I'm doing a project for school on Utopian Societies and a friend and I are doing hippies and there's some questions I need to answer and I might need help. 1. Name of the Utopian Society that you are going to research. Hippies 2. Which person or group created this society? 3. Give a brief background of how this society came into existance and why it was created. 4. Who was allowed into this Utopia? 5. How did they keep others out? 6. How did they keep their members in? 7. How did they recruit new members? 8. What made people want to join this society? 9. What were their laws? 10. How were these laws enforced? 11. Did this society suceed in their goal? 12. If not, why? 13. If yes, why? 14. Was this a society that helped humankind in general or did they actually harm our global community? 15. Any other details that might help you defend this society or explain why it should have been abandoned. Any help with this will be appreciated. I know some of the questions are obvious on what they are but it seems that I still need to learn more about the 60's hippies. Thx!
i think your assignment is refering to the societies built by Robert Owen and the like--you might possibly even get away with the Society of Friends or Amish societies Hippie isn't a "Utopian Society", it was a fashion statement in the mid-60's that went along with the a liberal movement during the time-it was far from being a "society" with rules and the like
It could be a Utopian Society to an extent cuz one other kid that's doing the same thing as me asked if he could do it and the teacher said yea
i think 'utopian' and 'hippies' is not something should put together, and 'society' and 'hippies' well, hell no. so, hippies a utopian society?! no... burbot was totally right.
I am by no means an expert, but I'll take a shot at some of these questions. The parents of the hippies had largely grown up during the Great Depression. They were people who were thrilled at the thought of owning there own homes (hence the creation of Levittown, etc.) It was a time of unnecessary luxuries (like electric carving knives and can openers - everything was meant to be made "easier" that what they had known growing up.) A lot of these parents tried to give their kids everything in life (note how many hippies came from American suburbia.) The thing was that many young people questioned the stringent values and conformity they saw in their parents. They did not want to grow up feeling restriction. The "dropping out" movement came from a great portion of young people feeling this way. I have done some reading on communes, and from what I understand, hippies didn't really exclude people from the world they created. There may have been slightly less accepting to part-time or weekend hippies, but generally they were not excluded. Those who wanted to be part of the lifestyle found the communes without much problem; there was always someone new coming. In one book I read, "Drop City," one group within the commune was alienated because they acted in an extremely vulgar manner (one of them raped a young girl.) The attraction to this lifestyle was the freedom it entailed, and opening one's mind (often through the use of drugs.) It was about going back to the land and protesting events (most notably the war in Vietnam) because it just didn't seem right, and other people just weren't doing anything about it. The women often did the cooking, and men did work on the land (digging ditches when sewage became a problem, etc.) I don't necessarily think that they succeeded in their goal of getting everyone to drop out, but I do think that many of their ideas were good ones, and that it is generally a positive thing when people incorporate some of these ideas into their lives. I don't know exactly why the movement failed in some respects...I think that hippies may have been too radical for the general population, and sometimes acted in ways that didn't support what they claimed they stood for (example - engaging in acts of violence.) One of the big drawbacks to the movement was the spread of AIDS. Anyone can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.
That helped. Thanks. We need to have a summary of our society and looks like I'll have to do some research for some of the stuff....
