Were The Hippies Right?

[boont]

The following excerpts are from Mark Morford’s column in the S.F.Chronicle.

Go ahead, name your movement. Name something good and positive and pro-environment and eco-friendly that’s happening in the newly “greening” of America…. I’m talking about, say, energy-efficient light bulbs. I’m looking at organic foods going mainstream. I mean chemical-free cleaning products widely available at Target and I’m talking saving the whales and protecting the dolphins. I mean yoga studios flourishing in every small town, giant boxes of organic cereal at Costco and the Toyota Prius becoming the nation’s oddest status symbol. You know, good things.

There is but one conclusion you can draw from the astonishing pro-environment sea change happening in the culture and (reluctantly, nervously) in the halls of power in D.C., one thing we must all acknowledge in our wary, jaded, globally warmed universe: The hippies had it right all along.

All this hot enthusiasm for healing the planet and eating whole foods and avoiding chemicals and working with nature and developing the self? Came from the hippies. Alternative health? Hippies. Green cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMA seeds? … It’s about time the media, the politicians, the culture as a whole sent out a big, hemp-covered apology.

I couldn't agree more.

boont

 

[dex]

I'm not sure I would attribute it all to the hippies.
I think to get a true understanding of the hippy movement you need to look at the philosophical underpinnings and roots. All these ideas did not begin with the hippies.

Take a look at Buddhism; Taoism; and Hinduism. Herman Hess was an important writer for the meeting of eastern and western philosophy.

 

[boont]

Well, the Hippies are a little closer to us than Buddhism; Taoism; Hinduism and Herman Hess. I don't think anyone can deny that the Hippies were for all the things mentioned in the article, they were scorned, and then we accepted it.

Of course, they got their ideas from the sources you state. But they lived it. That says something for them that is hard for many to admit.

boont

 

[FinallyRetired]

How about free sex love? I don't know if they were right but before I could find out it became really expensive.

 

[loosechickens]

Amen.....I am continually amazed that things that are finally becoming "mainstream", I was reading about in Coevolution Quarterly, the Whole Earth Catalog and the old Mother Earth News twenty and thirty years ago.

I look back now at the whole counterculture movement, and see huge numbers of changes that had their genesis there. Some things, of course, that have died aborning,........but many, many that were really the products of minds that were capable of thinking independently, not just going along with convention.

I think we owe ourselves a vote of thanks.....along with the tie-dye and beads and sh*t, we added a huge amount of really, really good ideas and outlooks to the world.

Yeah....I agree. LooseChickens

 

[donheff]

Yeah. I guess I would have to say I was right. :

 

[anes]

Funny how things never really change.

In 1974 I graduated high school and the headlines were? Rising Inflation, unpopular war, America in decline, New Ice Age at hand, Healthcare to expensive, Oil Embargo, Middle East ready to cause Armageddon, ……… you get the idea.

Yawn, I already know the future.

 

[Tiger]

 

[unclemick]

Boone's Farm gave me the runs.

heh heh :

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

i was too young to be a hippie but i remember recycling glass (& separating the clear from the colored glass) when i was a young teen. in college i joined bucky fuller's world symposium on peace. i even chose to be gay (lolololol) so i wouldn't add to overpopulation growth and to participate in free love. i've done my part; where's my rebate?

 

[unclemick]

Wait just a minute - you mean it's NOT all Clinton's fault?

The hippies gave us Clinton not the other way round? Or maybe, just maybe Al Gore invented something else besides the internet.

I'm confused - and I was there!

heh heh heh - listening to da Beach Boys. 8)

 

[Mwsinron]

How many of those people in the pictures died of drug overdose. Ya hippies had it right all along...

 

[free4now]

What fascinates me is that a lot of these changes towards "hippy values" are being driven by globalization, offshoring, and big box stores. I can buy a carton of organic soymilk at Costco for about half what an independent health food store would charge, and I do. I can buy organic produce at Trader Joes for near the cost of the non-organics, and I do, even though it's overpackaged in lots of wasteful plastic that I despise.

It seems to me that today's reducing margins, production in China, and internet buying are causing a change in how products are designed and marketed. It used to be that selling was about trying to shove something down the consumer's throat whether they wanted it or not, by limiting the consumer's ability to discover what they really wanted. Today these big multinational corporations are competing to find out exactly what the consumer wants, and to be the one that is most attuned to stocking the products that will be in demand. They do this by extensive market research, spending lots of money on design to get the product just right, and then mass produce it in China. This is why Target and even Walmart now stock yoga mats at great prices.

 

[Cut-Throat]

How many of those people in the pictures died of drug overdose. Ya hippies had it right all along...

Well, Mr. right wing - If you want to be 'right all along' - you should turn in your car keys - you might die! - Car crashes kill twice as many folks than drug overdoses. FYI - Most hippies were not doing drugs that they overdosed on - contrary to your news sources of rush limbaugh. I know you are 'morally' opposed and have a right to your opinion. Not to your own facts, however!

Also I'm guessing that you probably side with the tobacco companies on 'your right to smoke' in public places.

Cigarette smoking is the single most preventable cause of premature death in the United States. Each year, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking. In fact, one in every five deaths in the United States is smoking related. Every year, smoking kills more than 276,000 men and 142,000 women.1

The number of accidental drug overdose deaths rose from 11,155 in 1999 to 19,838 in 2004, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The report was based on death certificates, which do not clearly detail which drugs played the greatest role. But CDC researchers said they believe sedatives and prescription painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin were the chief cause of the increase.

OxyContin has been blamed for hundreds of deaths across the country in recent years.

