Hippies and Hippiedom: let's have a serious look

What, exactly, is the essence of hippie? Does this term have a uniform application? That is, are there some characteristics of a person it almost always implies, no matter who's using it? Is it a word that carries through time well, or ought it be packaged up lovingly with our graying memories of a short and specific historical time period? What is your opinion of the current people to whom this term is applied?

One thing I'm driving at is this: is hippie a solid and complete philosophy of life, essentially the equivalent of a religion, reliably able to guide an individual healthily and meaningfully from womb to tomb?

Let me lay my cards on the table. My father was definitely a hippie in the late 60s, and had a bit of beatnik in him before that. My mother was definitely a good Christian girl from a white picket fence home, but she's become very bohemian over the course of living with my dad. My dad is one of those (sadly) rare left-leaning humanitarian minded clergymen. But he never self-described as a hippie (or a beat, or a bohemian); I'm comparing my memories of him when I was a kid to subcultural stereotypes (for lack of a better term) I've picked up over the course of my life.
As for me, marijuana has been my drug of choice, and I've smoked it more or less regularly for 13 years. I like intellectual topics and art, especially the goofier and more far out ends of both. I drink espresso, write a lot, read a lot, appreciate nature and the earth, think that taking care of one's mind and spirit requires taking care of the body, and am always for giving peace a chance. My clothing is pretty inconspicuous, and not very funky. People have described me as 'hippie' and 'bohemian' (and 'raver') and I haven't objected. What can I say, I'm kind of dyed in the wool.

That said, I'm not one AT ALL for just adopting carte blanche one source's take on an issue of any kind, be it political, philosophical, societal, or in terms of artistic taste. I mix and match as I see reasonable, and I make up my own mind. One thing I never waver on is my belief that a nonviolent solution to any grievance is possible and desirable, other than a direct and immediate threat to your physical safety, or that of someone you care about. The problem I've sometimes encountered from other (self OR other people described) hippies is bewilderment, and even a mild passive-aggressive sort of disrespect, when I calmly but firmly and reasonably express a view that's not like theirs, such as being unimpressed with the Grateful Dead, or being all for a uniform national school curriculum. It's not that I'm not open minded. On the contrary, I err on the side of being open to ANY possibility. But if I've read a wide variety of sources and seen a good bit of world with my own eyes (both of which take openmindedness to do), I may just have things weighing in on my views on the issue that someone not as adventurous might not have considered. If one is to be a true humanitarian, there is really no substitute for, and no excuse for not, getting to know lots of different kinds of people in lots of different places.

It seems to me for some people, hippie is primarily a social set, and the viewpoints are kind of a diversion -- the viewpoints get traded and played like Magic the Gathering cards in that social set, but their true value in the larger world is always up in the air. This is certainly not true across the board. But just how prevalent is it, do you find?

I personally think 'bohemian' is a bit more on the mark a self-description than 'hippie', since it's a more general term that encompasses a wider range of people. A good friend of mine who I met raving says the most accurate term she can find for me is 'free spirit', and defines that as somebody who doesn't really follow any rules, including the rules of groups of rule-flouters. I'm flattered. But is that what that term actually means?

It's no secret that hippie is a word that makes some people bristle with hatred. What are the common beefs people have with hippies? How can somebody who actually takes seriously a lot of the values hippies preach about win the trust and goodwill of people who are predisposed to dislike anyone who rubs them strongly as hippie?

Hippies are free spirits who seek:
Wisdom
Justice
Moderation

A hippie is just another name for a certain mindset that has been around for all of civilization.

That fashion trends that they spawned in the 60's are meaningless. Meaning, you can't pick a hippie out of a crowd just by looking at them.
Hippies tend to love peaches and mangoes.

In my mind, hippies were a certain group of people who emerged in the 60's as part of a larger counter-culture movement. I think that the term "hippie" should strictly apply to the people who were a part of that specific movement in that general time frame given that there was a certain set of social and cultural issues that pertained to that time and said movement.

Often times I now hear everybody who's non-violent, dresses a little off and smokes weed calling themselves a "hippie". The reason I dislike this is not because of the term itself, but because of the eagerness with which they apply the term to themselves. It seems to me to stem from a need for an identity or simply for attention.

If you stand firmly behind your principles you shouldn't need to go around telling everyone you are a hippie. That term is, in this era, antiquated and accessory. I too enjoy a wide array of chemical joys, intellectual topics, writing, the arts, mysticism and the like, and hell, I even appreciate the base nature of existence for all it is. However, I don't feel the need to dress like a circus clown, nor do I feel the need to attach myself to a label to get my point across. I figure people will see who I am through my speech and actions without me having to say anything else.

^you may be a hippie then.

I think the majority of people who wear tie-dye and smoke pot are the furthest thing from being a hippie.

MyDoorsAreOpen said:

If one is to be a true humanitarian, there is really no substitute for, and no excuse for not, getting to know lots of different kinds of people in lots of different places.

