The hippies were right all along

Originally posted by Whaa
The SF Bay area was Heaven!

Wish I'd been there
...dancing in the streets.

[edit on 13-5-2007 by khunmoon]

I was fortunate enough to meet Ken Kesey and his wife back in 1999, when he was doing a tour of England. He was in Further II and I have a picture of it. He came across as very shy and humble.

Congrats to the OP! What a fun and interesting thread.

. . . .And I too was lucky enough to grow up during these turbulent
"hippie" years. I can remember many good things because there always
seemed to be a "cause", and nine times out of ten it was a righteous
cause. Friends went to war and friends went to college. We were on the
brink of realizing that war is never good, and we were getting "mad as hell
and we weren't going to take it anymore." Anti-war protestors brought me
out of my haze one day when I stepped down from the Trailways bus with
my military uniform on, my seabag over my shoulder and my medals
pinned to my chest. I was heading home on leave and they wanted a
confrontation. Well, maybe they just wanted me to listen. So I did.
I sat down with three of them, drank some coffee together, and proceded
to get "turned". From then on I chose Love over Hate, Peace over War.
And I still feel that way today.
I can remember Woodstock like the back of my hand.
I remember some "hippies" that were so sincere about taking care of the
Earth that their enthusiasm was contagious.
Music said it all, without swearing or inciting violence.

Originally posted by redseal
what a bunch of crap!!!!!!!!!

Hippies dont want to work, they just feed off of others who do work to enable them!!!!!!!!!!

Lazy bunch of freeloaders!!


Get a job and contribute like the rest of us!

Thats untrue
your views and logic are flawed
the hippies had it right from the beginning
we dont need money and job and lies to make our lives good
You just perpetuate the same rubbish that your pathetic education has taught you.
I dont mean to be rude but calling visionaries freeloaders is even more rude.

Hippies had it right, they just got caught up in too much drug taking, (my opinion), hell maybe it wasn't that, they were just stomped out by the big, powerful government

Originally posted by the-real-syn
Hippies had it right, they just got caught up in too much drug taking, (my opinion), hell maybe it wasn't that, they were just stomped out by the big, powerful government

The hippie philosophy is seen as a major threat to a patriarchal hierarchy such as is the dominant culture in the US. So that culture took substantial active steps to reduce or eliminate the impact of the hippie culture.

Hippie drug use is a case in point. Of course there are more than zero cases of hippies using drugs in an irresponsible manner and ruining their lives. However, the propaganda put out by the mainstream culture entirely misrepresents the level of drug use in the culture. And there have been far more lives ruined by over-reaction of law enforcement types than have ever been really ruined by drug use on its own.

A side note that I find interesting - while I am not condoning or promoting use of illegal drugs, it is interesting that the marijuana culture, which was the primary drug of choice in the hippie community, is the one drug that fostered peace and sharing. In the hippie/pot culture, if someone had some 'stash' and their friends were dry, those with freely shared (in most cases) with those without. This was also reflected to some degree in the acid culture, another popular hippie culture drug.

This is in contrast to the coc aine, speed, meth etc. drug cultures which are marked by violence and greed on the part of the members of those communities.

And yet, even today, we see that the mainstream culture is entirely up in arms over marijuana... for nonsensical, myth-based reasons.

I believe this is another aspect of the concentrated effort to eliminate the hippie culture, due to the fear the mainstream has of the impact of that culture.

Thanks guys, for taking me back to a more tolerant day. Sure we had the man to deal with, and jobs were scarce for us, though I could "tuck my hair up under my hat" if need be for enough work to get by.

We changed, became a part of society after our youthful days. But the philosophy never really left us. We went right on trying to change the world. We grew older, grayer, and realized that it wasn't a movement, but a way of facing life that we were a part of. And movements can be crushed, truth cannot. So we kept the truth and let the style fade.

We kept the important part. The establishment lost, is losing. That's why we find places like ATS. A lot of you are hippies, even if you don't know it. Back then we were 'hip' to the deceit and power trips, and that's why so many are here now. You're hip too.

I'm proud of where I've been, and where I'm going. Hippies are still cool.

Well said Benevolent Heretic....if only more of us looked at things in that light what a better place this society would be...keep on keeping on and "Denying Ignorance!! ".....tracer

Originally posted by Ram
I agree - Hippies where right.

What made them wrong?
Money? The system? Police - Corruption? Lies?

Drugs, but not just any drugs. Heroin, Meth, Cocaine and addictive drugs as such. Early in the movement, most smoked pot, dropped some acid, did paoti or mescilin, and some great mushrooms, but when the needle showed up, so did death.
When I read stuff on self sustainability, or sustainable lifestyle, I have
to smile, because this was the practice of the "Hippie Comunes". If you wanted to eat, you had to work, and there was some fine work in some comunes, very creative minds.
I don't necessarily recommend that we all join a comune, but you can really stretch out you money, and have a better life if you were to gear yourself to live a sustainable lifestyle.

Living green before their time

LINK



Morninglory Farm, nestled in the hills near Wilno, Ont., about an hour's drive east of Algonquin Park, has been marking the turn of the seasons with ceremonies like this for decades, so the gathering on the vernal equinox was not out of the ordinary. Yet coming as it did on the 40th anniversary of the year when hundreds of hippies ushered in the Summer of Love from a San Francisco hilltop, then held a mock funeral signalling "the death of the hippie" just four months later, the event had a certain poignancy.

In those heady days of Hendrix and Haight-Ashbury, "hippie communes" dotted the hills around the south and eastern edges of Algonquin Park as people in the back-to-the-land movement discovered the area had lots of cheap land to get back to. The hardscrabble farms homesteaded by the Madawaska and Bonnechere Valleys' Polish and Irish settlers were being sold off at low prices as their descendants moved to town.

