I used to be a light and sweet guy... I have worked myself all the way down to black coffee... sometimes with one flavor shot but no cream or sugar... and I do get the Keurig Cups with flavored beans but otherwise black... tea too, I don't like to add anything anymore... weird how tastes can change... I've also enjoyed more bitter beers the last few years too
I'd like to think of myself as a hippie in some ways. I prefer Bohemian style clothing, listen to the style of music from that era, am quite liberal, meditate.
That's why I enjoy this culture and consider myself to be one. I try to see the good in people. If their energy is too negative, however, I just walk away. No worries. Hopefully they can find their inner happiness one day.
I think the term hippie these days is simply to sound or look cool...rich kids with large egos who are more about their image & "clout" than peace & all that. I sometimes call myself a dark hippie but really, I'm just me.
You met some wooks.They are not real hippies. Sorry that happened to you but lots of people at a Bob Wier show would never do that to you. A hippie might get stoned but they want to help the world and be kind. The wook just wants to be lazy and take. They have no problem thinking only of themselves and their next high no matter the cost to others. This urban dictionary definition is perfect A wook is a hippie without any ambition, motivation, or drive other than drugs and image. They're generally in their twenties, college students (or dropouts) at small-town liberal colleges (such as Appalachian State University) and dependent on an income other than their own. Wooks tend to travel in packs, they smell strongly of patchouli and are in constant search for free drugs. One of the defining characteristics is an excessive amount of unkempt hair, usually in dreadlocks. It is important to make the distinction between a hippie and a wook. Hippies can generally be viewed as positive, optimistic members of society with an idealistic goal for the betterment of society. Wooks are everything that you've been warned about in regard to hippies wrapped into a neat little package.
this started short, turned into a rant, so novel warning. unfortunately a lot of the communes/intentional communities nowadays /that I have interacted with/ (not all, I'm sure, just the few I've bumped into) are packed to the gills with wooks. nobody wants to work, nobody wants to do anything but drum, toke, and then go busking for 'green energy' when they're out of weed. drove me nuts dealing with em, because they're like 'oh we're doing this to get away from babylon and be self-sufficient'. self-sufficient requires work. a lot of work.. because you're rejecting that herd ease to strike out with yourself, and if you're lucky, you'll find a tribe along the way, because no (wo)man is an island. you gotta grow your food (and your smoke), you gotta be willing to doctor the chickens for them to give you the eggs. interconnected responsibility. I asked.. I said 'guys. what're you doing to open minds and free hearts? sitting around a campfire and toking's great, but the world needs help. you guys talk about babylon, and how you're waiting for it to fall.. it won't unless people open their eyes and see, unless they open their hearts and love. we might not always get along, but we're all one family. we're all people. ' 'yeah, you just don't get how it works. you're not a real hippie,' motherfucker. I knew about the roots of the movement. about the hippies, the yippies, the freaks, the beats, friends of jesus, the weathermen... the hows and the whys of the movement. it wasn't just sex, or drugs, or music, or art, or dropping out or unplugging or minimizing to go camp in soho or out under the redwoods. It was a need for something more, a spiritual gasp for meaning. the choking flailing of all the someones drowning in a war they didn't want, and saw we didn't need, of watching brothers and sisters getting beaten for their skin, seeing what came out of everything that came before and going 'no, we can do better!' and by gods, TRYING. banding together and saying 'hey, you're weird, i'm weird, but that's cool, and we can swap ideas. maybe fix this.. or at least try.' all the 'stuff' was just that.. stuff. trappings and ceremony. didn't matter /how/ you opened your mind and heart, all that matters was that you were working towards being more than you started. some did it through anarchy, some through orgies, some through tripping balls and talking to the sagebrush. but no matter what path you walked, 'the man'.. the outside.. they hated it, because seeing someone 'free' in any way makes them uncomfortable. you're dangerous, because you think... and your thinking is insanity to them. it wasn't all peace and love, folks. we freaks are catfish. we swim the