Deaths from falls climbed between 1999 and 2004 at a more modest rate, from 13,162 to 18,807, the CDC said. Motor vehicle crashes accounted for 40,965 fatalities in 1999 and 43,432 in 2004.

 

[Mwsinron]

Well, Mr. right wing - If you want to be 'right all along' - you should turn in your car keys - you might die! - Car crashes kill twice as many folks than drug overdoses. FYI - Most hippies were not doing drugs that they overdosed on - contrary to your news sources of rush limbaugh. I know you are 'morally' opposed and have a right to your opinion. Not to your own facts, however!

Whats your problem? You like to make everything a political issue don't you

 

[HFWR]

What's there to live for?
Who needs the peace corps?

Think I'll just DROP OUT
I'll go to Frisco
Buy a wig & sleep
On Owsley's floor

Walked past the wig store
Danced at the Fillmore
I'm completely stoned
I'm hippy & I'm trippy
I'm a gypsy on my own
I'll stay a week & get the crabs &
Take a bus back home
I'm really just a phony
But forgive me
'Cause I'm stoned

Every town must have a place
Where phony hippies meet
Psychedelic dungeons
Popping up every street
GO TO SAN FRANCISCO

How I love ya, How I love ya
How I love ya, How I love ya Frisco!
How I love ya, How I love ya
How I love ya, How I love ya
Oh, my hair is getting good in the back! Every town must have a place
Where phony hippies meet
Psychedelic dungeons
Popping up on every street
GO TO SAN FRANCISCO...

Hotcha!

First I'll buy some beads
And then perhaps a leather band
To go around my head
Some feathers and bells
And a book of Indian lure
I will ask the Chamber Of Commerce
How to get to Height Street
And smoke an awful lot of dope

I will wander around barefoot
I will have a psychedelic gleam in my eye at all times
I will love everyone
I will love the police as they kick the **** out of me on the street
I will sleep...
I will, I will go to a house
That's, that's what I will do
I will go to a house
Where there's a rock roll band
'Cause the groups all live together
And I will join a rock & roll band
I will be their road manager
And I will stay there with them
And I will get the crabs
But I won't care

"Who Needs thte Peace Corp"
We're Only In It For The Money - The Mothers of Invention

 

[Gone4Good]

Umm, if the hippies were right all along, how come they dropped back in, got jobs, became good little corporate climbers, raised suburban families, and generally became part of the main-stream politic which is significantly more right-wing then what they rebelled against 30 years ago?

 

[dex]

Well, the Hippies are a little closer to us than Buddhism; Taoism; Hinduism and Herman Hess.
****Why? They were physically closer but I don't get what you are saying.

Of course, they got their ideas from the sources you state. But they lived it. That says something for them that is hard for many to admit.
**** Buddhism; Taoism; Hinduism - lived it and are still living it. Why do you say they are not?
boont

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

Umm, if the hippies were right all along, how come they dropped back in, got jobs, became good little corporate climbers, raised suburban families, and generally became part of the main-stream politic which is significantly more right-wing then what they rebelled against 30 years ago?

because when they turned 30 they could no longer trust themselves.

 

[donheff]

Umm, if the hippies were right all along, how come they dropped back in, got jobs, became good little corporate climbers, raised suburban families, and generally became part of the main-stream politic which is significantly more right-wing then what they rebelled against 30 years ago?

Because we were right all along.

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

The avant garde (today's hippies) in Bellingham are now doing without toilet paper.

I hope this is not the wave of the future, too.

 

[unclemick]

The avant garde (today's hippies) in Bellingham are now doing without toilet paper.

I hope this is not the wave of the future, too.

I hope they are not drinking Boone's Farm.

heh heh heh - the Beach Boys broke up and the Rolling Stones are still going strong - I'm still pissed and can't handle Boone's Farm now either. :

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Unc, bein' as how you are an old Husky, do you remember Old Smiley applejack? :

 

[pedorrero]

A lot of "hippie" ideas went mainstream because (gasp!) many of the Hippies aged and went mainstream.

As for drugs as cause of death: you forgot to mention alcohol, edged out only very slightly by tobacco as the #1 leading "preventable" cause of death. My father was a nice, conservative right wing smoker and drinker most of his life. He died of cancer at 67. His pararents both lived into their 90s, and his brother and sister are still alive and well on the way to 90 or better (AND they're probably more liberal !!!)

Oh, let's not forget gun deaths. On the "positive" (?) side, I recently learned that jsut over 1/2 of gun deaths are suicides. I have no problem with people offing themselves, just when some of them take innocents with them (e.g. VA Tech recently). Messy, but effective. Don't get me wrong, I don't oppose a person's right to use booze or even (presently) illegal drugs, or own weapons. Just that people should be aware of the costs to society.

 

[boont]

"Why do you say they are not?"

There is a difference between being inspired by something and getting off your butt and doing something. Washington, Jefferson, and Tom Paine were inspired by John Locke, but John Locke did not win the American Revolution.

As Abbie Hoffman said at Vanderbilt University in 1989, "...in the nineteen-sixties, apartheid was driven out of America. Legal segregation- Jim Crow- ended. We didn't end racism, but we ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you can send a million soldiers ten thousand miles away to fight in a war that people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens. Now, it doesn't matter who sits in the Oval Office. But the big battles that were won in that period of civil war and strife you cannot reverse. We were young, we were reckless, arrogant, silly, headstrong and we were right. I regret nothing."

We are in Iraq, but not with 500,000 men like Vietnam. Bush doesn't dare go to a draft. The country wouldn't stand for it and are already forcing an exit to Iraq. I credit most of that to our generation. We won.

boont