in the creation of art and resistance to bourgeois values. The development of individual potential should not be hampered by artificial strictures. They often held left-wing political views, but were by and large apolitical. Beats tended to hangout in Jazz Clubs and all night coffee houses where intellectual discussions were the primary sport. You could play chess at 2 a.m. with a better than average player who carried around a steel plate in his head from the Battle of the Bulge. It wasn't too uncommon for a bunch of intoxicated Beats to set off to see America in a pre-war automobile with bald tires. You might want to read "On the Road", "The Subterraneans", and "Dharma Bums". The anthem of the Beats was Ginsberg's "Howl", and this is a must read if you want to understand what was happening from around 1958 through 1965.
The Beatniks weren't socially acceptable, and that alone might have made them attractive to a younger generation too young to serve in WWII. In the late 1950's America was paradise for the Greatest Generation, but deadly dull for their children. The voters might have liked Ike, but his low-keyed style was under-whelming for high school students who wanted to set the world afire. The injustices of Jim Crow were demonstrated on national television, itself a new innovation. During the War telegrams were still the primary means of rapid communication, and party-line telephones tied together a country that was dynamically shifting from small rural communities to urban concentrations. Most people traveled on trains and buses, and only the wealthy flew. Radio still reached far more people than television, and the Hit Parade featured "How Much is that Doggy in the Window" and Doris Day. When Rock and Roll arrived on the guitar strings of Bill Haley and the Comets, or in the piano smashing lyrics of The Killer, our parents went wild. Elvis held up as a national disgrace for his lewd movements on stage. For many the alternative to suburban life was the Beats.
The younger set began to hang out around the coffee houses, and Jazz Clubs. The Jazz musicians of the day had their own language, and Jazz terms were frequently found in Beat poetry. In that patois, the word "Hip" meant to understand, to know. "I'm hip", was a declaration that a person was aware and alive. The phrase became so common that the younger Beats began to refer to themselves as Hip, and society labeled the whole movement Hippies. In the early Sixties, there wasn't much difference between the older Beats and the younger Hippies. Both rejected middle-class values, and denied society the absolute right to dictate a person's life style. Both revered the individual who could break free of constraints and fulfill their potential. Talent, wit, and strong intellectual foundations were common. As time when on, the Hippies tended to abandon the darker and more cynical views of the Beats. They became much more life affirming and the idealism of youth could not be denied.
There was a trend toward a modern version of Rousseau. "Natural is always good; artificial is always bad." Flowers were in our hair and in our designs that in retrospect owed much to the Art Nuevo Movement at the beginning of the century. The Commune became the building block of Hippy life, but permissiveness ruled. Hippies, for all of our worship of the individual, were still herd animals. We swapped American Culture, for a tribal culture of our own. Everyone wanted to be creative, but many had zero talent. Jazz fused with rock and roll at Woodstock, and thereafter discordant highly amplified sound replaced harmony and song. Still the Hippy Movement became a national phenomenon. We were featured in Life Magazine (weekly magazines were still a profitable enterprise then), and became characters in popular films. Large Hippy communities existed in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Denver, but there were Hippy Communes even in small towns. In San Francisco, there were tour buses for the Square World to come and gawk at our colorful clothing and our seemingly free life style. Life wasn't all that easy, we still had to find the money for rent, groceries, and other necessities. Our philosophy demeaned wage labor and welfare. Many tried to be craftsmen and entrepreneurs, other's begged or became hangers-on to those who did have some income.
Drugs had always been available. The Beats and Jazz people always had a joint available, and some of them were hard-core addicts. Bill Burroughs ("Junky" and "Naked Lunch") was an advocate of the chemical high and sent periodic reports of mind-altering substances in Meso-America that capture a large audience. Leary and Alpert made LSD popular among those who wanted to unlock "The Doors of Perception". During the early years it was common to find a communal stash of marijuana, hashish, LSD, DMT, Morning Glory seeds, and a whole bunch of other substances reputedly effective in opening one's eyes and mind. Heroin, cocaine, and speed were generally forbidden in Hippy communes, but they began to show up increasingly as time went on.
