Sunday, June 8, 2014

Hippies Punching Upwards

[Posted as a retort to Glenn Reynolds' disparaging post on hippies, posted here]

Hunter S. Thompson writing about hippies in 1968, well before he got really weird:
The British historian Arnold Toynbee, at the age of 78, toured San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and wrote his impressions for the London Observer. 'The leaders of the Establishment,' he said, 'will be making the mistake of their lives if they discount and ignore the revolt of the hippies and many of the hippies' non hippie contemporaries on the grounds that these are either disgraceful wastrels or traitors, or else just silly kids who are sowing their wild oats.'
Toynbee never really endorsed the hippies; he explained his affinity in the longer focus of history. If the human race is to survive, he said, the ethical, moral, and social habits of the world must change: The emphasis must switch from nationalism to mankind. And Toynbee saw in the hippies a hopeful resurgence of the basic humanitarian values that were beginning to seem to him and other long-range thinkers like a tragically lost cause in the war-poisoned atmosphere of the 1960's. He was not quite sure what the hippies really stood for, but since they were against the same things he was against (war, violence, and dehumanized profiteering), he was naturally on their side, and vice versa.
--Hunter S. Thompson, The Hippies (1968)
More of Thompson's thoughts on the optimal timing of being a hippy from the same essay are here.

44 comments:

Shouting Thomas said...

The hippie thing was part of a recurrent theme in American history... the Great Awakenings. The movement was intensely Christian, calling as it did for us to "get back to the Garden," in that famous song about Woodstock. The "garden," of course, is a reference to the Garden of Eden.

Not a new thing in American history.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

There was a deeply spiritual trend in the Hippies. I mean the real hippies and not the drug addled hangers on and wanna be hippies who didn't really want to make the change or sacrifice. Those who found out that it was actually work to be a Hippie.

The spiritual thread was very confused however being all over the place from First Testament Biblical, to Hindu-ish, to Bhuddist-ish, American Indian spiritualism and often a confused mish mash of all of the above. The kids (I call them that now, even though I was one of them, sort of) were looking for something to latch onto. I don't know where or when it was that they LOST their spiritual foundations. Maybe the disillusionment of their parents returning from the horrors of WWII and the rise of commercialism, which is not a substitute for a spiritual foundation or core belief.

In any case, they were "a generation lost in space" and still are.

Shouting Thomas said...

@DBQ

The Holocaust was the most important event in triggering this Great Awakening.

The Holocaust cut the legs out from under Western civilization.

That, and the advent of atomic weapons which gave us the power to commit suicide.

edutcher said...

The hippies were no more than a national temper tantrum thrown by kids who didn't want to grow up.

The talk of peace and love was mostly phony. If you didn't see things their way, one way or another, they'd try to shout you down.

The fabled "tolerance" of the Left got its start then.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

I generally like hippies. Not many left.

Shouting Thomas said...

I generally like hippies. Not many left.

Plenty of them in upstate NY, particularly in the New Paltz/Woodstock area.

Shouting Thomas said...

The fabled "tolerance" of the Left got its start then.

What else would you expect from people are who, essentially, religious zealots?

The Northeast always tends to be the hotbed of these types of religious movements because the original European settlers to this region were Utopian religious sects.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.

Benjamin: Yes, sir.

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?

Benjamin: Yes, I am.

Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

edutcher said...

Shouting Thomas said...

The fabled "tolerance" of the Left got its start then.

What else would you expect from people are who, essentially, religious zealots?


They never struck me that way. I never met one who was an exceptionally deep thinker or all that committed (although several should have been).

More like people looking for any excuse not to be made to do stuff they didn't want to. They'd buy anything that justified what they wanted.

Good lynch mob material, though.

chickelit said...

I ❤ plastics!

chickelit said...

Geez ed, were you old already in the 1960's or just non-evolving?

I identified with the hippies to some extent as a teen, even though there are those out there who petulantly argue that one must have been born between such-and-such years to be genuine.

The mark of a tiny mind is one who insists on exclusivity, who says in effect you can't be part of something because you're not age appropriate.

Image if the Renaissance had died with 14th century Florentines.

I read that Thompson essay when I was around 8 or 9, before I knew who Toynbee was. Then I lost track of it. Later, when I found it again and after I had studies Toynbee to some extent, I was delighted to read that Thompson essay again. It joins philosophies together, instead of rending them to pieces.

chickelit said...

The Germans call plastic Kunststoff or "art-stuff." Of course the word "art" has the same meaning as "artificial" and not hoity-toity "art-art." But in fact, there's a fair bit of commonality buried in all those words: man made.

God doesn't make art: he makes Nature.

ndspinelli said...

The Hunter Thompson exhibit, part of The Rolling Stone exhibit, @ The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, is a fucking hoot. Ever been there, chick?

ndspinelli said...

edutcher is Benjamin Button, except he is not getting younger very quickly.

chickelit said...

@Nick: I briefly lived in Cleveland in 1984. Was it there then? I missed it. I was too busy, working on plastics. I haven't been back since.

ricpic said...

Althouse still thinks of herself as a hippie.

