Hippy culture

beach · Jun 11th, 2004, 19:57

What exactly was this ‘Hippy' era?

I know that people felt free and started traveling freely all over the world.

But why weren’t the (felt) free before?? What happened all of a sudden?

jay_m_222 · Jun 11th, 2004, 21:12

Mpop-You are definitley a cool guy but you always get me going on certain topics!

Sorry, I can't handle this idealistic idea of the 60's hippie generation:

When I look back, I observe the following...
the hippie generation of the late 60's was a self-absorbed, self-righteous, drug obsessed crowd, thrilled that the girls of the time were into the idea of free sex and could get laid. They became as conformist in their 'uniforms' as the suit and tie conservative culture they were 'rebelling' against. They destroyed property, Did their share of name calling and discriminating. And these first enviromentalists left the town of Woodstock in shambles.

I am sure we could have avoided WWII if the hippies were around to give Hitler a loving hug and paint his face bright colors...

The best contribution of that generation was some of the musicians that came out of it (Jimi Hendrix et al)

Jun 11th, 2004, 21:24

I came late for hippy culture, but there's one thing I know from my many (very deep) hippy friends...you have to have been there. everyone else merely suffers from hippy envy.

a hedonistic lifestyle is bound to attract sanctimonious judgements from history(and other squares) but the mix of sex drugs and rock and roll with REAL spirituality is a high point of personal development.

This is not to say that every hippy commune worked or that somehow there was no exploitation and crime among the hippies,...or that even a small percent of them lived up to the lofty ideals of renouncing the material world that they were so taken by, but you gotta love 'em, more importantly, first, you gotta get 'em.

(and there's always coctails...merely from scientific curiosity, of course...)

jay_m_222 · Jun 11th, 2004, 21:39

First of all, MPOP I am sorry I typed 'guy'!

Yes, there are some positives. Music was great: Jimi Hendrix, Sgt. Pepper by the Beatles and most important.......the infusion of Indian Classical music and the embrace of Ravi Shankar!!

Albaruni - For the record, I have no Hippie envy what so ever...
nothing wrong with a little hedonism but to revolve your whole existence around it is a waste.
Pt. Ravi Shankar shunned the drug use and excess of the hippie culture and he is still performing....is he a square?!
Jimi Hendrix is dead

Jun 11th, 2004, 22:23

mpop:

Quote:

drugs, can only mess up with your head, so I can only imagine what the mass consumption of drugs can do to you. what kind of development is that? death?

and

jay

Quote:

Pt. Ravi Shankar shunned the drug use and excess of the hippie culture and he is still performing....is he a square?!

you sound like my dad dude,

get with it...

Re drugs, The nation fell out of love with maryjane (and a good amount of her did no one any harm) and into love with prozac. Yeah yeah, one should be drug free and squeeky clean like mickey mouse...and all that, but it's not like drugs were peddaled by ONLY the hippies. the SQUAREST of american institutions (the CIA) pushed esctasy in south central LA. so I guess drugs are good if WE sell 'em to you. only a little bit oof your growing your own potted plants is not OK, we can't have you...er...self motivating yourself...you gotta work for the system ...slave...get into debt AND THEN get addicted to codine, prozac, legal drugs, alcohol, hand sanitizers, suburban living...and any other type of habit formers that COST MONEY! that's the american way! [/rant]

Quote:

but to revolve your whole existence around it is a waste.

to whom? IMO you are accountable primarily to yourself, and if mind expanding drugs is your call , then so be it. just be very sure that they are your scene.

Don't have time to judge other people...am too busy living my life....

