what makes a hippie a hippie
Posted by hiimkelsi on Feb 21, 2009 · Member since Sep 2004 · 2297 posts
what do you think are the characteristics of being a hippie?
michael says he hates them and i always thought that i was one... whatever that meant. i know i am friends with so called hippies. but i dont know why we were called that. and michael hates them but cant explain who they are.
so. what makes a hippie a hippie?
I found this definition in an article on hippies from wikipedia. I too have in the past considered myself a hippie and hope today that I continue to follow the best part of that movement. Young people today would do well to also learn what was trying to be accomplished by the ones who were questioning the artificial values of their parents generation. It seems that much of their ideals have been lost and this is a shame. I was a hippie that avoided the drug culture deciding to expand my mind through the practice of meditation. I did also move to a remote mountaintop, let my hair grow long, and lived close to mother nature. It is interesting to note that my search for the answers to the questons being asked in that period such as "Why are we here?" and "What is the purpose of life?" led me to become a Christian! But yet I hold on to my hippie roots and do not belong to any particular organized church but choose simply to follow the teachings of the greatest hippie of them all Jesus Christ. He too with the exception of promoting drugs also called for people to remove themselves from the society and the old teachings of His day to follow Him in teaching everyone to love each other and live in peace. How sad it is to see how His message has been perceived and distorted by so many calling themselves Christians. Anyway the following is what I found. Peace and love.
"Do your own thing, wherever you have to do it and whenever you want. Drop out. Leave society as you have known it. Leave it utterly. Blow the mind of every straight person you can reach. Turn them on, if not to drugs, then to beauty, love, honesty, fun."
Printerguy, I really enjoy your posts! You are such a great new addition to vegweb. ;)b
I have frequently discussed this topic with my friends. People often call me a "hippie." I just don't know. Part of me feels that I can't possibly be a real "hippie" since I'm only in my twenties...you know, like the real "hippies" grew up in the sixties...everyone else is just posers...type deal. But I started thinking about it and came to the following conclusion. There are (at least) two types of "hippies." One type is compassionate, aware of their environment and those in it, in touch with and respectful of the earth, and focused on being a good person for the sake of being good. This type of hippie focuses on living as simply as possible. The second type is the type that gives all hippies a negative reputation. These are the anti-establishment, strung out, jobless wanderers. (I do not mean to offend anyone...simply stating extremes that exist). I feel like this type of hippie is more focused on being "against things" than trying to improve things. Make sense? You know, obviously I wasn't there, but I think of the Haight Asbury as the classic example...I feel like it started out with my first "hippie description" and ended disastrously with my second description.
what do you think are the characteristics of being a hippie?
one of today's hippies? or one of us who 'came through the 60s' hippies?
somewhere the movement got derailed, or fizzled out, there are a couple different theories but i'm not sure which ... and yet although there's a vestige of what came about during Woodstock, Vietnam, and the Haight, it's a different thing now.
amongst those of us who did come through the 60s, well, looking back at my friends i see various groups: those who went to 'Nam, including those who did & those who didn't come back (either left to Canada or were a combat victim), those who, at some point, eventually settled down into Mainstream America, and those who still, to some degree, live fairly close to the ideals of the day, passing them onto their kids who, straggling across the 70s & 80s, either held on (e.g., Rainbow kids) or didn't ...
michael says he hates them (...) but cant explain who they are.
puzzling to hate something or someone you don't know ... but we all know it's out there. perhaps your michael will change.
~ fr
I think you do make good sense. It seems to be the case in many areas of life, such as in Christianity, that the bad examples ruin the proper picture of what the ideals and purposes were to be and then these wrong ones are often pointed out as representatives of the whole movement.
Thanks also for the compliment. I am so glad to see many young people choosing this life style. There were few when I started out and this site is surely something that is a great help to people making that choice. I wish it had been around thirty years ago, but then again I guess it wouldn't have been much help without a computer. ;D Boy, I am getting old.
I think the movement questioned authority, same as hardcore punk did for me as a young adult.
I feel the two have cross pollinated through the evolution.
I see the black and white as well as the shades of grey. Just as being a hippie is founded in love, freedom, having a higher understand there is a dark negative aspect associated with the movement, the 'uniform', drug culture and sexual liberation that became twisted and/or commodified.
While I think most of us pull from hippie ideals that we identify with, we are all rather removed from the movement and culture.
Definitions, movements and culture that directly affected us are redefined and recycled for contemporary use.
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
Walt Whitman
these are all really great explanations! i'm getting a better understanding but also, theres one thing that kind of coincides with what michael said.....
