Which winds do the old hippies blow in?

[catherine]

Awkward title but anyway... trying to tie in old hippies with the classic Dylan folk song. Oh well.

My question is, in your experience have 60s hippies grown mellower with age, or more cantankerous?

Just wondering, a bit of a silly question, but driven by my growing impatience with a friend of mine.

She was a colleague when we were both doing market research together--she clearly has strong hippie, activist roots and very strong liberal bent. We used to have great discussions, and I really, really like her. She's very genuine about her beliefs, but her beliefs are really rigid. For instance, I was telling her one day that my head was about to explode because I had read Scott Nearing's "Making of a Radical" one week and "The Fountainhead" the next. I asked her if she ever read Ayn Rand, and she started harrumphing about how she would NEVER read Ayn Rand, that capitalist so-and-so... My feeling is, why not just open your mind and challenge your beliefs, and then nestle back into them, if that's what you want? Why just dismiss any POV that differs from your own--and with such hostility??

So, now she's a Facebook friend, and I can barely even blow through her posts without getting annoyed because if she's not calling a Catholic a papist moron, she's calling Mitt Romney a political moron, or she's calling every corporation effin oppressors etc. (She's actually the mean-spirited liberal friend I referenced in the Ann Romney thread).

I've decided to hide her posts because, honestly, it's rubbing me the wrong way, but I'm wondering how many old hippies have gone the ever-the-angry-activist route and how many have just chilled out over the years.

I suspect we have a few aging hippies on this board, so I'm just curious--have your attitudes and ideals stayed the same, or changed over the years?

[ApatheticNoMore]

I think some of the activists are precisely those involved in all local movements towards sustainability etc.. But I'm way too young for this thread :). There's a hippy trend in the younger peeps though ... gen Y and stuff. First you realize everything is messed up (and really in many ways worse than it was for the boomers) then ...

[Gregg]

Not an aging hippie, but I have found the ability to keep some folk's rants invisible on my Facebook wall to be a handy feature.

[JaneV2.0]

I don't think this has anything to do with so-called "hippies." (I've been characterized that way repeatedly, which perplexes me because I'd just as soon face a firing squad as live communally and I love my stuff. I did drive a VW bug for years, so there you go.) I agree with Gregg about "disappearing" anyone who persists in posting annoying messages on Facebook. Which is pretty much everyone, which is why I have no real presence there.

[Tenngal]

I find that one of my "hippie notions" that comes to mind now and then, is how when local law enforcement spends so much time and money on nabbing the local pot growers. I always think "isn't there something more important they should be doing"? I know is it illegal, but it is a natural product, unlike so many more dangerous drugs these days. I say leave the pot smokers and growers alone. Use our limited resources to work on more important issues. Oh, well.

[mtnlaurel]

"isn't there something more important they should be doing"? I know is it illegal, but it is a natural product, unlike so many more dangerous drugs these days. I say leave the pot smokers and growers alone. Use our limited resources to work on more important issues. Oh, well.

Yes, there is something more important they could be doing... going after the Pain Pill traffickers!
If your handle means you're from TN.... it is just eaten up with Pain Pill & Meth crime.
I can hardly stand to read my hometown paper anymore.... so much for my Mayberry memories.

[Rogar]

I think most of the old hippies I know fall into two categories. The first being that they are less globally active in favor of being active locally. I think they burned out banging their heads against the the wall of futility on national issues but still do volunteer work and some activism on local fronts. The second group has ruined their health with substance abuse and doesn't do much at all. Many of my friends and including possibly myself, who were on the edge of the counter culture but not in with both feet have generally found some ways to nudge change forward by working with in the system.

[JaneV2.0]

I have at least one self-described hippie friend who does a lot of community volunteer work--at the animal shelter, the food bank, and for several other causes--much as you describe. I understand why any of us who lived through the turbulent period that produced hippies would be angry and bitter that we're having to fight the same battles all over again that we thought we had won circa 1970. It's hard not to be disheartened.

[Yossarian]

Where is Best these days?

[Gregg]

Where is Best these days?

Reincarnated as ZigZagMan when we moved over here. I think he decided his time might be more enjoyable doing other things, especially avoiding some of the conflict in PP. I feel the same way some days. Heck, I'd join him down there in Tee-jas, but the conversation would put us both right back where we started. Zig, if you're lurking, drop in and say hi.