cyberhippie · Jun 11th, 2004, 22:35

Probably the greatest legacy of the hippy era was that finally young people started asking questions of their goverments, parents and the establishment. Though to say that this particular group of young people spawned all of this would be wrong I reckon the hippy 60's were the culmination of many years of discontent.
The blind allegience that came before was no longer to be countenanced.
It also spawned a whole host of pressure groups like CND, greenpeace .etc, and was at least instumental in saving lives in Vietnam .
The hippy culture of music drugs and travel Created an audience for people like Ravi Shanker.
Much of the music of the 60's came about because of the mood of the day not in spite of it.
The excesses of the day were then as now were probably completely blown out proportion, much the same as ALL demonstrators at a G 8 conference are anarchists bent on bringing down the cosy capitalist world we live in?
Jay I think there is indeed a lot of truth in what you write and it fair to say excesses did occur, but far from all the "cats' fying their brains on LSD, speed and weed, I imagine many dabbled, like young beatniks, rockers,mods, like punks like the techno/Goa trance crowd and then moved on to more "normal"? persuits.
You mentioned Woodstock, watch it you'll see many examples of a caring hippy community, well they put themselves in debt to put it on for one thing, there were many many unpaid volunteers, guiding the army of cars, building stages, putting up fences and looking after the welfare of the folks who went a little bit too far!!
Even many of the locals had a lot of praise for the folks that turned up!! I think the phrase was "america has no need to worry about it's young people" Though there were detrators as well.
I'm not even sure if your statement about enviromentalists leaving the site in a mess is true, certainly the organisors appealed for everyone to take their mess with them!! If that happened or not I'm not sure!
My personal definition of a hippy was someone who cared enough about certain issues to stand up and be counted with all the hassles that brings, black lists, police harassment, interment,
Before Hippies we thought that everything was taken suitably taken care of by "the establishment!" This obviously not the case especially during the late 60s in America!
But here is the crux, did it change anything? Well hard to say we're still being stonewalled, by the same guys, understanding of what we're about is still miscaculated, and many of the problems in society identified during this period remain the same!
So not a lot of change there, but it's not for the want of trying!

jay_m_222 · Jun 11th, 2004, 22:40

Quite some interesting conspiracies.....Right everyone is a victim and is getting hooked at gunpoint...I don't even want to get into these ideas. This country is drug dependent because everyone is shunning self reliance and responsibilty and gleefully claiming any disoreder or victimhood they can to justify popping some pills!

Trust me, I have had my share of pot, booze, coke....in the past but I never glorified it or thought I was opening my mind etc..or thought the feds were involved....jesus!

I am a musician and quite frankly dont need to 'get with it' anymore in order to play music, create or enjoy it. So if that is being a square.....i am cool with it...believe me

If you want to stay inside in shoot up heroin all day or smoke some fine weed....go right ahead. I don't care. What irked me in the thread is this glorification of that movement. that the hippies of the 60's were this deep, insightful group.....no....
THEY WERE STONED....

cyberhippie · Jun 11th, 2004, 22:43

Ok !!!

Jun 11th, 2004, 22:45

where are you getting your statistics from?

Quote:

[rant]you are judging people quite a lot albaruni. that and provoking people on the site.[/rant]

sorry if it appears to you that I'm doing this, but i really am not.

Quote:

please albaruni do not try to convince otherwise nor spread the message on this site that drugs are good[

as above.

mpop, please desist from sensationalizing and deamonizing my opinions. I'm just a regular guy with regular opinions. ...

jay

Quote:

This country is drug dependent because everyone is shunning self reliance and responsibilty and gleefully claiming any disoreder or victimhood they can to justify popping some pills

and that's any LESS of a conspiracy theory? blaming the victims for their problems? (like blaming the poor for being poor...or blaming the rape victim for the rape?)

but seriously, we AGREE. I just thought that there was a component to hippie culture that was hedonistic and was about personal development, in the sense that they focussed away from a bunch of dumb social mores and asked questions that needed answering real bad in the US. As CH said, this was not a consequence of the hippie movement alone, or somehow a conspiracy of a few LSD kids, both(the questioning and the hippie cultures) were products of their time.

jay_m_222 · Jun 11th, 2004, 22:46

Cyberhippie- Great points. I think Woodstock is a good view of that culture. The promoters that put on the show had this idealistic vision, a nirvana. But reality and the 'dark' side of the culture was also revealed there as well. I saw a documentary about the creators of the concert and they went through hell!

Again, I am not trying to villify that whole movement, I just wanted to raise the other side of it.

MPOP-you nailed it....Albaruni certainly spent some time judging me (i am a square.....like his dad, and i need to get with it) and the U.S. - We are all on drugs.... We ALL JUDGE! Lets at least try to judge fairly

Jun 11th, 2004, 22:55

I was REACTING to a post that called the hippies a bunch of druggies with no redeeming features. I wasn't JUDGING your every utterence. (there are shades of grey. they exist)

Quote:

We ALL JUDGE! Lets at least try to judge fairly

You're just absolving yourself of your need to judge people by saying this. Once you start getting down a spiral of making judgements, you NEVER judge fairly. a judgement is partly about who you are and partly about who the other person is...and partly about how you'd want the other person(whom you are judging) to be.

jay_m_222 · Jun 11th, 2004, 22:59

Hmmm.....is saying that I have an opinion a better term? Yes, I need to express my opinion on issues, places, people, music, movies etc....