Most of those communities are gone, as is the "hippie commune" label, overburdened as it was with stereotypes about free-flowing sex and drugs. Today, Morninglory and a couple of others are alive and well, "intentional community" is the preferred term, the "herbs" are mostly for eating or medicine, and the sons and daughters of hippies have grown into adulthood on the farm and are parenting a third generation.

Ah, the colloquial life.

A long, long description of life the way it was first envisioned by hippies and how it has evolved over the 40 year interim.

Algonquin Park is a beautiful setting, dotted with lakes and rolling hills covered in pine forests.

A required read for those of us who are 'into' this topic.





[edit on 20/5/07 by masqua]

I grew up in the eighties and I can tell you that, in high school, hippies were considered an extinct species from a bygone era. The closest thing we had to hippies were the nihilistic "stoners" who listened to heavy metal and didn't know a thing about politics. As far as a counterculture, in that decade the peace sign had been replaced with the anarchy sign, and any kind of coherent political discussion among my peers was impossible, due to the gen-Xer's complete and total ignorance of the outside world, or at least the ones I knew.





[edit on 22-5-2007 by Flatwoods]

Originally posted by masqua

Living green before their time



Morninglory Farm, nestled in the hills near Wilno, Ont., about an hour's drive east of Algonquin Park, has been marking the turn of the seasons with ceremonies like this for decades,




[edit on 20/5/07 by masqua]

I wonder if it is merely a coincidence that a simple layman's method of making L.S.D. was from a certain variety of morning glory seeds? Hummmmm.

The 60's are over and the hippies lost. Thank God.

-- Boat

I've spent some time reading through this thread with tears running down my face for all that has been lost. I unfortunately was born after this great period in history but I was lucky that my parents believed in the philosophy and lived by it. To all intents and purposes they were "normal" working class people but the ideology lived on in their souls and was taught to their children. We NEVER had sweets, chocolates or cooldrink in the house that wasn't home-made (my mom's ginger beer and coconut ice...mmmmmm!) We almost never went to the doctor because we used herbs or "old-wives'-remedies". We were taught to love everybody, regardless of gender, race or financial standing and to think through everything that we heard or read and not just take everything at face value. Every day when I see the "lost children of this generation" I thank the Lord that I was lucky enough to have "hippies" for parents.

LovingSoul, it's never too late.

You are very fortunate to have the parents you have.

I'm not saying it can be done again what the hippies did. It was shift of paradigmes that helped us along. But the the times badly needs a change of mind. And we can all help that along.

Remember it's never ever too late.

Peace & Love.

Thanks, Khunmoon. Its really difficult to feel any sort of optimism for our world when you look around you at the youth of today and imagine them as adults!
Love your avatar by the way - I'm a huge fan of the King!

[edit on 31-5-2007 by LovingSoul]

Sometimes "hippies" or liberals are off the mark, and sometimes their ideas are just plain common sense.

It is just plain common sense in an age of global warming and wars being fought over oil to drive a Prius as opposed to a Hummer.

Recycling is just a new term that has been applied to the ages old economically efficient of practice of melting down scrap metal.

Eating fruits, vegetables, and homemade as opposed to factory made foods for health is something your grandmother knew to be correct. Most of these newfangled hippy health foods are just foods that people in Europe and the Middle East have been eating for milenium.

Looking out for poor and middle class people is not some wishy washy hippy principle. Rich people's prosperity depends on the prosperity of the people below them.

In short, maybe it is the "traditional" American ways of wastefulness, greed, and glutonny that are new and wacky.

Originally posted by Boatphone
The 60's are over and the hippies lost. Thank God.

-- Boat

Talkin' about God?

God is alive Magic is afoot
God is alive God is afoot Magic is alive
Live is afoot
Magic never died God never sickened
-Many poor men died Many sick men lied
Magic never weakened Magic never hid
Magic always ruled God is afoot
God never died
God was ruler though his funeral lengthened
Though his mourners thickened
Magic never fled
Though his shrouds were hoisted, the naked god did live
Though his words were twisted
the naked magic thrived
Though his death was published round and round the world

The Heart did not believe.

Many hurt men wondered, many sick men bled
Magic never faltered - Magic always led
Many stones were rolled but god would not lie down
Many wild men lied...many fat men listened
Though they offered stones, Magic still was fed
Though they locked their coffers, god was always served
Magic is afoot god rules Live is afoot
Live is in command
Many weak men hungered - many strong men thrived
Though they boast of solitude God was at their side
Nor the Dreamer in his cell, nor the captain on the hill
Magic is alive
Though his death was pardoned round and round the world
- The heart would not believe

Though laws were carved in marble they could not shelter men
Though alters built in parliaments - they could not order men
Police arrested Magic and magic went with them
For magic loves the hungry
But Magic would not tarry - it moves from arm to arm
...It would not stay with them
Magic is afoot, it cannot come to harm
It rests in an empty pond it spawns in an empty mind
But Magic is no instrument - Magic is the End

Many men drove Magic but Magic stayed behind
Many strong men lied - they only passed through Magic
and out the other side
Many weak men lied - they came to God in secret
and though they left him nourished they would not tell who healed
Tho mountains danced before them, they said that God was dead
And tho his shrouds were hoisted the naked god did live

This I mean to whisper to my mind
This I mean to laugh with in my Mind
This I mean my mind to serve 'til service is but Magic
moving through the world
and mind itself is Magic coursing through the flesh
and flesh itself is magic dancing on a clock

And time itself the magic length of God.

- Leonard Cohen
Sung by Buffy Sainte-Marie