[catherine]

I think most of the old hippies I know fall into two categories. The first being that they are less globally active in favor of being active locally. I think they burned out banging their heads against the the wall of futility on national issues but still do volunteer work and some activism on local fronts. The second group has ruined their health with substance abuse and doesn't do much at all. Many of my friends and including possibly myself, who were on the edge of the counter culture but not in with both feet have generally found some ways to nudge change forward by working with in the system.

Interesting--I see the same divide--and also I'd ditto what Jane said. As for me, I've always carried the "peace, love, and don't harm the Earth" values in my heart, but basically was not big on rebellion, so that took me out of the free love, substance abuse, and street protests. I've always been kind of mellow, kind of yellow (ok, that's my second lame 60s song reference). Then four kids and a need for money has a way of shifting priorities.

BTW, my Facebook friend wound up responding to a few negative comments from her circle on her Christianity-bashing by deactivating her account. So I didn't have to "hide" her after all. I'm surprised but I was a little disappointed. Even though I started this thread because I was fed up, a small dose of outrage was fun every day.

[HappyHiker]

Guess I'm kind of an old hippy, still mostly living my "less is more" values in the face of ever-increasing consumerism and trying to "be the change I want to see in the world."

It's hard, you know? I fight cynicism almost every day. Back in the day, I/we thought we could help make the world a better place--a greener place.

But with climate change breathing down on us, I wonder what's in store for us as a world, as a people? I wrote on this topic this in my e-book, Falling Through Time. The book, in the end, is hopeful, but also dark, as our human population has been greatly reduced. But the new way of being in the world is quite community-based and democratic.

Still trying to work out the why of our self-destructive behaviors in my mind and to view the glass as half full...keep on truckin', yes?

[ApatheticNoMore]

I understand why any of us who lived through the turbulent period that produced hippies would be angry and bitter that we're having to fight the same battles all over again that we thought we had won circa 1970. It's hard not to be disheartened.

Yea, like the boomers say, and I've been in those conversations, we knew all this in the 70s with "Limits to Growth" and everything. Now I realize those predictions were not entirely accurate, but the overall thrust of resource limits and stuff hmm.

So there's a lot of people on the left thinking "I told you so" and they are just sick of it all, and there's also some people who approach political situations very much from a feeling point of view (note I don't mean irrational - but just maybe they've seen a lot of poverty and so on). So I think that's why the thought of reading Ayn Rand is antethema. :) Now I don't believe in thought crime, so read and think anything, anything at all. But I do care some about what becomes actual policy and all. Yes, yes, I've read plenty of Rand - good points: can be inspirational, has some brave heros that can inspire, our first loyalty IS to ourselves. Bad points: politics, materialism (selfishness always filtered through the materialistic prism), encourages severe emotional repression, lack of awareness that community (and not just one of super-acheivers) is in one's self-interest, stuff pushed off as rational that frankly makes no sense whatsoever (not all of it but some of what she claims is only rational).


Still trying to work out the why of our self-destructive behaviors in my mind and to view the glass as half full...keep on truckin', yes?

thanks, it makes me happy someone is thinking about the why of it all. Now the human race is probably doomed, but there are 7 billion little thought machines out there .... so ..... who knows. :)

[HappyHiker]

Don't give up...a new day is coming...better get ready now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M0r1iSeiHU

[catherine]

Don't give up...a new day is coming...better get ready now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M0r1iSeiHU

Thank you! That was fun.

[Spartana]

I thought that hippies became yuppies who are now boomers. The hippie thing was a bit before my time but it seems like many people who were teens and young adult hippies in the '60s have gone corporate mainstream..... Or maybe that should be anti-anti-establishment ;-)!

[Yossarian]

Heck, I'd join him down there in Tee-jas, but the conversation would put us both right back where we started.

I always figured that even after a spirited debate Best would be willing to kick back and roll a fat one with us.

[Zigzagman]

Reincarnated as ZigZagMan when we moved over here. I think he decided his time might be more enjoyable doing other things, especially avoiding some of the conflict in PP. I feel the same way some days. Heck, I'd join him down there in Tee-jas, but the conversation would put us both right back where we started. Zig, if you're lurking, drop in and say hi.

Hi - I still check the forum but not really interested in "debating" any more. We've had a wonderful Spring this year in the Austin area (after such a bad 2011). All the best to everyone.

Peace