Hitler was a hippie in his down and out Viennese days.

The Russians have a proverb: "The poet always cheats his boss," which could be applied to a hippie as well.

The reason the poet (or hippie) cheats his boss is that the notion of giving an honest day's toil for an honest day's pay is seen as hopelessly square or bourgeois by the poet/hippie.

Guaranteed Obama imagined himself a hippie in his Choom smoking days.

The hippies are good at pioneering the urban wilderness but God help the city in which they take the reins of power.

Whitman was a great poet and at least half-a-hippie/hobo.

William said...

I had long hair. People called me a hippie, but I was never comfortable with that designation. I was a veteran and liked Jack Daniels more than pot and there was no way in hell I would ever experiment with LSD. LSD was the Eucharist wafer of the hippie movement. That's how you showed the depth of your commitment. I resisted bell bottoms for as long as I could, but I'm ashamed to admit that I eventually got around to wearing them. I thought free love was a great idea, but world peace seemed a bit more problematic.........The hippie movement was so amorphous that just about everybody could claim at one time or another to be a hippie or to be opposed to that group of poseurs. On balance and in retrospect, I was more non hippie than otherwise.

AllenS said...

I got out of the Army in 1968, and with all of the hippie chicks around, I thought I had died and went to Sexual Encounter Heaven.

rcocean said...

Hippies = silly parasites. People riding the 60's economic boom and cheap oil/commodities.

And of course, their contribution to keeping that boom going or making the USA a better place for the next generation = zero.

chickelit said...

@rcocean: I think you're completely glossing over Toynbee's point and focussing only on the negative embodiments.

chickelit said...

AllenS said...
I got out of the Army in 1968, and with all of the hippie chicks around, I thought I had died and went to Sexual Encounter Heaven.

Charles Manson said something similar when he was first released from prison and let go in San Francisco around the same time.

chickelit said...

BTW, I used the term "hippy" in my post as a singular noun. Of course the plural is "hippies" -- but is "hippy" incorrect? I vaguely recall seeing both terms for the singular, but it has been years.

Grammar Nazis are welcome to chime in.

chickelit said...

Where is Sixty when you need him?

Synova said...

"The real hippies" is sort of like "the real communists" isn't it?

The thing itself is good and right and important and will *work*... it's just that no one ever does it right.

I don't think "Free Love" was good. I don't think that a lot of the "good" things that came out of the 60's were "good". They seemed good only because they were built on a foundation of established "square" values and no one could imagine the new freedom being misused.

I'm in a sort of cranky mood over facebook "friends" atm, so I'm more judgemental than usual, or at least more willing to say so.

But... no one would *casually* get an abortion, right?

No one would take "free love" and the fact that sex is never wrong as a reason to advocate "child love" right? Nothing bad is going to happen if we throw out all that old prudish nonsense.

So someone posted an angry righteous rant about how mosh-pitting and crowd-surfing... where you deliberately intend on-purpose to have hundreds of skeezy, high, total strangers put their hundreds of hands on your body... is not permission for a groping and anyone of these hundreds of skeezy, high, total strangers who you intend on purpose to put their hands all over you deserve to be punched in the mouth if they grope you while doing it.

And I realize that we're children, we're all children, and if I point out how childishly ignorant and stupid it is to deliberately, on purpose, ASK hundreds of total skeevy high strangers to put their hands all over you without expecting one of the skeeve heads to grab your boob or crotch... well then, I'm saying they *deserve* it, and *rape culture*, and *war on women*.

"Deserve" is a measure from childhood. Adulthood is not, and never will be, about what you DESERVE. Adulthood is about getting over childish things.

And since I took the excuse to bring up rape culture... apparently it's the prudish, square, Christianist, farking *Patriarchy* that is responsible for the "rape culture"... which has zero, nada, nothing whatsoever, to do with the "free love including getting off on bondage fantasies don't you dare disapprove of anyone's sex choices" culture.

Nope.

Nothing to do with that AT ALL.

... but "real" hippies weren't about that, so...

edutcher said...

For those interested, I woke up quite young.

After the Watts riots, I saw an interview with a black guy whose business had been wiped out. He was asked why he didn't go on welfare and stuff and answered, "Ever been to an Indian reservation?".

I was about 18 and that really hit me.

And, no, there was nothing about hippiedom that ever appealed to me or with which I identified. Growing my hair, looking and acting like a slob, and walking around in a fog held no appeal for me.

chickelit said...

BTW, I used the term "hippy" in my post as a singular noun. Of course the plural is "hippies" -- but is "hippy" incorrect? I vaguely recall seeing both terms for the singular, but it has been years.

The term hippie originated as a corruption of hipster - a very hip guy. You hear the word on a few rock 'n' roll songs from the early 60 ("You Can't Sit Down", etc.).

There was even a group called The Hippies in the same period, later changing their name to The Tams.

rcocean said...

"@rcocean: I think you're completely glossing over Toynbee's point and focussing only on the negative embodiments."

And what were the positive points again? What's their lasting positive legacy? Legalized Pot?

Unknown said...

