An open letter to young hippies

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Come watch some late nite TV in NYC,REV-:ack2:

 

that man will one day realize you are always right, JMT

 

dude, i very much respect you you know how it goes man you know it man everything happens for a reason and you posting that man i just showing that loads of kids are going to learn from that and know I'm going to live now and be hippy because what matters now is what counts for them and us eace:

 

I saw these" tips" on some website- for younger hip* minded folks- Take them as you wish, some serve as a decent guidline-
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Be open-minded and liberal

Listen to hip music

Be organic

Don't pollute

Wear colorful clothing

Stand up against against violence, weapons, racism, unfair laws and minority discrimination

If you wanna learn a martial art such as tai chi, remember you are doing it because of the eastern philosophy behind it, it is not to be exploited for harming others

Try to make peace in any arguments. Be the mediator for issues and see if you can help people by listening and giving advice.

Just because past generations of hippies have smoked marijuana doesn't mean you have to-

Just be yourself! Have any religion and believe in anything you wish. There's no ground rules or regulations on being a hippie that you must follow.

Living the life is mostly a feeling on the inside, many hippietype people cant be noticed just by looking at them these days-- the steps above are just is general guide on how hippies were in the past generations. You may stretch and experiment with your own style

 

I hate rep limitations...

 

Quite honestly, some of those are dead wrong.

The general intent is correct, though.

 

I missed the important parts of the sixties, being preoccupied with things like learning to walk and talk, and playing with baby dolls.

By the time I got to junior high and high school, those places were loaded with young teachers who had been in college in the sixties, so I was indirectly impacted through their experiences. Those teachers had grown up in the brain-dead, ultra-conformist fifties, in cookie cutter neighborhoods and schools, where everybody knew their place in society. The horrific events of the sixties and the youth reactions to them had shaken these future teachers to the core, forcing them to confront the fallacies of mindless conformity, and to reject it.

Their ultimate message to me was that I had to learn how to think for myself, and never accept at face value anything I was told by older generations or authority figures. They told me that courageous young people could and would make the world into a better place, one step at a time, if we were forever open to new ways of thinking and doing things.

To me, this is the pure gold of the sixties, and it never has to end. It isn't about music or fashion or anything else that is trendy. It's fine to enjoy a little nostalgia for a time period that interests you, but don't let that distract you too much from more important things.

The one thing that I would add to the message I was taught by those passionate young teachers is to take your intellectual skepticism to the next level. It's not enough to just question authority. Question everything. Some radicals are just as screwed up as the worst conservatives, so never follow or trust anyone or anything blindly and completely. Lies and half-truths multiply like weeds. Take everything you hear as one more item to be compared and weighed along with everything else, and never forget that the truth is always a moving target. The world changes every day. Don't be afraid to change your mind about something, if you have good reasons for doing so.

Last but not least, don't let toxic negativity drag you down to its level. If you find yourself doing that, stop. Rise above it; clear your mind. Allow yourself to be a better person. Have the courage to be different, not expecting it to be easy.

I think this is partly true. Some of the things we do matter, and some don't, but we rarely know which ones are going to make a real difference at the time we are doing them. Our predictions about such things are usually way off target. So just try to do the right thing, and the best thing, all the time. Let the future decide what was important, way back in 2012.

 

I live in a small town in Montana and our local TV station advertises for the local plastic surgeon.

This is a good thread. I've been a member of this forum for a long time and have probably made a lot of spazzy posts with the impetuousness of youth. I always giggled about the fact that there is a FORUM for hippies, when one would think that "true hippies" wouldn't even own a computer. As I get older I'm realizing that if you want to "be" a "hippie", you just need to focus on being good, doing good, sharing, caring, loving. Don't even try to label yourself. I was once told I own too many shoes to be a hippie. My ex always claimed he WASN'T a hippie, even though by society's standards he probably would have been labeled as such (he preferred to be called a hobo.) What's most important is to be a good human. The labels will follow, don't worry. People call you a hippie for doing anything that isn't "plastic fantastic Madison Avenue" these days.

 

Hey Karen,

I agreed with everything in your post, but this in particular. For someone who wasn't there in realtime you sure captured the essence of the time. Ppl are sometimes too hooked on labeling everything when there are degrees of everything that defies categorizing them all.

The impact we had as a movement was mostly by our numbers. The huge post war baby boom came of age and rebelled at the same time, if not for all the same reasons. But there were some in our parents' gen who gave us examples. The Beat gen and other Bohemian types were also rebelling from the constrained culture of conformity. We just added weight to it.

 

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was definitely a hippie!

 

Well he did live in the sixties.

 

So you posted this thread on MY thread... I mainly want the part of the 60s that's like this quote "
What I like most about the 60s is that when things got really, really fucked up the youth didnt allow the rich white men that fucked shit up to continue running the show. The youth culture actually reclaimed their country. My generation has the opportunity to do that right now, and we just turn on our ipods and tune it all out instead."
I'm not saying I want us to have to face racism or other really bad laws just so we can rebel. I think most of the laws today are bad enough as is and they should be changed, or removed. I still think there's room for a hippie era and lifestyle AGAIN, where a whole bunch of us youth do it again! I don't think it's just to party. It's for freedom. You probably sold out and don't get it anymore. I've turned on, am tunign in & dropping out bit by bit. I wish more were doing that. Because of course I see an ideal and if more people see what I see, I think the world would be a better place.

 

I've already qualified this little outburst in the other thread you posted it in so no reason to

:beatdeadhorse5:

C/S,
Rev J

 

You have a beautiful mind, dude c:

 

im not calling you a sell out, i was just saying you probably changed and dont feel the same way as you did in the 60s

 

Being as though I was born in 75 I wasn't even a smile and a wink during the 60's. I grew up second generation hippie. My dad runs a school for sustainable agriculture in Maine. I also always knew the right books to read, movies to watch etc. Growing up with people who lived the philosophy and having it ingrained in me that way prevents me from having the rose colored glasses nostalgia that others of at least my generation and younger have. I stand by the observations I mad in my first post.

And you did call me a sell out. Not that I'm particularly hurt by that. It's just a judgemental statement to make about someone you just met.

C/S,
Rev J

 

A judgemental and negative statement, designed to make you alter your behaviour (the behaviour of calling out that poster).

It does seem that among people born after the 60's, those who are from a background where they didn't actually grow up around people who think and behave in a properly growed up n' thoughtful fashion, are much more likely to gravitate towards exaggerated stereotypical obnoxious hippie epiphanies, and rant about turning on, tuning in, and dropping out... That crap makes me think, STFU, it's all about turning on so that you can broadcast and climb in..... For fucks sake, leary is one of the guys who caused LSD to be illegal, and seen as turning people crazy -- cause maybe he was a bit crazy, and his research didn't mean too much either, because he mostly wanted to show how awesome LSD is instead of actually find scientific data.

 

Wow that is such a good point, never even thought about that.

 

Speaking of Leary I love this speech from Fear and Loathing:

After West Point and the priesthood, LSD must have seemed downright logical. “We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.”

I had to cull the whole quote from 2 different sources.

C/S,
Rev J