By the mid-sixties the whole movement was beginning to deteriorate. Run away children as young as 13 began showing up on the street. Instead of finding the "Age of Aquarius", the kids were put to work by pimps who got them hooked on drugs. Thieves were everywhere, and one never knew if a person was truly crazy or just having a bad trip. Strange people were discovered living in our closets. People you had never met before came into the communal kitchen and took what they wanted while demanding that the commune be changed to their liking. Some communes relocated far away from the urban areas, and may even still be quietly operating today. Most degenerated as the original communards left for less stressful lives.
What was less stressful? Well, many went back home and made peace with their families. Some went "underground" while working routine jobs. Most eventually got married and had children of their own. Rebellion became quiet for most, though their dedication to some of their youthful ideals remained important long after they left the Hippy life. Some of the Hippies later became rich and famous, but most became the parents today's children rebel against. Anti-establishment attitudes may be somewhat more common today as a result of the brief flowering of Hippy America, but mostly Flower Power is just a footnote in our cultural history.
The Hippies, disapointed once too often, became today's cynics. AIDS took care of the free love (which was always just about rutting) and the right continues to keep drugs illegal so they can pander to their voter base and so the CIA can continue to finance a lot of their activities with drug deals while giving harsher sentences for the possesion of LSD than for murder or rape.
Hippies were a nice thought that didn't work out.
A lot great music came out of it though and as David Crosby said "Between Woodstock and AIDS we did it. A lot."
The "beat generation" was a result of the Korean War, yet a very conservative/patriotic movement which questioned such social phenoma as Levittown conformity. The Hippie movement was contrary to the beat movement with a basic premise of question authority, all authority. This led into the "me" generation of self-fullfilment/gratification. All of which where fads of the times and driven by the then current economics.
Even the hippies were divided in their approach.
There was the Tim Leary approach, and the Ken Kesey approach.
Myself, I was always of the Merry Prankster variety.
even today, even in this forum... you're either on the bus or off the bus.
It is said that "If you can remember the '60s, you weren't there."
If there's any truth to that, and given that I was in my 20s for mosta then, I guess I musta been there
Now, I don't necessarily advocate sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll, but whuthtuheck - its always worked for me :wink:
Great take, Asherman - a very well done essay.
For those interested, you can still - sorta, anyhow - take a trip on
The Bus.
Could you tell me something about HIPPIES?
My Lord, Asherman! That's quite an essay!
What an excellent essay by Asherman!
I just love people who take the time to answer a question on the threads properly instead of throwing off a silly one-liner
I must admit I was too young to be a Hippy and that I didn't really "get"
Howl when I read it.
The nearest I came to understanding it was when I read a remark that it would have been one of the finest American poems of the 20th Century were it not for the fact that its premise [stated in the opening line : "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness"] was false.
However there is an excellent biography of Ginsberg by Barry Miles [the so-called "English Beat"] that may help those of us who have trouble with AGs poetry. This is very readable. Infact I couldn't put it down!
We knew Allan and his friend Orlovski reasonably well back in those days. Actually, I kind of liked Orlovski better as a person ... he was certainly easier to take in large doses. Years later, my wife Natalie took our infant son to one of Allan's poetry readings. It started out alright, but something about the reading upset the kid. He began to howl. At first, Allan continued over the baby's crying, but then stopped and in very emphatic language ordered Natalie out of the room. That was Allan to a "T".
Above Dyslexia, another old Hippy, asserted the Korean Conflict was the source of the Beat movement. That's largely true, though many of the leading Beats of the time were WWII veterans. The Beat Generation didn't just start on a particular day and dissolve into mist on another. WWII veterans were joined by Korean era youth and a decade later by even younger folks who eventually came to be called Hippies. The fundamental philosophical underpinning of the movement didn't change really all that much. The greatest change I saw was from a cynical, almost nihilist, view of the world during the late Beat period to a more life-affirming and optimistic view held by many of the people I knew later. The Beats rejected conventional social values, and hovered on the brink of existential despair. The Hip replaced traditional social values with idealistic optimism that we/they could revolutionize the world. Down with strictures and discipline; up with permissiveness and spontaneity. Of the two, the Beats tended to be better educated and far more intellectual.
I'm a bit sorry not to have talked a bit more about the economic, political and military circumstances at the time. The Hippy Movement didn't happen in isolation from those important trend setters. America was still living off of WWII savings and almost everyone had fine paying (for the time) jobs. People could get good, secure employment in heavy industry, and America still led the world in producing things like steel, automobiles, etc. Americans were more confident in themselves and their government than people are today. We had just a decade earlier won the most horrific war in human history. Europe and Japan were being rebuilt with American assistance and money.