...later last night, i asked michael again, and he said that there are no real hippies anymore, just people trying to be hippies. the only hippies, he said, lived in the 60s and 70s but then after that there were no more because the movement had ended. he said that today there are only people who think they are hippies or try to live up those ideals or try to keep the movement alive. i dont see anything wrong with trying to keep a positive thing alive. trying to keep the hope in something when so many people lost hope after the 80s.
kannas. your description makes a lot of sense to me. i see a lot of the same values in punks and hippies. but i feel like theres this attitude in punk that we should hate hippies simply because theyre hippies. we both value the respect of all creatures, living simply, beating the status quo, questioning authority, and i'm sure many more, both movements share these values. so why do we hate each other. i dont know. i know in high school that i said i hated hippies, but in college, i realized that it was the hippies that i had most in common (i first spent my freshman year looking for the punks haha but there were none!!!). thanks hippies for being my friends. haha. now i dont know if they proclaimed themselves as hippies, but i do know that people would yell "HIPPIE!" at us. so thats how i figured we were placed into that group. haha.
it's a different thing now (...) Rainbow kids
the only hippies, said, lived in the 60s and 70s but then after that there were no more because the movement had ended.
yep, pretty much changed ... but there are those out there who try to hold some of that which started it all; the one's i mistakenly called "rainbow kids" are really the "rainbow tribe" (http://welcomehere.org/). too, seems the basic spirit which moves "Burning Man" (www.burningman.com) is very similar.
~ fr
now i dont know if they proclaimed themselves as hippies, but i do know that people would yell "HIPPIE!" at us.
That's funny. Most of the places I've lived, you'd stand out if you didn't look "hippy"
In term of symantics, I call current hippies, "neo-hippies."
I figure that punks hate hippies is rooted in the culture/music scene, where punk music was emerging as a genre to stay at the end of the hippy era and punks were the flip of the coin. Michael doesn't know why he hates a group of people, he just does because his subculture has taught him to blindly hate a group of people. It's nothing new. Groups promote prejudices against other groups all the time. I don't think it has anything to do with what a hippy is or isn't. They could have promoted hate against all Pacific Islanders or all orange tabby cats and then Michael would hate that punk-approved group in a show of loyalty.
I browsed to see if there was something enlightening about punks vs vegans and came across this amusing My Space vegan punk forum.
CHEWBACCA: If you hate vegans, what are you doing in a punk thread?
kim: lolz you don't have to like vegans to be a punk. this isn't the hippy forum. and if your statement is based on some false assumptions that punk rock kids all have the same ideals. then your a retard.
CHEWBACCA: are you sure Punks aren't hippies? I just find it pretty sad how un-supportive "punks" are about vegetarian/vegan lifestyles.
kim: well they do smell bad and bitch a lot like hippies.
Felix: Yeah I don't know whats up with all the punks hating hippie's. Punk and hippie ideoligy's are very simaler in a lot of way's. But i guess it's the punk thing to do. I hate u2 vegan fur wearing hippies but them old fucker's from the 70's are pretty cool sometime's. Though alot of hippies hate punks just as much as punks hate hippies. And dude, I would still consider myself a punk and smell like fuckin pomigranite's and rose's. Man i love herbal eccenses..
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
Walt Whitman
"For with consistency, a great soul has simply nothing to do."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
that's all!
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
Walt Whitman
"For with consistency, a great soul has simply nothing to do."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
that's all!
xo
BTW I was called a hippie the other day!
George Carlin explained the original hippies pretty well
And there is the 60's hippies that everyone knows.
I live life super simple pretty much off the grid.
Little ruff in the winter because I can not capture water easily among many other problems.
Been doing it 6 years and I am used to it.
Maybe that makes me hippy like since I basically only interact with the mainstream folks only when working
Or conversing with them on the web
Can not have long hair at my job.
To me I have know real idea what a hippy is
I tried to post this picture of me in my hippie days but forgot how. So I put it as an attachment and hopefully that worked.
This is about 25 years later. the first girl is now 28 and this one is 7. Both cute. Still a hippie on the inside.
I think Timothy Leary posited that the prime characteristic of a hippy was unchecked hedonism.
Great pictures, pg! The first one in the pjs made me ;D . Ya hippie.
Two things that Timothy Leary said that affected me were:
"Think for yourself, question authority"
and "Turn on Tune in and drop out"
I read some of his books and far from pushing drugs he encouraged meditation. Thats what the turn on was, just getting your brain to work and think more clearly. Would I have become a vegan without doing that, I don't know, but it helped when I began to question everything instead of just blindly accepting what the authority figures in my life expected of me. Tune in was becoming aware of a different reality which led me to God. And drop out was a call to free ourselves from society's norms that were damaging to us. He was not always a good example but his writings definately made sense to me at the time.
I was reading a book last night about the life of Christ and here is some of what it said.
"The Jewish teachers made many rules for the people, and required them to do many things that God had not commanded. Even the children had to learn and obey these rules. But Jesus did not try to learn what the Rabbis taught....Jesus was always trying to make others happy. Because He was so kind and gentle, the rabbis hoped to make Him do as they did. But they could not. When urged to obey their rules He asked what the Bible taught. Whatever that said He would do." Also "His happiest hours were found when alone with nature and with God. When His work was done, He loved to go into the fields, to meditate in the green valleys, to pray to God on the mountainside, or amid the trees of the forest."
No doubt He questioned authority and dropped out from the regular rules of society, and spent time meditating getting Himself attuned to a different reality but He never did this for selfish purposes but gained from these experiences a new source of desire to help others.
""He spoke a word of sympathy here and a word there ...He taught others to look upon themselves as having precious talents....He passed be no human being as worthless.."
Anyway just some thoughts.
I read today that the song "Come Together" written by John Lennon was written for Timothy Leary when he running for Governor of California. His campaign was shortened when he was arrested and thrown in jail.
For a taste of the hippie experience have a look at this:
http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/jimi_hendrix_at_woodstock.php