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Completely agree. I feel you learn far more about universal unconditional love when exposed to a broad range of people, and by not restricting yourself to a particular group based on a solid list of values and views.

This is the underlying reason why, although i am very much in agreement and disagreement with a lot of what the word hippie stand's for, would never associate myself as one. I've spent the last 3 years getting to know the modern-day hippie culture, and there are some really wonderful people.. but they still represent the manifestation of an extreme idea.. and because of this they will never learn universal unconditional love until they are able to take a balanced perspective on 'all.' I'm referring to activism.

MyDoorsAreOpen said:

I personally think 'bohemian' is a bit more on the mark a self-description than 'hippie', since it's a more general term that encompasses a wider range of people. A good friend of mine who I met raving says the most accurate term she can find for me is 'free spirit', and defines that as somebody who doesn't really follow any rules, including the rules of groups of rule-flouters. I'm flattered. But is that what that term actually means?

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I would agree with her. I understand the term free spirit to represent a person who manages to keep outside influence's to an absolute minimum, allowing them to follow there own will or desire, i see a lot of spiritual leaders to be a representation of this way of thinking.. keeping an absolute balanced perspective of 'all' and never following extremes.

MyDoorsAreOpen said:

It's no secret that hippie is a word that makes some people bristle with hatred. What are the common beefs people have with hippies? How can somebody who actually takes seriously a lot of the values hippies preach about win the trust and goodwill of people who are predisposed to dislike anyone who rubs them strongly as hippie?

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I just be. And let people take it as they will..

Hippies were all about peace & love, anti-war, "tune in, turn on, drop out," living with nature. They were disliked by red-necks because they didn't shave (women too), grew their hair long, smoked pot & "didn't work." Actually many of 'em were craftsmen. They grew out of the Beat Generation. I admired them & thought they were cool. Soon, the hippy ghettos were flooded with speed & heroin and the "free-love" women were taken advantage of. "Where have all the flowers gone?" (Gone to growing pot in N. Cali.)

essence of hippie?

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Patchouli oil I believe

^
LOL. No offense to those who like it, but I've always found that particular scent ghastly...

On topic, though, I'll get this out: I don't think there is any way to define hippie without resorting to some measure of stereotype. Indeed, the term has IMO become synonymous with the stereotype, like jock. So, my own idea is necessarily limited.

I'll get rid two superficialities: fashion and "nonconformity". Fashion has no import on a person's ideas; liberals and conservatives, rich and poor, Westerners and non-Westerners alike all over the world wear, say, business suits on a daily basis. Yet, there is no category for "suit", not really. I deny nonconformity because there is no such thing; goths conform to other goths, ravers to other ravers, hippies to other hippies.

What's left, is a state of mind. I've met very few people I could consider hippies (not surprising, given my location), either online or in person, but they seem to share a few characteristics:

--A focus on emotion and intuition rather than cogitation and logic, which ties into their yen for psychedelics.
--A loose attachment, if not disdain for larger power structures (steady careers, competition, even categorical limitations--which I guess would fall under nonconformity, so sue me).
--Often, but not always, ready and willing to move and follow their peace.
--A lackadaisical attitude towards love and sex.
--A broadly primitivist philosophy, especially toward the place of man in the universe.

I've always admired some core aspects of the hippie mindset: free love, world peace, personal independence, selflessness, gender equality, a return to the sublime view of nature. This is good stuff, really. I do, however, disdain what I perceive as their naivete:

--Yes, it's sometimes necessary to bust heads, to plot, to lie, and even kill.
--No, money isn't going anywhere.
--No, meetings in underground, smoky offices are not staging the willful destruction of mankind and the planet. Etc., etc.

I also marvel at how many of them abandon their ideals when they, you know, either grow up, or who conversely stick to their ideals yet do no more than slap a peace sign bumper sticker on their car rather than working to make any of the changes they supposedly so crave to see in the world. I have no love for neocons or fundamentalists, but at least they get off their asses to railroad their bullshit through Congress instead of showing off their bong collection at five and passing out in a drug-addled stupor in their drum circle at ten, hoping that one day people will just get it, man.

Yes, that sounds awfully narrow and a little mean, and it's an exaggeration, but it explains why they're always perplexed at the endless stream of jerks who keep running the show, because those jerks know that living is hard, in a world that requires hard men, not shamans and musicians.

Belisarius said:

because those jerks know that living is hard, in a world that requires hard men, not shamans and musicians.

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For someone who condemns the naiveté of others, you seem a bit naive yourself. :D () I think our world requires all types of people in order to work correctly. Businessmen, "hard men" (whatever that means), shamans, craftsmen, musicians, lawyers, scientists, artists, doctors, teachers, gas station attendants, professors, trash collectors, and on and on and on.

