The Sixties and Hippie Stuff.

I'm assuming that most people who visit my site are familiar with the sterotypical "hippie": long dirty hair, unshaven, ratty clothes, drug addicts, immoral, anti-social and definitely Un-Amerikan. But I wish to assert that this stereotype, and many like it are not accurate. In this page I have collected a series of articles, qoutes and links about hippies and the "counter culture". The 'point' of all this is to affirm that "hippies" and the culture they were trying to create was one that was vital, neccesary,positive, and directly related to many basic traditions and experiences of humanity. I would also assert that their influence was an important one, and that it can still be felt today.

"Hippies are survivors, there's no doubt about that."

"Sometimes I forget about hippies, I don't see them much in the Big Apple, All I knew about hippies before the Rainbow Gathering was that they had bad hair, wore bad clothes, and listened to bad music. It's been 30 years, hasn't it? But exist they do, and I tell you, I think when they finally drop the bomb and the smoke clears at ground zero, the hippies will still be doing bong hits with the rats and roaches, and saying "I told you so."

--Chris Simunck, High Times.

" The Deadheads are doing the dance of life, and this, I would say, is the answer to the atom bomb! " -- Joseph Campbell at a seminar with the Dead 1986

In February of 1985, Campbell had attended a Grateful Dead concert and this link will take you to an account of his comments from that experience.

"I regard science fiction as the entry drug into the psychedelic world. If by nine, ten, eleven or twelve, you're reading science fiction, then you're probably lost to normality."

-Terence McKenna.

The word Hippy has many connotations, and many associations.Ask fifty different people what a hippy is and your likely to get fifty different definitions. Dirty, lazy, drug addict, immoral, sex fiend, wears long hair and beat up clothes, listens to the Grateful Dead, and so on. To my mind almost none of these definitions are accurate.

This is a an entry from my journal, dated August 15, 1995. In it I discuss what being a hippy means to me.

I guess I'm still trying to define what I believe and why I believe it. M.Scott Peck says that the way to holiness is in questioning everything. One of the maxims of the Sixties was, 'Question authority'. Anyone who knows me knows that I have an affection for anything related to the sixties or hippies. To me being a hippy means a personalized search for values, a sense of community, intellectual pursuits, an appreciation of art, music, theatre, and other creative expressions, a search for peace, reconciliation and justice for all people, a sense of responsibility, to the larger world community, to children, and to future society.

The original "hippy" movement largely ignored most of these concerns, but today many people who choose to call themselves hippies are comitted to these ideals. (Or at least give them lip service!)

In trying to redefine my values and my world, I continually find myself returning to the hippies. I recently re-read "The Summer of Love", "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test", and "Glimpses". All of these books described an experience, a search for new values, a shared experience that was almost mystical in nature, and a transcending of those experiences and the founding of a new lifestyle.

One of the criticisms most often lobbed at the hippies in the sixties, was that they had no goals, no defining values, or any real directon at all. But this is the way almost all religions, and social movements begin. Not with a predetermined course of action, or a predecided set of values, but they are the product of a shared experience.

The New Testament era church began in much the same way. Jesus never spoke of theology, even in biblical texts, as we know it. Neither did most of the writers of the New Testament. Theology as a study, or as a rigid system of beliefs and dogmas, seems to have developed centuries later. So how did this early sect, begin? What bound it together, and allowed it to become the force it is today? The Experiences! A sense of community, of belonging, being part of something new, something divine!

A friend of mine once said that she had attended a Grateful Dead concert, not because she liked the music, but because of the sense of community she experienced among heads. I am sure that most people currently associated with the Hippies and Deadheads would describe similar experiences.

So to sum up. Being a hippy to me means, a shared experience, personal transformation, working to achieve peace and justice not only in the world but in your heart as well. It means questioning everything, and educating yourself, thinking for yourself and not bowing to the conventions of the status qou. It means a personalized search for values. Just because you wear a tie-dye, or do drugs, does not make you a hippy!

By Rob Clark.

The following is an excerpt from a conversation with Huston Smith.

