decline of 60s style hippie spirit on forums

I once had a black friend who said he'd have like to have seen the sixties.
I gave him the 'are you freakn' kidding me look'
He thought about it and changed his mind.

 

I think it's common and normal to idolize "the good ole days", and while there was some terrible things like the racial oppression, the 60s really did seem like a magical time and change and mind expansion, and I think truly positive things came out of it and continue to do so.
I think HF still has a hippie vibe, though not as much as it used to. No matter, people are always waking up, ready to join the revolution.

 

The way people in the 60's thought helped to change the way people think now. While it might have been illegal to be gay in the 60's, they surely helped it getting accepted because of a more liberal attitude to many things. So while the 60's may not have been the 'greatest' time to be alive for many, it sure was an interesting time I can imagine.

It's kind of like the Enlightenment of the 17th century. And we are still in the middle (or even beginning) of that process. I bet in a few hundred year our age will be known as the "Second Enlightenment" and the 60's will be seen as the instigating time.

 

I perceive it kind of like that as well, bird! The 60's was not nearly the start of this progressive quest for equality, enlightenement etc. and it wasn't the end either. I guess it sometimes looks more like evolution than revolution after all but if we look at it in the perspective of all history we are going rather quick. Nothing to complain about our (humanity's not hippie's) steady way 'forward'

 

Not saying the 60's was the start, but I think it did help instigate it and gave it a huge kick in the ass. Can't exactly pinpoint a starting time, but I think the 60's were important to get our 'Second Enlightenment really rolling.

 

Isn't that what happened to most hippies, in general?

Maybe that's just a part of hippie-ism. Eventually, cynicism of the Man but attachment to the beauty of life and hope for the future, fades into just plain cynicism. The ego-driven optimism can't withstand the years of slow progress and hard losses.

 

Maybe that's life, not just hippie-ism.

 

That's when you know it's time to take a few days off and completely lose yourself in something different, in a different place.

There are so many different ways to hit the 'reset' button. Some people use drugs, alcohol, or sex. Some use meditation. Some use music, poetry, or literature. Some spend time in the wilderness, connecting only with nature. Some travel to a place where the culture is completely different, and nobody gives a shit about any of the things that seem so important back home. Whatever works for you, do it! If you don't know what works, try something you've never done before.

Whatever it takes, you can't let the world drag you down and take away your spirit. That's worse than being dead.

 

I was 17 in 1969. What you are describing might have been true in Haight-Ashbury, but it certainly wasn't anything like that in Maryland. Not at all. Most people were extremely uptight about sex. There was a lot of talk about "getting to second base", which meant touching with clothes on, as I recall.

 

Well,having gone through the 40s-50s-60s-etc-etc, I remember what change meant in those days. Racism was a serious matter (and still is,but gains have been made), black music was NOT to played on the radio until the early 50s, the freedom marches were beginning, freedom riders and little girls were being killed by hard-core racists,womens rights were becoming more of an issue,especially with the advent of the pill,the Viet Nam war was raging and combat was on the TV every night telling us about "the light at the end of the tunnel",the native Americans took over Alcatraz,the Patty Hearst/SLA situation was in the news,riots at various colleges,(not to mention Kent State), Nixon and his crew were in the spotlight(what a nasty bunch of people).

Music began to reflect the changing of society,more and more people tuned in,turned on and dropped out. Thousands of young began to feel freed from the constraints of 40s-50s society and were all over the roads hitching here and there. (believe me when I say you NEVER saw a female hitching in the 50s) and there was great cameraderie between any and all long hairs just about wherever you traveled. It was definately an us and them situation and it was an exhilerating time to be a part of it.

Free music in the parks, the great underground newspapers(gone) like the Berkely Barb,the Los Angeles Free Press telling it like it was, meeting travelling folks from all over the world in hostels and hanging with people for a day or two doing L and then never seeing them again. We were in it together and it actually meant something when you passed a car on the highway with other freaks in it (anywhere) and gave each other the peace sign. Sounds silly now, but we meant it in a way that went to the core. Brothers and sisters in----what was being done and what we hoped would be some changes for the better.

I remember going to Kihei,Maui and seeing hundreds of naked hippies,male and female enjoying the sun. Waking up to naked folks sitting on my deck in the place I had in the jungle on the island of Hawaii. That did not happen in the decades prior to the 60s. Probably would have been sent to an insane asylum.