There are benefits to being "hard" as well as benefits to being sensitive, as well as there are benefits for being a mix of the two. The world needs people with all types of different traits, in all sorts of different unique ratios, in order to be a decent place to exist.

Hippies were idealists . . . where's the idealism today?!

The world is much "harder" today than it was in the 60's & 70's. . . . the money-slave $ystem makes it hard.

<<I think our world requires all types of people in order to work correctly. >>

Fair enough.

^plus many many doctors, teachers, businessmen and the all other "productive" citizens can be considered hippies.

i believe hippie to be a derogatory term for gaianists, and i don't mean gaianists in the new-age scam-industry sense. i mean people who believe in nature's order, and that humanity's technological progress is damaging a harmful equilibrium that we would enjoy with the earth in the absence of unnecessary, industrial technology.

for example: has modern medicine saved lives? yes it has, but that doesn't make the world any more utopian because it disrupts the natural order by allowing the weak to survive where they would normally die out. this leads to unnaturally high population densities that requires further and further application of new technologies to maintain. look at the situation we're in now. trying to solve global warming, global hunger, global inadequacy with technology which is what got us into this fucking mess in the first place.

industrialized society is a cycle of doom. first comes prosperity, then comes war, followed by decadence and the fall. we're nearing the fall of the current cycle, perhaps the coming of the new dark ages. trying to hoist us out by throwing more fuel on the fire is counterintuitive and it's sad that humanity is foolish enough to keep on keeping on because we're too absorbed in our day-to-day lives to fully comprehend the harm we do by being an integral part of the machinery of industrialized society.

on a serious note

these are hippies.... I should know.





Guess which one is me...

because those jerks know that living is hard, in a world that requires hard men, not shamans and musicians.

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You must have meant the exact opposite. Life is hard because of the hard men.

Belisarius said:

because those jerks know that living is hard, in a world that requires hard men, not shamans and musicians.

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swilow said:

Life is hard because of the hard men.

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It's a matter of perspective. Life can still be easy in a world where harsh people think they rule. All it involves is changing your mind.

There is no conspiracy. There is nobody deciding that people should be their slaves in unconscious servitude to "the system". There is only the blind, and the blind who lead the blind.

Sometimes a soft girl can make life hard.

I'd trace the origins of hippiedom back to Rosseau in the 18th century, with his views on the inequality of the Western economic system and his support of a "back to nature" type solution.

One could even extend this idea of hippiedom back to some of the more radical aspects of Christianity, i.e. ascetics leaving behind (among other things) the evils of society.


Most hippies are concerned with the equality of all humans and desire a sustainable and harmonious relationship with Nature. It seems to me hippies took these concepts (and a lot of other concepts e.g. Eastern mysticism) that existed prior to themselves and applied the ideals to the social and political climate of the 1960s and 70s. It would be incorrect here to claim that the hippie culture didn't have some forward-thinking and innovative ideas that weren't totally derived from the past (they certainly did), but they seem to embody that unique phenomenon, common in America, that happens when several diverse cultures and beliefs intertwine.

And then, of course, as with every subculture in good ol modern consumerist times, the substance disappeared and the image became good for $$. (Although, I won't make the claim that some "true hippies" (whatever exactly that means) aren't still living the dream).



Re: "bohemians" - Maybe bohemians aren't always looking to the past, but employ intellectual synthesis to create new ideas that transcend what has already been conceived?



In addition to most of the other excellent things mentioned in this thread.

construct said:

And then, of course, as with every subculture in good ol modern consumerist times, the substance disappeared and the image became good for $$. (Although, I won't make the claim that some "true hippies" (whatever exactly that means) aren't still living the dream).

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That's a pretty pithy summary of the state of hippie right there.

Re: "bohemians" - Maybe bohemians aren't always looking to the past, but employ intellectual synthesis to create new ideas that transcend what has already been conceived?

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I think bohemians are pioneers. They're the ones who explore the fringes of what's been done and what could be done, and are willing to live on the fringes of society, many of them as social rejects, for the freedom to live the way they see intellectually or aesthetically right. Through their daring to be creative and new, bohemians spawn what become the next trends among the great middle of the population. But once bohemians take over somewhere, it's not long before more mainstream people move in and gentrify and capitalize. And by then a new set of freaks have begun to cluster somewhere new.

I use bohemian without a capital B. I'm aware that this term comes from French society's comparison of artistic and intellectual counterculture people's clothing style to that of Roma, who were wrongly assumed by some people to have come from Bohemia. But I'm using it to mean what it's evolved to mean, as a general term for people who flout a lot of social conventions and live outside the mainstream culture.

Also Roger&Me I agree, it takes all kinds of people to make the world go round. Hippies serve some sort of purpose in society.

Is the hippie "type" found within indigineous cultures or is it a product of materialism itself ?


What I'm trying to get at is whether or not "hippies" may simply be people who oppose the central tenet of what upholds their society. The hippie is a rebel of many shades but feels almost exclusively "western" to me.