" MISHLOVE: Had you thought about the relationship between mysticism and drugs prior to your encounters with Leary and Huxley? SMITH: Well, only academically, in that I had read descriptions, also Huxley's in The Doors of Perception, and as he points out there, phenomenologically, which is to say descriptively, if you match descriptions of the experience, they are indistinguishable. I actually conducted an experiment on that in which I took snippets or paragraphs from classic mystical experiences, and then descriptions of experiences under the psychedelics which were mystical. Of course not all experiences under those have that character, but those that did. And then I shuffled them up and gave them to people who were knowledgeable about mysticism, and asked them to sort them in what they thought -- MISHLOVE: Which came from the real mystics and which came from the drug users. SMITH: Exactly. And there was no reliability in their predictions. MISHLOVE: That sounds similar to a more recent piece of work I know Lawrence LeShan did, where he took statements of mystics and statements of physicists and compared them, and they seemed almost indistinguishable as well. SMITH: That's right. I'd like to add one other thing. So phenomenologically, which again means simply descriptively, one cannot tell the difference. But I think I would want to say that that's not the only dimension, because religion is not simply an experience; religion is a way of life. And experiences come and go, but quality of life is what religion is concerned with. So one has to ask also, not only do they feel the same, but is their impact on the life the same? MISHLOVE: Well, I think especially now that we can look back after twenty years from the original psychedelic experiments of that type, you can see distinct differences between psychedelic cults and real deep religious traditions. SMITH: That's right. So I think it's important that, having touched on this subject, we not leave the impression that the two are identical in every respect. Simply descriptively they are indistinguishable."

HUSTON SMITH, Ph.D. The Psychology of Religious Experience.

"Americans in the Nineties don't have the political language to advocate their own desires. "It ain't nobody's business if I do" is an excepted posture of culture but not of politics. Culture is vulgar, sexy, and wild. People don't know how to politically defend their enjoyment of hip hop, Tarantino, Viagra, marijuana, and "South Park," but they vote their opposition to fundamentalist cultural ayotallahs day in and day out with their dollars and their remotes. That earlier revolution, the revolution of the '60s, had many faults. But the genius of the hip Left sixties was that it resolved the tension between altruism and desire by enclosing the erotic, the atavistic, and the visionary within a philosophy of humanism, unifying the personal and political under an ideal of liberation. By projecting a Party that's *having a party*, a party at play in the media apocalypse, we can seduce the alienated, irreverent, unregistered, and unbelievable into joining together with us, and while they're seduced, we can steal their undies and design a new American flag, forged not in toil, blood, sweat and tears but soiled by the juices which leak forth from a noveau body politic confused and yet striving toward pubescence and thinking of Leonardo DiCaprio."

From Revolution® Part 1, by R.U. Sirius.

Oh how I yearn for the euphoric splendor that envelopes me as I dance to the rapture of crazy fingers and open my eyes to only get lost in the sea of smiling faces, the image a mirror of our tranquility... There is nothing more kind than a gathering of deadheads, to feel the vibes, so kind, to dance to the drums, to be free and happy..to be.... The most beautiful words ever spoken to me was when my boyfriend and I went out to eat at a pizza place, and our 2 five year old children ran ahead of us to go on a ride, when we went to gather them later to eat, the girl running the ride said she wondered who their parents were; because they were the HAPPPIEST children she ever saw, she said of course every child smiles to be there and ride, but that our children had a special glow..... I will never forget my first show... and I will never see the world through the same eyes.... I am forever changed, for I found my place in this big crazy world, I can think of nothing better to do but to be a part of a beautiful wonderful gathering of such kind giving free spirits. The most beautiful thing in this world is to be surrounded by deadheads, hippies, or whatever you want to call them, we are anyone and everywhere, it is you and it is me or the person behind the counter, or the bus driver you see everyday, or the lawyer on a case, or the boy in school, we are what we are, call it whatever you want.....we just are...... we wish you all much love and happiness, have a kind day, drop us a line....and send us your thought, poetry, stories, artwork, or whatever else.....- at Corey-Annette@prodigy.net

Original source Hippyland Hippy magazine..

Stop the drug-info ban!

Community Lifestyles.

Articles about "Hippies"

Hippies fostering the mentally disturbed

"Straight from the Sixties: What Conservatives owe the Decade They Hate,"
Ronald Reagan v. the hippies
Native Americans The First Hippies?
Where have all the hippies gone?
Runaways, Hippies, and Marihuana:American Journal of Psychiatry Vol 126, Nov 5, 1969, 717-720 by Joshua Kaufman; James R. Allens, MD; Louis Jolyon West, MD..