Anyway---I was there (here and there) and I think it was one of the most interesting and exciting times to be alive.

Unfortunately ,the axiom "the bad always drives out the good" holds true for the era. The Haight turned to shit,we still have what seems like eternal war and we old hippie types are relics of a bygone era. Some are trying to keep the mind set going and are doing fine. Ask the Heifer. She and her brothers and sisters were there too. But the 60s were the 60s---and this is not.

I feel that if a draft was brought back--we would return to something similiar,but those that decide these things were damn smart not to.

Alright--this is a little of what I think and remember about those days.

 

It seems to me that the decline of "hippie spirit" here has mostly to do with the growing number of members who hate hippies. Their guiding principles are not love and peace. They see them as weaknesses. They are consumed with negativity, cynicism, selfishness, and paranoia. They might take LSD and mushrooms, but not for spiritual enlightenment, but just to "get fucked up". They don't read much and they don't fact-check what they hear. They evaluate truth simply by whether it fits into their existing world-view. Oh, don't get me started ...

 

Dominate cultures tend to have a way to assimilate, bend and pervert concepts and ideas of countercultures. In the 60's: sex, drugs, rock n roll all had a novel rebellious dynamic nature to it as it sought to reject the status quo at the time. Over the decades, all of these paradigms have been assimilated and normalized into dominator culture to some degree. It's blatantly obvious how sex has been integrated into dominate culture as It's plastered on about 90% of the magazines, all over tv and the internet. Drugs have been integrated to a lesser extent but pot certainly has a leinancy to it now (even legal in a couple states) and I've noticed many psychedelic drugs are getting bogged down by this overly rigid, precise scientific approach on ways to mini dose, desiginate chem a for one setting, chem b for another, that strips some of the dynamic mind liberating qualities of a full on psychedelic trip. Rock and the rebellious forms of music that have followed have been made difficult to make a living from records due to the pirating of music and most festivals have become bloated cash cows.

So I think people are afforded the luxury of experiencing elements of the 60's these days from within dominate culture, which weakens the strength of counterculture and perverts the concepts and ideas of those ties which bound the 60's together.

 

I forgot to mention--the forums are reflective of society as a whole now. The gentle, live and let live types are still around,but there are more cynical, mean ones around. Just like in the real world.

 

Except for the drugs, this sounds exactly like the anti-hippie mainstream culture of the '60's. And I see it too.

If I was running a hippie forum, I'd throw out people who had absolutely no interest in, or tolerance for, the original movement's fundamental principals and concepts. But then...I might end up with very few members.

Yeah, a lot of that didn't change in a lot of places until the mid to late '70's. My sister was a high school leader in promiscuity during that time, and even she was shocked by some of the bisexual and S&M stuff that came along in the early '80's. When she started doing blowjobs, that was considered cutting-edge stuff.

We traveled a long road to get where we are today.

 

Mentioning gay--I was in a lesbian bar in San Francisco when the cops came in and took all the women that were wearing mens clothing --TO JAIL!! 1960,that was. Changes.

 

I don't think that's a fair assessment.

I speak against hippie-ism and hippies quite often; but think love and respect are the only things in the universe that matter (if anything at all does).
On the other side of things, quite a number of the declared hippies on this website are very negative, cynical, and rude to other members.

So true. Cause the living dead just corrupt the others that are trying to live.

Maybe that's why zombie films are so popular lately...

 

Maybe the main thing that's missing is hope. Hope that things will get better for humanity. This seems in short supply for almost everyone, even hippies.

 

Hopefully, in the long term, the original participants in the movement will be remembered mostly for their good qualities and positive changes that they brought about. eace:

It's not just online. Most of the hippies I've met in person in Asheville, NC have been worse. I've never seen such miserable, chronically angry people in my life.

I don't think they are motivated by anything they learned from the founding leaders of the movement. Judging the whole concept by them would be like judging all Christians by the Westboro Baptist Church.

I had several schoolteachers who had been enlightened in many ways by the hippie movement in college. Nothing I remember about them reminds me of the losers and bums I run across in hippie hangouts around downtown Asheville. They're just pathetic wannabes, with nothing useful to do with their time.

 

40s, 50s, 60s...... damn how old are you - Dead?


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