There's no such thing as a hippie

i was laying in the bath the other day and started thinking. i then decided to share my thought with you coz i'd like to know other peoples opinion on the subject......


i know hippie is just a label, but i dont believe that there is any one who fits it these days.

the ideal of peace and love will never work. it would be lovely if it did, but it wont, coz in this day and age its just not realistic. i dont think there's anyone naive enough to truly believe that peace is possible, and thats the difference between people of our generation and the hippies of the sixties, where they all seemed to have the belief that anything was possible and you could change the world just by going to sit-ins.

the whole free love thing would never work either. how many of you could honestly say that you wouldnt mind your partner coming home and saying "i just had the best shag - but its ok honey, it was all about free love, it didn't mean anything!" the whole thing of being able to sleep with who you want under the label of free love could never work.

nearly everyone has either a job or some form of education to go to. no-one just wanders round aimlessly anymore just waiting to see what life throws at them, coz now, in the real world, everyone needs money. its not possible to live the carefree existance lived by the hippies of the sixties.

no-one believes anymore that the world is this wonderful place where anything can happen. it seems to me that we have lost the feeling of empowerment, the belief that we can change the world. if anyone suggested a revoloution now it would never work. if we went up to soldiers to put flowers in the ends of their guns chances are we'd never get anywhere near them, and if we did we'd get arrested. people in general seem to lack the passion that once existed, and even those who do stand up and protest are ignored completely.

i know this probably seems a little cynical, but the world just isnt what it was, so my question is.....

how would you define a hippie of the new millenium? we still have a few things in common, but i believe the essential hippie spirit is dead. no-one has the look of innocence in their eyes anymore. what do you guys think?

peace and love
stardust
xxx

 

I've always thought the word hippy is impossible to define. But sometimes I think it's as simple as just looking up at the stars with a sense of wonder. Those of us who think of ourselves as hippies are still very different from the rest of society in some very fundamental ways. I don't think it has to be confined by a narrow definition - it's more a feeling and a way of living. Even if we can't always live up to the ideal, the yearning in the heart is still there.

 

I am too depressed after reading that to answer.......

The hippy movement was very brief, but the whole protest generation is as strong as ever I believe...Just look at the million people who went on the anti war demo (fat lot of good it did), look at the amount of publicity the anti war movement is geting, look at fair trade products now available...This is what the hippys wanted and never got, if anything we are getting way closer to their ideal than they ever did

As for wandering around, in the 60's oversea's travel was limited and very few really did it....Nowadays ywah we have to work but I can get on a plane and be in Goa tomorrow, Australia the next day and wherever after that. This is again a freedom that the hippies of the 60's could never have known.......

And as for the whole free love thing......Do we really want that??? and if you do go join a swingers club and have as much free love as you like, no restrictions and no worries....

I believe the hippy generation still exists but is now a lot more mainstream....Did you really wanna be part of a generation that got beat up for having long hair by the police???

Music was better then, but hey we can still listen to it

That cheered me up

 

We still do sit ins! Well I have anyway We are changing the world, just very slowly... its inside us.

hmm free love is great! Love is wonderful! But sleeping around is vacuous. Give your love freely yeh! but that dosnt mean sleeping with everyone.

But we have evolved different ways of living... co-operatives, career breaks, years out... freedom for women to move out of home without having to get married to do it.

A revolution wouldn;t work cos we are all too cosy It dosnt mean there aren't people doing direct action and willing to get arrested for it though.


More to come... Love Clairexxxx

 

"but we have evolved different ways of living" .......

this is what i'm talking about. i probably just didnt explain it well. we have evolved - e.g. we're no longer like the hippies of the past. we are the hippies of the present and thats the difference.

the hippie values and lifestyle of the past can never exist again, but similar ones exist in this community.

i wish i was better at explaining what i am trying to say. i think what i mean is......

the original hippie lifestyle can never be recreated coz society and people have changed so what we call hippies today are an evoloution of the original ones but it is still two completely different groups of people.

hope i'm making sense.

peace and love
stardust
xxx

 

I agree us "Hippies" have learned from our past, evolved and progressed

Love Clairexxx

 

a rose by any other word would smell as sweet

 

so.......have we evolved and progressed into different hippies from the sixties one. the question is though, which hippie would you rather be?

i would go back to the sixties in a second if i could.

peace and love
stardust
xxx

 

What and have to fight all over again for what little rights we have won so far?

It;s easy to look back at the 60's with rose tinted specs I guess...

I miss the good music myself too though ...

We've moved on though. I'm happy to be in 2004 and continuing the hippy vision... but not going backwards.

Love Clairexxx

 

Yup yup yup.. i agree. I think personally, Hippy is a term used for a period of time that isn't now. We shouldn't be adhiring to what was, we should making our own way making a new time! With our own ideals and beliefs. We don't have to live up to this "Hippy" thing, all you need to live up to ourselves and our own standards and reolise that the worlds different and a lot harder to forfill things. Freedom doesn't come so easy nowerdays, people just don't trust people enough any more.

 

you hit the nail on the head there!

that is the idea i love most about the past and what saddens me most about modern day society. the total lack of trust.

peace and love
stardust
xxx

 

Bollocks to that! The sixties was full of pretentious middle class twats.

 

Yeah, but that's learned through realism. People didn't stop trusting for no reason. I'd love to trust everyone, but trust has to be earned. The sixties didn't disappear up its own arse for no reason.

 

ok, let me rephrase that.......i would like to have been a hippie in the sixties. i agree about the middle class twat bit, but at the same time i would love the chance to have shocked my parents in the way that the youth of the sixties did. i dont think any generation could ever shock their parents as much as the teenagers of the sixties did. nothing i do shocks my parents any more. they dont like some of the things i get up to, but they are never shocked by it.

peace and love
stardust
xxx

 

Yeah, but that's a good thing. It's a sign of how many social conventions have been broken down. I mean I couldn't even have lived with my girlfriend in the sixties unless we were married without attracting social stigma and shocking people.

 

i know that. i'm just saying it would be nice to have the level of trust they had back then. i know there was a good reason people stopped trusting others, but at the same time it would be nice to see what it would be like. i know its not realistic to go round trusting people in this day and age, and probably not back then either. its a nice idea though.

peace and love
stardust
xxx

 

"no-one just wanders round aimlessly anymore just waiting to see what life throws at them, coz now, in the real world, everyone needs money. its not possible to live the carefree existance lived by the hippies of the sixties.

no-one believes anymore that the world is this wonderful place where anything can happen. it seems to me that we have lost the feeling of empowerment, the belief that we can change the world."

I've spent the last 2 years wanderring around aimlessly, waiting to see what life throws my way and it's been the best, mellowest, easiest, possibly healthiest 2 years I can ever remeber having.
I almost never know where I'll be or what I'll be doing from week to week. I work when I feel like it and walk away from anything that fucks with my head.
I meet other people doing the same thing here and there.

 

i just enjoy shocking people though. i would have enjoyed causing all that shock! i dont agree with alot of the social conventions of the times, but i would have had alot of fun helping to break them down. now they are all broken down for us.

peace and love
stardust
xxx

 

Get a penis transplant. That'd shock people

 

where abouts do you do your wandering? i live in a caravan and live on the road most the time, but its still not the same thing. i still have to work now and again aswell and take part in the real world. it can be done, i know, but not in quite the same way.

peace and love
stardust
xxx