But, today is of a different tone: "Those darn hippies."
I've mentioned "Happy Days" before. As a television show, it was a 1970's flashback to the 50's as... a better time period. I wont go into a lot of detail here, but after world war 2, there were a lot of men coming back to America to restart their lives... You had the baby boom. You had the creation of the GI Bill. At its inception, the GI Bill had FAR greater reach than today, helping to create a thriving middle class in this country, when prior, there was not much. Idealism was at its penacle. You had the patriarchal "nuclear" family, where dad worked outside the home and mom stayed home (like June Cleaver?) to nurture and raise the children. These are the days when Rock N Roll and Elvis twisting his knees seemed riskee'. The days when you rarely saw a scene on tv of a bedroom, let alone a bed scene. Remember, when they showed Lucy and Ricky Ricardo in their bedroom, they slept in separate beds. This is percieved as a social and economic golden age, where morality was high and each and everyman could support an entire family on his own.
But something happened. Who are the hippies? The hippies, are the kids who grew up in the 1950's, and became teens and 20-somethings during the 60's. Radical social change is understanding to see during a tumultuous time period, but, from the relative calm and prosperity of the 50's, came a generation of teens who, thoroughly and explicitly rejected the culture, the identity, the goals... the expectations of their parents. It wasn't so much a different culture, but a rejection of culture. Counter culture. Anti-culture. It could probably be summed up in one picture.
Kids who lived in the peace, safety and tranquility of the 1950's... grew up to reject the conservative and (in their minds) selfish ideals of their parents. It was a radical rethinking of the American experience. Materialism was being rejected. Do we really need to work a 9 to 5 doing something we dont enjoy? Should we spend our lives separated, on idle pursuits? Do money and material possesions outweigh the joy of community and fellowship? What exactly do we gain from the house and the car? Status? Do we need status? Do we even want status? But where did it begin?
The hippie movement, evolving from the Beatnik movement, can not be separated from the drug movement. And though marijuana was of course a mainstay... when you think of the 1960's and drugs... you must think about LSD.
Lysergic acid diethylamide had been around since the late 1930's, but in the early 1960's, the United States government decided to do a little research. During the Cold War, LSD was tested by the CIA for its possible usefulness in interrogations, and mind control. Two men had a huge impact on the expansion of LSD in America. One being Alfred Hubbard, who worked directly in several different professional experiments on the usefullness of LSD. The other being, Harvard professor Dr Timothy Leary, who conducted his own on-campus experiments with LSD with students. Both men, particulary Leary (who would end up on in jail later when LSD became illegal) did their part to spread the experience of LSD trips with as many people who were willing to go. And undoubtedly, it took Leary to Haite-Ashbury.
Haite-Ashbury, San Francisco is the home of the hippie movement. The evolution from the Beatniks. If the 60's counter-culture, best described as ANTI-culture, was an earthquake, then Haite-Ashbury would be the epicenter. Here to liberal free thinking San Francisco, came white teenagers from all over the country. These were not kids from broken and destitute homes. Regular kids. Teens and twenties... who had a radically different view of their peronsal reality. And the LSD was their catalyst. It was all about community. Here is where the theory of the commune originated. People living together in a simpler context than current society dictates.
And of course, there were parties. But, it wasn't about money... in fact, a lot of the drugs were free or near free at the time. For the true hippies, the drugs were not an end into themselves, like in the 1970's, however, the drug "trips" were a way to get to a clearer understanding, of what reality was supposed to be.
While it is true that the hippies were NOT active in politics, not even liberal politics, but rejected them as a whole, I believe it can be said, that their hyper-liberal views did bring a different understanding to the table, than what would have been possible in the 1950's. There were a lot of groups that were told to "shut up" in the 1950's, and (being the main reason I love the 1960's) these different groups now had a voice, and perhaps even more importantly, they had an audience. As mentioned before, materialism was rejected. Hippies had thrift stores that gave out clothes. There were people who gave out food. What you wore didn't matter. Being apart of something bigger than yourself was all that was important.