Jun 11th, 2004, 23:00

depends on how ..inflexible your opinion is(and I don't know you) and how excitable you are about it being challenged...

I know one or two people that are very excitable about opinions contrary to their own(on this site and off).

cyberhippie · Jun 11th, 2004, 23:02

Ok I'll now and steer this meandering back on track!!
Whilst in India I read with some suprise that the acid house craze that hit America and Britain in the mid 80's was actually inspired by Goa trance which was something that came about when the California acid tests went to Goa and the musicians of the day started experimenting!
I was really suprised to read about this link back to the hippy 60s having always thought that the development of this style of music went in the other direction developed in the West then tinkered with in India to come up with Goa trance.
Is this a true representation of how Acid House/dance/Techno came about or the author of the Article slighly askew in his writings????

Jun 11th, 2004, 23:07

I think that's a bunch of ...um...nonsense..

acid and most synthetic drugs were product of the(post disco,punk) 80's new york...and made their way to london as the rave scene began. The brits may have infected goa trance with them...

CH I reread, I meant the drugs, not the music...(i'm not much into goa trance).

(afik)

Jun 11th, 2004, 19:57	#1
beach Lost in translation Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: India ! Posts: 2,233	Hippy culture What exactly was this ‘Hippy' era? I know that people felt free and started traveling freely all over the world. But why weren’t the (felt) free before?? What happened all of a sudden? __________________ Hampi info

Jun 11th, 2004, 23:07	#15
albaruni Posts: n/a	I think that's a bunch of ...um...nonsense.. acid and most synthetic drugs were product of the(post disco,punk) 80's new york...and made their way to london as the rave scene began. The brits may have infected goa trance with them... CH I reread, I meant the drugs, not the music...(i'm not much into goa trance). (afik) Last edited by albaruni : Jun 12th, 2004 at 02:50.

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Jun 11th, 2004, 21:12	#2
jay_m_222 Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Reading, Ma Posts: 117	Mpop-You are definitley a cool guy but you always get me going on certain topics! Sorry, I can't handle this idealistic idea of the 60's hippie generation: When I look back, I observe the following... the hippie generation of the late 60's was a self-absorbed, self-righteous, drug obsessed crowd, thrilled that the girls of the time were into the idea of free sex and could get laid. They became as conformist in their 'uniforms' as the suit and tie conservative culture they were 'rebelling' against. They destroyed property, Did their share of name calling and discriminating. And these first enviromentalists left the town of Woodstock in shambles. I am sure we could have avoided WWII if the hippies were around to give Hitler a loving hug and paint his face bright colors... The best contribution of that generation was some of the musicians that came out of it (Jimi Hendrix et al)

Jun 11th, 2004, 21:24	#3
albaruni Posts: n/a	I came late for hippy culture, but there's one thing I know from my many (very deep) hippy friends...you have to have been there. everyone else merely suffers from hippy envy. a hedonistic lifestyle is bound to attract sanctimonious judgements from history(and other squares) but the mix of sex drugs and rock and roll with REAL spirituality is a high point of personal development. This is not to say that every hippy commune worked or that somehow there was no exploitation and crime among the hippies,...or that even a small percent of them lived up to the lofty ideals of renouncing the material world that they were so taken by, but you gotta love 'em, more importantly, first, you gotta get 'em. (and there's always coctails...merely from scientific curiosity, of course...)

Jun 11th, 2004, 21:39	#4
jay_m_222 Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Reading, Ma Posts: 117	First of all, MPOP I am sorry I typed 'guy'! Yes, there are some positives. Music was great: Jimi Hendrix, Sgt. Pepper by the Beatles and most important.......the infusion of Indian Classical music and the embrace of Ravi Shankar!! Albaruni - For the record, I have no Hippie envy what so ever... nothing wrong with a little hedonism but to revolve your whole existence around it is a waste. Pt. Ravi Shankar shunned the drug use and excess of the hippie culture and he is still performing....is he a square?! Jimi Hendrix is dead