The fly in the ointment was that the War never really ended, it just continued under a different name, "Cold War". Stalin's Russia had imposed a brutal dictatorship over a large part of Europe, and he had the BOMB. Mao had kicked the KMT out of China in 1948. A large part of the world was enslaved by the Worker's Paradise, and nuclear war seemed to many inevitable.
The conflict between Labor and Capital went back to the 19th century and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Marx and Dickens looked at a world dominated by class-conscious aristocrats and labor enslaved poverty, and class warfare seemed likely. In the United States the Labor Movement got its start during the Gilded Age, a time when Railroad and Robber Barons monopolized the economy. The U.S. Constitution and our traditional suspicion of government interference into private affairs and business, left Capital pretty much unchecked. In the early 20th century coal miners, lumberjacks, and stevedores all tried to force employers to provide safer conditions, pay higher wages and shorten the work week to something like 55 hours per week. Strikes were tried, but the owners employed Pinkerton strikebreakers who used violence, even murder, to break the early Unions. During WWI, the Wilson Administration nationalized the railroads, mines and lumber industries, and soldiers replaced strikers. The Communist Party, along with the Wobblies, Socialists, Anarchists, etc. resisted both the business owners and the government. The Communists were suppressed by the Palmer Raids, but after the fall of the Czar became even more popular among urban masses and intellectuals.
The Nazis and Communists were mortal enemies in the rubble of WWI, but the secret Hitler-Stalin Pact agreeing to divide up Poland set the stage for WWII. Hitler attacked Stalin before Stalin could attack Hitler, and for a time the German military was welcomed wherever it appeared in Russia. Then they started wholesale murder and enslavement, so Stalin survived. Stalin survived also because the United States under that rascal FDR was making American military supplies available to anyone fighting the Axis Powers. It was an uneasy alliance between the U.S. and Britain, and the Soviet Union, France and a host of smaller governments in exile (today they would be called puppet governments). The Communists didn't pay much for American assistance, but they did mount one of history's largest espionage efforts inside the United States. They stole everything that wasn't nailed down, and then they took detailed notes and photos. Stalin was preparing in 1942 for a post-war world where he would dominate the world.
The Atomic Bomb changed things forever. At first, most had little understanding about what it was. Few understood that the bomb effects were more than just a super-big blast with a lot of heat. Virtually no one understood radiation, much less the EMP effects. What we all knew, was that a single bomb could totally destroy a large city. That the heat and light was so intense that it could capture the shadows of the people it killed. The bomb had been developed because no one could risk such a weapon being held by Hitler alone. Hitler's atomic program turned out to be not much more credible than Saddam's, and it was certainly less of the threat than a nuclear weapon in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists.
With both Russia and the U.S. possessing huge numbers of such a terrifying weapon, the world prepared for Armegeden, and the Red Scare in the United States reached right down into little villages on the edge of the Great Plains. The two super powers couldn't risk a direct confrontation that might escalate into a spasmic exchange of nukes, so they each sponsored clients along the political periphery. In Northeast Asia, the Soviet Union and its little brother China backed the DPRK, and Kim invaded the ROK ... murdering tens of thousands in the process. In Southeast Asia, the Communists sponsored Uncle Ho who had been a Communist since WWII. In South Asia, Russia contributed money and arms to India after the British departure. That threw Pakistan into the American camp. In Southwest Asia, Russia supported the Arabs and Palestinians whose support of the Axis left them humiliated by the birth of Israel. In Africa and South American, Communist agitators worked to undermine old dictatorships and newly independent colonies. Communists worked to bring Greece, Turkey and Italy into the Communist camp.
Korea and Vietnam were campaigns in the Cold War, and neither was popular with the American People. Wars that aren't wars confused us. Actions where the goal was never total victory, but only a temporary holding action, offended our sense of rightness. The draft that was instituted during WWII never went away, and that had never happened before. Usually, we dismantle our military at the conclusion of every conflict, but Korea demonstrated the folly of disarmament. Vietnam. The Abyss and the darkest time in modern American military history, was a new sort of war fought more on television and in American living-rooms than on the battlefield. The Army wasn't prepared for it, and our doctrine was terribly flawed. We were forced out of the conflict not by the enemy, but by our parents, our brothers and sisters who lost faith in a conflict that no one seemed to understand.
