How hippies changed the world
By J. Peder Zane, Staff Writer
The News Observer
Sunday Journal - August 5. 2007
"If you're going to San Francisco/ Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair/ ... For those who come to San Francisco/ Summertime will be a love-in there."
Come they did, as many as 100,000 young people during that Summer of Love. Inspired by Timothy Leary's call to "turn on, tune in, drop out," they flocked to the city's Haight-Ashbury district, where artists, musicians, political progressives and other hippies were reinventing themselves and America through a wide range of ideas suggested by the counterculture's holy troika: sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.
"We had a sense that the adults had ruined things and we could create a new society with new rules, new norms," recalled Barry Melton, lead guitarist for the rock group Country Joe & the Fish. "New norms for families, sex, drugs, religion, race relations. ... And we were going to end that war in Vietnam."
Forty years after the Summer of Love, it's easy to reduce that patchouli-scented time to a swirl of colorfully clad hippies seeking ecstasy through drugs, the groovy vibes of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, and a refrain of stock phrases -- "Question authority," "Flower power," "Tell it like it is" and "Never trust anyone over 30."
Those images and phrases weren't just fashion statements. They had teeth. They were, as historian Theodore Roszak observed, expressions of a radically creative spirit that galvanized "the most ambitious agenda for the reappraisal of cultural values that any society has ever produced."
Those dancing hippies fueled progressive movements -- including feminism, environmentalism and the gay rights movement -- that became mainstream. They defeated the forces of formality -- in fashion, language, human relations -- that helped create a looser, some say less civil, society.
Their far-reaching efforts also led to a slew of unintended consequences including the breakdown of families and communities and, ironically, a strengthening of the capitalist system many considered public enemy No. 1.
On the surface, the hippies seemed like invaders from Mars. Their bells and beads, crazy-quilt clothes, long hair, hipster lingo and drug use were an affront to traditional mores.
The counterculture they were building challenged the nation's Cold War social structures. Yet their ideas took hold because they were drawn from the deepest wells of American history.
"They were part of the anti-authoritarian, live and let live, don't tread on me tradition that goes back to the justifications for the Revolutionary War," said Dennis McNally, a Beat Generation scholar and longtime publicist for the Grateful Dead. "It's a line that can be traced through Henry David Thoreau and Mark Twain, the labor organizer Emma Goldman and many others."
The conformity of the 1950s reinvigorated this radical tradition. During an era of tract homes, "Father Knows Best" and the man in the gray flannel suit, technocrats such as Robert McNamara of Ford Motor Co. -- who would later manage the Vietnam War -- preached the gospel of flow-chart efficiency.
After decades of depression and world war, business and political leaders offered reason, logic, the power of systems. And they delivered a remarkable affluence to the parents of baby boomers (and future hippies) who had grown up amid want and death.
America was the richest and most powerful nation, the leader of the free world.
But the technocrats' vision struck many Americans as cold and soulless. In the late 1940s, they began challenging the status quo.
David Riesman ("The Lonely Crowd," 1950), Paul Goodman ("Growing Up Absurd," 1960) and other scholars confronted the prevailing social values. Publications such as Mad magazine (which debuted in 1952) and Playboy (1953) mocked and defied convention. And movies, especially the gritty film noirs, focused on the dark side of human nature.
The most famous iconoclasts were the Beats, the spiritual godfathers of the hippies, whose stance of searching alienation was most famously articulated by Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" (1956) and Jack Kerouac's novel "On the Road" (1957).
"These people were saying what many of us growing up then felt in our bones," said guitarist Barry Melton, speaking by phone. "That America was a lot different from the nation described to us by our leaders, teachers and parents."
America has always had dissenters. Their critiques might have remained below the radar if not for five developments that suggested that America was defined by hypocrisy and madness, not reason and riches.
First was the specter of nuclear annihilation -- the deep, palpable fear that the world might end tomorrow in a showdown with the Soviet Union -- which haunted the American mind. Our nation's official response, Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), struck many as just that.