Jun 11th, 2004, 22:35	#6
cyberhippie Account Closed by User's Request Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: the Netherlands Posts: 6,012	Probably the greatest legacy of the hippy era was that finally young people started asking questions of their goverments, parents and the establishment. Though to say that this particular group of young people spawned all of this would be wrong I reckon the hippy 60's were the culmination of many years of discontent. The blind allegience that came before was no longer to be countenanced. It also spawned a whole host of pressure groups like CND, greenpeace .etc, and was at least instumental in saving lives in Vietnam . The hippy culture of music drugs and travel Created an audience for people like Ravi Shanker. Much of the music of the 60's came about because of the mood of the day not in spite of it. The excesses of the day were then as now were probably completely blown out proportion, much the same as ALL demonstrators at a G 8 conference are anarchists bent on bringing down the cosy capitalist world we live in? Jay I think there is indeed a lot of truth in what you write and it fair to say excesses did occur, but far from all the "cats' fying their brains on LSD, speed and weed, I imagine many dabbled, like young beatniks, rockers,mods, like punks like the techno/Goa trance crowd and then moved on to more "normal"? persuits. You mentioned Woodstock, watch it you'll see many examples of a caring hippy community, well they put themselves in debt to put it on for one thing, there were many many unpaid volunteers, guiding the army of cars, building stages, putting up fences and looking after the welfare of the folks who went a little bit too far!! Even many of the locals had a lot of praise for the folks that turned up!! I think the phrase was "america has no need to worry about it's young people" Though there were detrators as well. I'm not even sure if your statement about enviromentalists leaving the site in a mess is true, certainly the organisors appealed for everyone to take their mess with them!! If that happened or not I'm not sure! My personal definition of a hippy was someone who cared enough about certain issues to stand up and be counted with all the hassles that brings, black lists, police harassment, interment, Before Hippies we thought that everything was taken suitably taken care of by "the establishment!" This obviously not the case especially during the late 60s in America! But here is the crux, did it change anything? Well hard to say we're still being stonewalled, by the same guys, understanding of what we're about is still miscaculated, and many of the problems in society identified during this period remain the same! So not a lot of change there, but it's not for the want of trying!

Jun 11th, 2004, 22:40	#7
jay_m_222 Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Reading, Ma Posts: 117	Quite some interesting conspiracies.....Right everyone is a victim and is getting hooked at gunpoint...I don't even want to get into these ideas. This country is drug dependent because everyone is shunning self reliance and responsibilty and gleefully claiming any disoreder or victimhood they can to justify popping some pills! Trust me, I have had my share of pot, booze, coke....in the past but I never glorified it or thought I was opening my mind etc..or thought the feds were involved....jesus! I am a musician and quite frankly dont need to 'get with it' anymore in order to play music, create or enjoy it. So if that is being a square.....i am cool with it...believe me If you want to stay inside in shoot up heroin all day or smoke some fine weed....go right ahead. I don't care. What irked me in the thread is this glorification of that movement. that the hippies of the 60's were this deep, insightful group.....no.... THEY WERE STONED....

Jun 11th, 2004, 22:43	#8
cyberhippie Account Closed by User's Request Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: the Netherlands Posts: 6,012	Ok !!!

Jun 11th, 2004, 22:46	#10
jay_m_222 Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Reading, Ma Posts: 117	Cyberhippie- Great points. I think Woodstock is a good view of that culture. The promoters that put on the show had this idealistic vision, a nirvana. But reality and the 'dark' side of the culture was also revealed there as well. I saw a documentary about the creators of the concert and they went through hell! Again, I am not trying to villify that whole movement, I just wanted to raise the other side of it. MPOP-you nailed it....Albaruni certainly spent some time judging me (i am a square.....like his dad, and i need to get with it) and the U.S. - We are all on drugs.... We ALL JUDGE! Lets at least try to judge fairly

Jun 11th, 2004, 22:59	#12
jay_m_222 Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Reading, Ma Posts: 117	Hmmm.....is saying that I have an opinion a better term? Yes, I need to express my opinion on issues, places, people, music, movies etc....

Jun 11th, 2004, 23:00	#13
albaruni Posts: n/a	depends on how ..inflexible your opinion is(and I don't know you) and how excitable you are about it being challenged... I know one or two people that are very excitable about opinions contrary to their own(on this site and off).

Jun 11th, 2004, 23:02	#14
cyberhippie Account Closed by User's Request Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: the Netherlands Posts: 6,012	Ok I'll now and steer this meandering back on track!! Whilst in India I read with some suprise that the acid house craze that hit America and Britain in the mid 80's was actually inspired by Goa trance which was something that came about when the California acid tests went to Goa and the musicians of the day started experimenting! I was really suprised to read about this link back to the hippy 60s having always thought that the development of this style of music went in the other direction developed in the West then tinkered with in India to come up with Goa trance. Is this a true representation of how Acid House/dance/Techno came about or the author of the Article slighly askew in his writings????

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