The Hippies weren't much more political than the Beats, but they/we did believe that LBJ's War was an abomination, a senseless slaughter of our troops. We witnessed Americans burning villages, "to save them". We were shown in graphic detail how modern warfare can maim, mangle and kill little children. "How is Vietnam a threat to the United States", we asked? We believed in love and thought that LBJ was a War Criminal. We didn't understand that Vietnam was the future of war, and that it was only a determined probe fought by a client of Moscow and Peking. The U.S. military was made up mostly of conscripts, who were just serving their time as prescribed by law. They were only in service for a couple of years, and had little taste for fighting in a country they knew nothing about. They never the less fought well and won almost every battle. The Tet Offensive may have been a psychological loss for Americans, but it was a military success at the same time. Back in the U.S., protests on college campuses were led by many who had ties to Socialist and/or Communist groups. The Weather Underground was expanding, and advocating violent action against the U.S. government, and anyone who supported our efforts in Vietnam. Bombs were exploded under police cars, and sabotage was committed against institutions working under U.S. Government contract.
My posts, though I don't post so often as some, tend to be long. The length is more determined by what I think I have to say than anything else. I want you, the reader, to clearly understand my meaning and be carried along be readable prose. With my posts, you get me and my opinions. Like them or hate them, they are mine.
They certainly are yours, Asher man, and that one carried me along very nicely, thankyou very much.
I read quite abit not so much about Stalin but certainly his effect on ordinary Russians when I chose the Russian module as an option in my Lit degree which included authors like Solzhenitsyn who got ten years in a labour camp when censors opened one of his letters home from the army and deemed something he had written as "Anti-Stalinist".
Solzhenitsyn later wrote "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" about his experience as a prisoner.Somehow they managed to get Cruzchev's seal of approval for its publication [bypassing the censors] and the lid began to be lifted on the realities of "Stalinism".
Not only was he paranoid about the ordinary public but he culled his ministers regularly, fearing that if any other man was in the public eye for too long they might become more popular than him.
He was paranoid about other world leaders...he created an atmoshere of despotic fear around himself but the remarkable thing is that it worked in at least as far as he stayed in power and nobody seriously challenged his inhumane leadership until the day he died.
Solzhenitsyn also went onto write some very long but immensely readable history books.
Well, history with abit of novelistic invention thrown in, for example in one passage he gives us the selfish thoughts of a lonely, ageing Stalin reflecting how sorry he was for himself because he couldn't really trust anybody. Then Stalin thinks "There was only one man I ever trusted: Hitler, yes Hitler!...but he betrayed me too"
Just thought I'd share that with you. I don't know if it has any basis in reality!
Asherman wrote:During the early 20th century, especially in the wake of the Great War, Existentialism became very popular amongst intellectuals. Science and Art were seen as alternatives to the traditional Weltanschauung underpinning Western Civilization. F. Scott Fitzegerald's books focused on a "Lost Generation", and Jazz Babies. Young people of substantial families adopted their own lifestyles that often flew in the face of their parent's values. Instead of going into the Family Business, Expatriates flooded the Coffee Houses on the Left Bank, and on the Spanish Steps. Those Expats came into contact with both the avant-garde, and the Bohemian life-style of European intellectuals. "Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse" was almost a motto for a generation escaping the horrors of the First World War, and the materialism prior to Stock Market Crash.
As absurd as the world seemed to the Lost Generation in 1928, it became almost madness thereafter. The Great Depression wrecked the economies of the great nations, and set the stage for a mortal conflict between authoritative dictatorships, like the Fascists in Italy and the Nazi's in Germany, and the Communist Party sponsored by the Soviet Union. Both promised to fix all the ills of the world. They would feed the hungry and right the wrongs that led to mass unemployment, and social injustice. "They made the trains run on time." They provided an answer to the question of why the world was in such lousy shape. The Communists blamed it all on Imperialistic Warmongering Capitalists, mostly led by the Jews. Hitler cut to end of the chase and just blamed the Jews for everything. Intellectuals went off to fight the Fascists in Spain with the Communists.
During World War II there wasn't much time for philosophizing, or for young people to question and/or challenge the status quo. They were too busy being part of a disciplined military, or working in war related industries. Challenges to the system were regarded as unpatriotic, even traitorous. There was a war that had to be won if free representative government was to survive. Once the war was concluded, there was a long sigh of relief.