I agree - real hippies are hard to find these days. The soft spoken, vegetable rights and peace types. I feel like they have been replaced by faux-enviros, greenies with smart phones, and progressives with agendas.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Of course the plural is "hippies" -- but is "hippy" incorrect? I vaguely recall seeing both terms for the singular, but it has been years.

I believe that hippy describes a physical condition. Wide load.

Were hippie is the term for one flower child. Hippies is a bouquet of flower children.

:-)

Unknown said...

"Deserve" is a measure from childhood. Adulthood is not, and never will be, about what you DESERVE. Adulthood is about getting over childish things.


I've been attempting to say that properly for so long. Synova-- so intelligent and thought-provoking, comes along and says it perfectly. Thank you.

Known Unknown said...

The hippies ruined everything.

Sincerely,

Generation X

edutcher said...

That can be echoed by all the Baby Boomers who are tarred by the hippies' brush.

Dad Bones said...

I think we're becoming a nation of hippies, if we aren't already, and whether we look like them or not. Hippies were the first white people, as I recall, affected by white guilt and who embraced the political agenda of black people. It took a few years but they surely helped put Obama in the White House.

Hippies were also among the first who thought the environment needs to be protected from greedy capitalists and we now have an EPA so powerful that it can make its own laws without approval from Congress.

How it all happened is beyond me but I don't think it can be stopped.

Meade said...

edutcher said...
"I was about 18 and that really hit me."

Were you drafted into military service in 1965?

edutcher said...

No, but the truth of that black businessman's comparison between the Welfare State and the Indian reservations told me all I needed to know about Liberalism.

chickelit said...

@Dad Bones & EMD: Perhaps it's high times the hippies should start expressing some "hippie guilt" for screwing things up so.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Hmmm… so I'm being baited? I don't see what there is to disagree with about Toynbee. Thompson, OTOH killed himself, and late in life, too. So to wonder who had the better instincts about humanity's best prospects sounds like an easy question to answer. Wasn't Thompson a cynic anyway?

Nationalism is, in general, a lost cause. Americans miss this fact because their nationalism is generally wound up in deeper and more universal ideas than most countries' nationalisms.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

This purism about hippie-ism sounds like an easy out, anyway. Sure, I know people who buy only organic or better yet only from producers they personally know or have even worked on farms but I don't know many who survive without cell phones. I have no problem with technology; the issue is whether it's used to connect or to disconnect.

The problem itself was the way the post-industrial society gave way to an atomization that dissolved traditional bonds. You can see this as a disconnect from the earth and farms that sustained us, a disconnect from the communities we lived in, a disconnect from many things. The success of Metallica and their form of music is thought to relate to that. How can one have any purpose or masculinity or humanity in a world as mechanized as the mass-produced society we made? It was a powerful society, though, and the harshness of their music encapsulated that perfectly - as well as the disconnect of that powerful society.

People criticizing hippies with the bullshit "no true Scotsman" fallacy fail to realize that life is all about trade-offs. My brother's family doesn't have a tv. I did without one for quite some time. When I bought one again, I got one that uses a lot less energy and connects with no cable monopolist for zombie programming (only the internet). I watch it very rarely. All my energy is provided by renewable sources.

If you aspire to live a quiet, peaceful, less destructive life, you don't have to do it to perfection. Becoming less and less destructive is something that can be done progressively, in stages.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Hippies were the first white people, as I recall, affected by white guilt and who embraced the political agenda of black peopl--

Of Native Americans.

Meade said...

"Of Native Americans. "

Exactly.

edutcher said...
"I was about 18 and that really hit me."

Were you drafted into military service in 1965?

edutcher said...
"No,"

You enlisted? Or were you opposed to the LBJ's war in Vietnam?

Shouting Thomas said...

Do you ever do anything besides this stupid shit, Larry?

Shouting Thomas said...

@Ritmo

Nationalism will seem like a "lost cause" until a war arrives that is a real existential threat.

Shouting Thomas said...

I once took Big Joe along to a benefit in Woodstock hosted by John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful. Big Joe is an old fashioned Italian Catholic.

The room was full of old line Woodstock hippies, many of whom had lived in communes together during the heydey of the 60s.

"Everybody in this room has slept with everybody in this room," I told him.

And, I wasn't exaggerating.

chickelit said...

"Everybody in this room has slept with everybody in this room," I told him.

And, I wasn't exaggerating.


Sounds like hippies did their part in evolving antibiotic resistance. Nice going.

Mitch H. said...

Sounds like hippies did their part in evolving antibiotic resistance. Nice going.

You've seen Tom Wolfe's classic rant about the hippies and "the Great Relearning", I presume?

At the Haight-Asbury Free Clinic there were doctors who were treating diseases no living doctor had ever encountered before, diseases that had disappeared so long ago they had never even picked up Latin names, diseases such as the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, the rot.

Back when I was still volunteering as a judge for History Day state finals, one of the kids submitted a paper about a little commune in, hurm, Meadsville I think in '68-'69 that made me think of this exact situation. Nice little bit of micro-history, liked it a lot more than the endless parade of Cuban Crisis, Homestead Strike and "wow, ain't the UN great?" clock-punching, time-wasters we usually got.