Sen. Joseph McCarthy's hunt for Communists seemed to belie the notion that America was the land of the free. More damning was the growing civil rights movement, which challenged laws that subjugated African-Americans. Tests of the hallucinogen LSD in the late 1950s and early 1960s -- whose volunteer test subjects included future counterculture leaders such as novelist Ken Kesey -- put a consciousness-changing substance on the map.
Finally, there was the war in Vietnam, which President Johnson decided to escalate in 1964.
"Our leaders were asking hundreds of thousands of young people to die a half a world away for a cause they couldn't explain and couldn't defend," Melton said. "We began to look for new ways to reinvent our culture and ourselves."
That fiery summer
By 1967 America was a nation under siege. The summer was defined not only by love but also fierce anti-war protests across the nation, and deadly race riots in Detroit and Newark, N.J., In 1967 Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight boxing title for his refusal to join the military. It was also the year when Thurgood Marshall became the first black Supreme Court justice, the National Organization for Women was incorporated and Jimi Hendrix blew minds by setting fire to his guitar at the Monterey Pop festival. And it gave us classic films that challenged conventional mores -- including "The Graduate," "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "Bonnie and Clyde."
San Francisco was the epicenter of this broad movement called the counterculture. But as Time magazine reported that summer, "Hippie enclaves are blooming in every major U.S. city from Boston to Seattle, from Detroit to New Orleans; there is a 50-member cabal in, of all places Austin, Texas.
Hippies were even in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. Universities -- whose student bodies nearly tripled, to about 7 million, between 1950 and 1967 -- became hotbeds for radical ideas.
The counterculture encompassed a wide range of ideas. They included calls for specific political reforms but also reflected a belief that the system was so misguided and corrupt that politics were beside the point.
The glue that held these strains together was the passionate conviction that the mainstream values of post-war America thwarted human fulfillment. Members of the counterculture wanted the freedom to chart their own path -- to decide for themselves how they would work, love, dress, talk and worship. As Robert Kennedy told Time magazine in 1967, "They want to be recognized as individuals, but individuals play a smaller and smaller role in society. This is a formidable and forbidding arrangement."
The counterculture never achieved its grandest visions -- to end racism, imperialism and war, to replace capitalist society with an America built on ecstasy and love. But it did reintroduce robust individualism to American life.
"The hippie revolution shook the establishment of traditional society," said Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University in Montreal. "But instead of replacing it with a new type of community, it ushered in an era of robust individualism marked by the freedom to do as one pleased."
The Me Decade of the 1970s was less a betrayal than a fulfillment of '60s ideals. "It's only when the hippies' personal quest for freedom merges with mass consumerism in the 1970s that those ideas take root across the country," Troy said. "Although Ronald Reagan was anathema to many counterculture figures, he succeeded by aligning their ideas about personal freedom with modern conservatism."
Looking back on the Summer of Love, Barry Melton says he has few regrets.
"When I look at the deceitful war in Iraq and global warming, I wonder if we changed anything at all" he said. "But people are flawed and progress is slow and we did make the world a little more humane, a little more fun."
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels]
6th August 2007 02:09 PM
pdog
todays hippie is a burning man going, manipulative asshole yuppie type.
Sad...
6th August 2007 02:09 PM
gimmekeef
The only thing these people are protesting now...is the drop in the Dow Jones.....Shallow bullshit artists at best....misguided assholes at worst...
6th August 2007 02:16 PM
Joey
" Finally, there was the war in Vietnam, which President Johnson decided to escalate in 1964.
"Our leaders were asking hundreds of thousands of young people to die a half a world away for a cause they couldn't explain and couldn't defend,"
What happened to the truth ?
What happened to the dream ?
What happened to all of that lovely hippie shit ?!
( Rooster Crows in the Distance }
Joey Cong
............
[cc:ss]
[Edited by Joey]
6th August 2007 07:51 PM
Mel Belli
"They were part of the anti-authoritarian, live and let live, don't tread on me tradition that goes back to the justifications for the Revolutionary War," said Dennis McNally, a Beat Generation scholar and longtime publicist for the Grateful Dead.