During the War consumer goods were in limited supply, and the relatively high wages mostly ended up in savings accounts and U.S. Treasury Bonds. People entered the new peace tired of sacrifice and hardship. The social order had changed, and the old class and sex barriers were no longer so rigid. Some young men addicted to risk and speed, formed the Hell's Angels and roamed the countryside. Most, however, used the G.I. Bill and went to college. There they became skilled in the professions that made the economic, productivity, and innovation revolutions possible. Some of those war-weary college students rediscovered Existentialism. They discovered coffee houses where Jazz and poetry were as important, or more important, than a regular paycheck. Rather than become the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, they made a virtue of poverty. They moved to a different beat from the rest of post-war society. They called themselves "Beat", and society called them Beatniks (an allusion to Sputnik, the first satellite to circle earth in space).
All right, are you following this so far?
The Beat Generation was mostly made up of young people who had been old enough to serve during WWII. They were righteously weary of war and tended to be cynical about life in general. If life were to have meaning, it would be found in the creation of art and resistance to bourgeois values. The development of individual potential should not be hampered by artificial strictures. They often held left-wing political views, but were by and large apolitical. Beats tended to hangout in Jazz Clubs and all night coffee houses where intellectual discussions were the primary sport. You could play chess at 2 a.m. with a better than average player who carried around a steel plate in his head from the Battle of the Bulge. It wasn't too uncommon for a bunch of intoxicated Beats to set off to see America in a pre-war automobile with bald tires. You might want to read "On the Road", "The Subterraneans", and "Dharma Bums". The anthem of the Beats was Ginsberg's "Howl", and this is a must read if you want to understand what was happening from around 1958 through 1965.
The Beatniks weren't socially acceptable, and that alone might have made them attractive to a younger generation too young to serve in WWII. In the late 1950's America was paradise for the Greatest Generation, but deadly dull for their children. The voters might have liked Ike, but his low-keyed style was under-whelming for high school students who wanted to set the world afire. The injustices of Jim Crow were demonstrated on national television, itself a new innovation. During the War telegrams were still the primary means of rapid communication, and party-line telephones tied together a country that was dynamically shifting from small rural communities to urban concentrations. Most people traveled on trains and buses, and only the wealthy flew. Radio still reached far more people than television, and the Hit Parade featured "How Much is that Doggy in the Window" and Doris Day. When Rock and Roll arrived on the guitar strings of Bill Haley and the Comets, or in the piano smashing lyrics of The Killer, our parents went wild. Elvis held up as a national disgrace for his lewd movements on stage. For many the alternative to suburban life was the Beats.
The younger set began to hang out around the coffee houses, and Jazz Clubs. The Jazz musicians of the day had their own language, and Jazz terms were frequently found in Beat poetry. In that patois, the word "Hip" meant to understand, to know. "I'm hip", was a declaration that a person was aware and alive. The phrase became so common that the younger Beats began to refer to themselves as Hip, and society labeled the whole movement Hippies. In the early Sixties, there wasn't much difference between the older Beats and the younger Hippies. Both rejected middle-class values, and denied society the absolute right to dictate a person's life style. Both revered the individual who could break free of constraints and fulfill their potential. Talent, wit, and strong intellectual foundations were common. As time when on, the Hippies tended to abandon the darker and more cynical views of the Beats. They became much more life affirming and the idealism of youth could not be denied.
There was a trend toward a modern version of Rousseau. "Natural is always good; artificial is always bad." Flowers were in our hair and in our designs that in retrospect owed much to the Art Nuevo Movement at the beginning of the century. The Commune became the building block of Hippy life, but permissiveness ruled. Hippies, for all of our worship of the individual, were still herd animals. We swapped American Culture, for a tribal culture of our own. Everyone wanted to be creative, but many had zero talent. Jazz fused with rock and roll at Woodstock, and thereafter discordant highly amplified sound replaced harmony and song. Still the Hippy Movement became a national phenomenon. We were featured in Life Magazine (weekly magazines were still a profitable enterprise then), and became characters in popular films. Large Hippy communities existed in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Denver, but there were Hippy Communes even in small towns. In San Francisco, there were tour buses for the Square World to come and gawk at our colorful clothing and our seemingly free life style. Life wasn't all that easy, we still had to find the money for rent, groceries, and other necessities. Our philosophy demeaned wage labor and welfare. Many tried to be craftsmen and entrepreneurs, other's begged or became hangers-on to those who did have some income.
