decline of 60s style hippie spirit on forums

It's something that seems to be happening on hippie-related forums as the years go by. What starts out like a 60s spirit on various hippie forums has a way of degrading over the years into something else. Not sure how to describe it. The atmosphere on some forums in its early years seems to embrace 60s style hippie values of love and peace but later degrades into the atmosphere of a weapons-ridden, warlord-run, armpit village in Somalia where people are having fights over things like guns and power. Part of the response to such an observation is the usual "if you don't like it here" thing, which offers no opportunity for discourse and tends to make things worse.

Not to sound negative or anything, but perhaps it's due to people of the 60s generation dying off and no one carrying on the spirit.

 

Meh.

The 60s sucked anyway, other than for the drugs and some of the music.

 

Or people are living in the now.

 

I only hope I haven't and never will contributed to any decline in '60s spirit, because even at forty-five, I can see a need for a re-emergence, or a reformation, or a rebirth, or some way of rekindling of some kind of a sense of joy. I was a little child living on an army post during the hippie era, so I didn't really get to see it first-hand except maybe through my transistor radio at night (always been a music junkie). The sense I get from knowing a few hippies and hippie-oids and ex-hippies, plus the many concerts, documentaries, seeing the Woodstock site, etc., is that there really was this sense that maybe it was OK just to live life. I think we need that. A lot.

Anyway, I'm going to try not to ramble out a wall of text.

 

That's something I've noticed too, myself included. I feel like I've lost a lot of the idealism I had when I first came around here. But I think the whole world has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. Things now are more about instability and uncertainty being blasted at us from all angles.

I'm still fairly young but between economic and political concerns, tax hikes, having to make more $ to essentially plateau and being out of balance in the work/fun spectrum, it is hard to hang onto that. Maybe I just need to smoke more ganj.

 

I live at the beach and it's probably because of that but a ton of my friends live that way still. They go to music festivals constantly and trip for days, they don't really worry about anything. They stay positive. Most of them work in restaurants so they have flexibility and also can make decent money without putting in long hours.

I think the corporatist shift, overbearing gov't, and even social media are the largest factors that contribute to this decline. Oddly enough, most of the people I mentioned intentionally avoid all 3 of those.

 

I wasn't around in the 60s but I'm pretty sure things like, hate, violence, anger, and other things were around back then. The 60s weren't all about love and peace. But maybe we should ask somebody that was there.

 

That's a good point.

 

I'm not a hippie and I never pretended to be one, nor do I wish to be one.

 

I've noticed that too. then again, when I first started coming here my biggest dream was to live on a commune with all my friends. Actually, that is still my biggest dream but I realize its never going to happen now. I guess people just get jaded, and the jaded people turn into the forum regulars and the regulars shoot down the ideals of any new, young, aspiring hippies who pop in here. I've actually seen that happen quite a lot.

Plus, who has time to live in a state of constant 60s nostalgia anymore? We really are living through a crazy time period.

I think this forum does still attract free-thinking, chill individuals for the most part, which is basically my loose definition of "hippie" anyways.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs6aaaJBAv0"]Niel Young Ohio Lyrics - YouTube
Ok.

 

The hippy movement started as activist, not love and peace nor drug culture. That came after. Flower children were an off shoot of the movement.

The forums go through changes as the people who started the movement also changed. There became other ways to express and to facilitate change. Ironically most often by using the system to their advantage and causing change in policy.

Most on the site are not and do not identify themselves as hippies. It is a cool place to hang and share ideas for the most part.

 

This is kind of how I feel as well.

 

My Mom was a hippie chick and she has said that if you turned a hippie guy down for sex he was pretty much like "I demand you have sex with me or you are just an uptight prude" And lots of those seemingly peaceful longhairs were really demanding with sexual favors... kind of like guys are now. So not much changes in that respect.

 

People generally think the past was better. People in their 30's now are saying how the 90's were so much better. Kids now will say in 30 years how the 2010's were so much better.

 

I think people had more respect for each other in the past. My family's from East LA and my dad said in 60s we didn't have to worry or even think about locking the door to the house. More recently that same house got robbed twice while my dad and I were staying there preparing it for renters. As a kid I can't even count how drive by shootings I witnessed and heard over the years in that same neighborhood.

But there was also a lot of racisms and racial tensions in those days too. In fact some of the communities around LA had 10pm curfews for anybody that was not white, and if you were not white and out after 10pm is was probable cause for the cops to fuck with you.

 

This is exactly how I feel too. But maybe it's because I'm not a teenager anymore. Sometimes I feel old and cynical and get a little sad but more often than not I don't care. My priorities have changed, I don't want to save the world anymore so to speak, instead I focus on enjoying my life and making sure my little family is happy.