And did i mention the parties? No surprise that another 60's movement, the sexual revolution, would overlap. And you can't have a sexual revolution without a feminist revolution. A feminist rethinking. The way men viewed women, and the way women looked at themselves had to change. The acid trip was supposed to be intellectually stimulating, but noone hid the fact that it was definately sexually stimulating as well. The "nuclear family" was being challenged by hippies who didn't feel the pressure of monogamy. They didn't feel the pressure of conservatism. Why should we be confined to a sexual expression with one person? Shouldn't it be up to each individual how they chose to express their love and affection? This would be a radical departure from the June Cleaver stay at home mom. To show the real life application of this... the divorce rate DOUBLED from 1958 to 1970, going from one quarter... to one half of couples ending in divorce... just in the span of 12 years. There would be real consequences to the decisions people were making.
Two other rejections were not just sexual rules and roles... but also religion and everyday living. People left for communes. Again, true hippies were not political. They weren't working with the college liberals, they infuriated them. They weren't trying to fix society. They were leaving it. Be it, in spirit, like those in Haite-Ashbury... or in a more literal sense. Though it would become problematic and impractical for most, people left the city for their communes. Where they would all do their part to be self-sufficient outside the bounds of normal American society. And their drugs also exposed them to different ways of thinking... not just of the physical realm, but also of the spiritual realm. A lot of Eastern mysticism was experimented with during this time. Look at the Beatles when they first came out, and look at the Beatles in the mid 60's. They look like different people. They ARE different people. They could afford to go to Asia, and seek out direct contact with Eastern religion, while others sought it through other means.
The true hippie movement was not happening throughout the country. It started as a cultural fire in San Francisco, and unintentionally, as criticism of the movement grew, it gave exposure to those, in other parts of the country, small town and rural American kids, who would otherwise have no firsthand knowledge of what their teenage Californian counterparts were engaging in. But they did come. And they came in droves. One of the first problems with Haite-Ashbury, which led to some disillusionment (crime and povery)... was the fact that the demands due to the number of peoples, could not be supported properly by the small capacity of the area. Thats when the poverty and homelessness crept into San Francisco. And another thing that came, even more dangerous... heroine.
"Make love not war." The counter-culture was grossly against the war in Vietnam. And as the late 60's progressed... as the bodies kept coming... as the war in 'Nam got worse... as hippies drafted were forced to go to war... it seemed as if the idealistic peace-loving hope of the acid trip... was beginning to fade. Add to that disillusionment of the original dream, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr... people who gave hope of a radically different world. The hippies were trying to elevate to a different reality, but that reality was not here. They kept coming back down to this earth. And it seemed like the news got bleaker each time.
But what truly caused the downfall of the hippie movement? There were three main factors.
First would be Charles Manson. While Woodstock was going on, and trying to recapture what was so good about the initial outpouring of the movement, Charles Manson was back in California materializing the conservatives worst fears of the drug culture and movement. Manson was the conservative "I told you so." Though, those from San Franciso, claim he wasn't a real hippie, and although he already had a violent criminal record, from the mass media perspective... it fed into the perception that mind altering drugs would lead otherwise rationale people to upspeakable, and uncontrollable violence. The gruesome nature of the killings, one person left with a fork stuck inside their bodies, only helped to sensationalize the stories.
The second would be an West Coast Rolling Stone concert that followed the relative success of Woodstock. A biker group, known as the Hells Angels, were hired to do the security. During the concert, there was an altercation, and a black man was stabbed to death, by the Hells Angels. Another public relations nightmare, for the once peaceful, loving drug culture.
The nail in the coffin, fittingly, in 1970... was the death of the three J's. Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix... all drug taking musicians... all dead from drug related overdoses... all in the year 1970... all at the age of 27 years old. Three musical giants dying from drugs... all in the span of 6 months. The size of that type of spotlight can not be avoided. The shift from a safe, existential experiment to expand the mind and learn... became a dangerous, deadly, mind altering hallucinogen... which could end your life.
It wasn't fun or funny anymore... drugs were serious. The party, literally and metaphorically speaking... was over. I wouldn't have wanted to live through it... but, man, I love the 60's.
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