bottom, explore the dark holes and survive the shit that kills the salmon and the trout. We learn old skills, we explore the dark depths of psyche that other people are scared as shit of. it ain't blacklight posters and deady bears. it's shivering your ass off at 3am in a half insulated shack in the woods because you couldn't stand living a dead-eyed soulless existence drowning in the same corporate bullshit day after day. It's letting your freak flag fly, and knowing that you're gonna wind up hassled every day of it by people who didn't care about the rest of humanity. and it's knowing as soon as dawn comes, you're gonna be out there finishing the job so you won't be cold tomorrow night, and you'll have some satisfaction, because it's /yours/ and that means you have enough.. and you can share with someone who doesn't.. it's about a bigger table over a taller fence. some people quit. they go back. they explored the path and found out they didn't like it. then you've got the wisemen, the earth mamas, the flower children that have a jay stashed behind their ear and'll hand it to you and say 'brother, you look stressed, take a load off your mind and heart for a while, then we can work on it together.' you ask em how much, and they say 'nah, it's cool, just do a kindness for someone else someday.' it's not about the 'image'. it's about the reality of the spirit. to elevate everybody. or at least open their eyes to the 'chance' to do them. to be themselves, the 'who they were' before they were packed into a box, labeled and shipped off to whatever place is killing their soul. The 'hippie spirit' never died, it just got distracted by shiny stuff. "Know the difference between the Illusion of freedom and the Reality of freedom." We forgot what we were about. some of us talk about the old days, despite not being there, because we /wanted/ to be there, not just for the shiny happy people part of it, but the 'brother, I don't care you're dark skinned, and nobody else should either. that's total bullshit' and 'why're we sending guys out there to die in asia? we got problems here that need fixing.' gotta take the bad with the good, and I'd have been in jail right along with the other protesters. but now.. everyone thinks I'm the man. I'm the mainstream enemy, which just makes me want to drop out even more. find some others that actually put in the research, put in the learning to say 'hey, what was this /really/ about?' instead of saying 'hey, cool colors, pot smoke and new age religious mishmash that makes me feel good.' every trip's gotta end, and everybody's gotta come down sometime, but that doesn't mean you should forget why you elevated yourself in the first place.
I always referred to "Wooks" as parasite hippies. They are only around for the party and to suck what they can off the scene and do nothing to give back. Another funny term I've heard over the years is "Trustafarian". A trustafarian is a white kid with dreadlocks, a Range Rover with a Bob Marley sticker on it and a trust fund. I was recently called an Earth Punk. The definition I was given was a person who embraces the grey area between punk and hippie seeing the good parts and bullshit of both. C/S, Rev J
earth punk. I like that. it's got a good ring to it. I don't run in punk circles, but that sounds a good way to be.. and yeah, no matter where you are, who you're with.. well.. I heard it like this 'you can drown in bullshit, even if it looks like ice cream' keep your mind open, but no so much your brain falls out. Everything's got its ups and downs. light and dark sides. the scene was no different, despite what a lot of people think.
a pretty appropriate quote I found, actually "When we heard about the hippies, the barely more than boys and girls who decided to try something different... we laughed at them. We condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives." Author: June Jordan seems pretty clear cut what most people, on the average, thought of the scene. they hated it because their children found the happiness they couldn't. 'you live in a van by the river with your cat! no way you can be happy!' 'you're not quite right, brother. no way /you/ could be happy living in a van by the river with a cat. I'm good with it. no mortgage to fool with, and i get to see the stars every night. it's about the priorities of what makes me happy and lightens my soul. come out sometime, toss up a tent, take a look, listen to the frogs and the crickets, and you might find something you didn't know you were missing' and it gets them to thinking 'what if this deadbeat dropout is right? what if I'm the one doing it wrong?' and then they get pissed because they got poked in their axioms. people, for the most part, don't like having their comfortable little reality disturbed too much or too often.