Drugs had always been available. The Beats and Jazz people always had a joint available, and some of them were hard-core addicts. Bill Burroughs ("Junky" and "Naked Lunch") was an advocate of the chemical high and sent periodic reports of mind-altering substances in Meso-America that capture a large audience. Leary and Alpert made LSD popular among those who wanted to unlock "The Doors of Perception". During the early years it was common to find a communal stash of marijuana, hashish, LSD, DMT, Morning Glory seeds, and a whole bunch of other substances reputedly effective in opening one's eyes and mind. Heroin, cocaine, and speed were generally forbidden in Hippy communes, but they began to show up increasingly as time went on.
By the mid-sixties the whole movement was beginning to deteriorate. Run away children as young as 13 began showing up on the street. Instead of finding the "Age of Aquarius", the kids were put to work by pimps who got them hooked on drugs. Thieves were everywhere, and one never knew if a person was truly crazy or just having a bad trip. Strange people were discovered living in our closets. People you had never met before came into the communal kitchen and took what they wanted while demanding that the commune be changed to their liking. Some communes relocated far away from the urban areas, and may even still be quietly operating today. Most degenerated as the original communards left for less stressful lives.
What was less stressful? Well, many went back home and made peace with their families. Some went "underground" while working routine jobs. Most eventually got married and had children of their own. Rebellion became quiet for most, though their dedication to some of their youthful ideals remained important long after they left the Hippy life. Some of the Hippies later became rich and famous, but most became the parents today's children rebel against. Anti-establishment attitudes may be somewhat more common today as a result of the brief flowering of Hippy America, but mostly Flower Power is just a footnote in our cultural history.
The word "succinct" never entered my mind.
All of you are so kind . Thanks very much ! I think I have a rough idea about HIPPIES now.
Hello Mr Asherman,
I was impressed by your detailed placing of beatniks and hippies against the background of their time. In another thread the US survivalist movement became a topic. I believe this to be a phenomenon that is found (almost?) exclusively in America and I wonder where it comes from.
Like hippies and beatniks survivalists do not have a high opinion of their government and (wish to) turn their back on modern society, but the similarities end there.
Do you have information about the roots and background of this section of society?
Anastasia4ever wrote:All of you are so kind . Thanks very much ! I think I have a rough idea about HIPPIES now.
Should we now move on to Yippies and Yuppies?
Paaskynen,
I'm less intimately familiar with the survivalist movement. Let me think about it. Just off hand, I suspect that the survivalists also are rooted in the Cold War mentality. In the wake of spasmic nuclear exchange between the United States and the old Soviet Union, most of the world's governments would have been shattered. Survivors of the nuclear war would effectively be on their own in a world without enforceable laws.
For many years, the world lived in expectation that someone would screw up and nuclear Armageddon would occur. Civil defense was a national priority. By moving people into subway tunnels, and basements with reinforced concrete it was hoped that many would survive a nuclear war. During the 50's and early 60's there was a boom in building personal bomb shelters. People stocked their shelters with canned foods, water, and other necessities. Urban bomb shelters tended to be small, and while they might have withstood the blast effects of an atomic bomb moderate distance way, they were woefully inadequate to insure continued survival of multiple strikes, or the greater force of hydrogen bombs.
Even then some folks recognized the futility of backyard bomb shelters. Some moved away from areas that would probably be targeted. The safest locations tended to be low-density rural areas. Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming were considered safer than Washington D.C., New York, Los Angles, or Omaha. Being prepared meant self-reliance, and the ability to live indendently of society at large.
The survivalists in those years expected nuclear disaster and the disappearance of government. That didn't happen, but the American People became much more cynical about their government. Some of those who protested the draft and Vietnam, hid out in the same locations that drew the survivalists. People disgusted by the "softness" and "decadence" of their neighbors could live "better" by leaving the cities for the countryside. Political movements like the Libertarian Party, and the Posse Comitatus, drew rural people who were fiercely independent and who distrusted the Federal government. Organizations like the UN were viewed with suspicion, and this segment of our society is especially prone to believing in conspiracy theories. Tom Jefferson is probably The Hero to survivalists.
For all their vaunted independence, these folks have a bad reputation for joining hate groups willing to use violence against authority. The numbers of survivalists probably isn't large, but they represent a small danger to society at large.
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