Aquarian Afternoon

Hippie chic -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
I grew up in a transitional time -- a little too young for the '60's hippie movement and too old to really appreciate a lot of today's popular culture (still not into hip hop). As a UT freshman in 1975, I wanted desperately to be a hippie. This was in spite of the fact that the whole movement was mainstream and passé by that point. Also, I had an Air Force retiree dad who couldn't tolerate his youngest son looking like a pot head. So alas, I allowed my hippiedom to be squelched.

What exactly is a hippie? The American incarnation is as recent as 1965 (when the New York Times first used the term hippie in an article), although the concept of peace-loving non-conformity goes as far back as Jesus, Buddha or St. Francis of Assisi. Even here in America, there was a group in the early 1900's known as Der Wandervogel -- a communal group of German immigrants who promoted health food and looked down on crass materialism. The word hippie comes from hipster and that word is only as recent as the 1940's. Just prior to the 1960's, we had the "Beat Generation" of the '50's, championed by maverick poets and writers like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Ginsberg was best known for his poem Howl and Kerouac was known for On the Road written like a personal journal. Both men promoted the concepts of personal and sexual freedom -- dramatic ideas for the fifties.

The full-on hippie movement came to us in the mid 60's and was probably a socially organic response to things like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War and the dull, programmed sameness of American suburbs like Levittown. We were a pugilistic, materialistic society on the brink -- the hippie movement just might have saved us from our vacuous, vapid and hell-bent selves. Hippies questioned everything -- middle class values, nuclear weapons, polluting industries, eating meat and many other American traditions. Hippies also promoted mind expansion through psycho-active drugs and alternative religions. To a buttoned-down Methodist from Midland, this might all seem shocking but in retrospect it seems much like a cure for what ailed such a blinders-on society. Not to say we should all be hippies, but it might just be that they opened our minds and our eyes to some more constructive ideas.

The implicit idealism of the hippie movement was short-lived. Pragmatism and Idealism can't be dance partners for very long, and pragmatism usually prevails. San Francisco became overrun with homeless people, seeking the "free stores" and handouts that happened mostly in 1967's Summer of Love. A woman was stabbed to death at 1969's Altamont Concert (which featured the Rollins Stones). Students were shot by the National Guard at a 1970 Kent State protest and numerous rock luminaries succumbed to drug overdoses (Rock and Roll Heaven welcomed Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix among many others). Some hippies were being tracked by the FBI's COINTELPRO although as a group, hippies tended toward expression through lifestyle rather than strident political involvement. Still, the movement had lost much of its steam by the early 1970's.

Something else happened too, which is a credit to the hippie movement and a blessing to the world. America listened to the music -- much of the counter culture message was heard and became a part of our mainstream world. Our society became more open-minded. LGBT people have more freedom to live openly and young couples can live together without fear of ostracism. Religious and cultural diversity are more accepted -- diversity is a mantra of most companies and city councils. Health food which was once the domain of liberal fanatics is now a large-scale, profitable business for companies like Whole Foods.

I can imagine some friends and relatives who would pale at the idea of gay, American Buddhists eating Kashi cereal with oats and drinking green tea. I'm hoping that these friends and relatives will someday open their hearts and minds to the Aquarian Age, which is now in its middle age. When students and protestors levitated the Pentagon in 1967, they chanted, "The whole world is watching". I think in some sense they did levitate the Pentagon and the whole world was watching. In spite of what you might think about how the Vietnam War was resolved, it's good that hippies gave us a "none of the above" option for our conduct of foreign policy and conduct of life in general.

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