Good Lord, how do you unpack the inaccuracies of that statement? The Minutemen (the original ones, not the band) and "live and let live"? Are you serious?
6th August 2007 08:02 PM
glencar
Good Lord! This week's Newsweek is yet another issue with a huge global warming/climate change propaganda piece. I shall skip the huge screed & turn the pages to the exciting Lohan news in the back.
6th August 2007 08:28 PM
fireontheplatter
quote:glencar wrote:
Good Lord! This week's Newsweek is yet another issue with a huge global warming/climate change propaganda piece. I shall skip the huge screed & turn the pages to the exciting Lohan news in the back.
i'll come back in another 5-10 years and find you belly up from severe sun stroke...then tell me we haven't a problem.
we are using this planet up..no one in particular is to blame. the girls are looking cuter than ever and god knows they are washing their clothes one piece at a time, wasting water...we are cutting down the rain forrest like nobodys business...take a look at all the fucking junk mail you get. we all need to recycle. i kind of understand why you would think this...it may be because you live in a place of madness and everything just wizzes by in the blink of an eye and you think nothing of it, so why bother.
i ain't dissing you man...just think about it.
i remember back in the 80's here in new paltz it used to be freaking freezing here from mid nov until mid march...ff a bit, but last winter we had but 2 maybe 3 snowstorms, and they quicky melted.
don't think twice...its not alright. we are all fucking the planet up one by one
just some personal observations man....don't bite my head off
6th August 2007 08:34 PM
pdog
Pave The Planet
We can offest carbon emmisions with the money collected from parking meters...
6th August 2007 08:49 PM
glencar
You guys'll have to turn off yer PC's & save the planet. I drive a hybrid which has fewer emissions & uses less gas, I recycle cans, bottles, plastic containers, newspapers AND plastic bags, I compost stuff & now I'm going to cut back on my mail by unsubscribing to Newsweek. Yes, we all can do more!
7th August 2007 11:00 AM
Maxlugar
We see this:
quote:Joey wrote:
What happened to the truth ?
What happened to the dream ?
What happened to all of that lovely hippie shit ?!
( Rooster Crows in the Distance }
Joey Cong
............
[cc:ss]
[Edited by Joey]
We think this:
7th August 2007 12:14 PM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:gimmekeef wrote:
.....Shallow bullshit artists at best....misguided assholes at worst...
You talking about the Bush Administration?
7th August 2007 06:41 PM
Joey
< ---- Is anybody out there currently weeding ?!
............
[Edited by Joey]
8th August 2007 10:55 AM
gimmekeef
quote:Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
You talking about the Bush Administration?
There are no more words left to describe that bankrupt group of parasites.......
8th August 2007 11:03 AM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:gimmekeef wrote:
There are no more words left to describe that bankrupt group of parasites.......
"I'M YOUR GIRL."
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels]
8th August 2007 11:40 AM
gimmekeef
Hillary is unelectable and her.."Lez Me Be President" slogan is not working.....
8th August 2007 12:08 PM
Joey
< --- anybody weeding today ?!
8th August 2007 12:23 PM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:gimmekeef wrote:
Hillary is unelectable and her.."Lez Me Be President" slogan is not working.....
I don't know about that. Who can beat her? I won't vote for her but I think she'll be the next President. And God only knows what she'll do with all this "Executive Priviledge On Steroids" that Bush will leave behind.
8th August 2007 01:14 PM
gimmekeef
Just a hunch...but I think by years end the polling numbers will show that Thompson or Guliani are in a slight lead.Hillary and Obama will be out of steam and the dems turn for a late run by Gore....Course wouldnt be my last hair brained thought not to work out!
8th August 2007 01:14 PM
glencar
51% of the population says that it won't vote for her, under any circumstance. This is before a general campaign begins in which she can be made to apopear ugly & dishonest. And then debates wherein she'll be seen as a blowhard a la algore. This'll be a fun election. It's important that the GOP selects someone competent yet lovable.
8th August 2007 01:19 PM
gimmekeef
A competent lovable republican?....hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Okay I give up?...Who??????????????????????
8th August 2007 01:28 PM
Riffhard
quote:glencar wrote:
51% of the population says that it won't vote for her, under any circumstance. This is before a general campaign begins in which she can be made to appear ugly & dishonest. And then debates wherein she'll be seen as a blowhard a la algore. This'll be a fun election. It's important that the GOP selects someone competent yet lovable.
LOL! C'mon Blue! She is ugly and dishonest!! She is dishonestly ugly! Hello,Rose Law Firm records?! They just happened to show up on her desk in her private study covered in her fingerprints one week after the sopeana expired?!?!?! Yeah right! Travel Gate? Whitewater? Vince Foster?
She was the first lady in the most corrupt administration in US history and she was neck deep in almost every fucking scandal that Bubba and Co. perpetrated!! Yet these asshat Dems love to throw out this "culture of corruption" bullshit at Republicans! Too god damned funny for words! More administration officials were charged,indicted,and convicted during the Bubba reign than in any other administration in US history,and now these mental midgets expect us to vote for this dishoent power hungry bitch?! Hypocrisy knows no bounds when it comes to the liberal Dems in Washington!
People can hate Bush all they want,but there is not one single shred of evidence that he is dishonest! Hell even that fat fuck Ted Kennedy has stated that fact. Yet with Hillary there is documented evidence of her blatant lies and deceptions.
Riffy
8th August 2007 01:41 PM
glencar
Relax Riffy! I think we agree about her chances being a BIG FAT ZERO!
8th August 2007 01:49 PM
Joey
quote:Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
I don't know about that. Who can beat her?
.
NOBODY !!!!!!!!!
" Except maybe Al Gore Ronnie ! "
Joey Cong !
8th August 2007 01:51 PM
glencar
Lunch?
8th August 2007 01:51 PM
glencar
Where's Baby Steelie?
8th August 2007 01:52 PM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:Riffhard wrote:
People can hate Bush all they want,but there is not one single shred of evidence that he is dishonest!
Well a good place to start might be the Downing Street Memo.
8th August 2007 01:53 PM
glencar
Don't be a cocksucker!
8th August 2007 02:16 PM
Riffhard
quote:glencar wrote:
Relax Riffy! I think we agree about her chances being a BIG FAT ZERO!
Oh I know. I'm not even pissed about it Blue. I just find each and every Hillary "Cankles" Clinton supporter to be laughably unread in her history or her blatant lies and hypocrisy! If the Republican canidates had the media on their side and the sheer weight of Hillary's scandals were ever actually reported on she'd be sunk. Alas the media has already crowned her the rightful heir apparent.
Riffy
8th August 2007 05:00 PM
Joey
quote:glencar wrote:
Where's Baby Steelie?
My Baby Steel Magnolia pulled a " Keith Moon '78 " last April during a really Nasty Late Spring Cold Front .
Why ?!
WHY ?!!!!!!!
Has anybody here seen my old friend Steelie?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he's gone.
Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he's gone.
Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked 'round and he's gone.
Didn't you love the things that they stood for?
Didn't they try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free
Some day soon, and it's a-gonna be one day ...
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walk up over the hill,
With Steelie, Martin and John.
8th August 2007 05:25 PM
glencar
quote:Joey wrote:
My Baby Steel Magnolia pulled a " Keith Moon '78 " last April during a really Nasty Late Spring Cold Front .
Why ?!
WHY ?!!!!!!!
Has anybody here seen my old friend Steelie?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he's gone.
Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he's gone.
Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked 'round and he's gone.
Didn't you love the things that they stood for?
Didn't they try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free
Some day soon, and it's a-gonna be one day ...
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walk up over the hill,
With Steelie, Martin and John.
Does this mean he's still doing drugs? I miss the guy & hope for the best.
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