Context and Responses - The Hippies

Excerpts from Time Magazine

[Americans who were young in the 1960s influenced the course of the decade as no group had before.]

(January 6, 1967)

The young have already staked out their own minisociety, a congruent culture that has both alarmed their elders and, stylistically at least, left an irresistible impression on them. No Western metropolis today lacks a discotheque or espresso joint, a Mod boutique or a Carnaby shop. No transistor is immune from rock 'n' roll, no highway spared the stutter of Hondas. There are few Main Streets in the world that do not echo to the clop of granny boots, and many are the "grannies" who now wear them. What started out as distinctively youthful sartorial revolt drainpipe-trousered men, pants-suited or net-stockinged women, long hair on male and female alike--has been accepted by adults the world over.

The young seem curiously unappreciative of the society that supports them. "Don't trust anyone over 30," is one of their rallying cries. Another, "Tell it like it is," conveys an abiding mistrust of what they consider adult deviousness.

Sociologists and psychologists call them "alienated" or "uncommitted." In fact, the young today are deeply involved in a competitive struggle for high grades, the college of their choice, a good graduate school, a satisfactory job--or, if need be, for survival in Vietnam. Never have they been enmeshed so early or so earnestly in society. Yet they remain honestly curious and curiously honest.

Despite their tolerance of quixotic causes and idiosyncratic roles, the young reflect--more accurately than they might care to admit--many of the mainstream currents in society at large. In 1966, the young American became vociferously skeptical of the Great Society. Though he retains a strong emotional identification with the deprived and spurned citizens of his own and other societies, he recognizes that the civil rights revolution, in which he was an early hero at the barricades, has reached a stage at which his own involvement is no longer vital. And, as a letter to the President signed by 100 student leaders across the nation showed last week, he has become increasing perturbed by the war.

[Youthful Americans protested the rigidity and elitism of their universities, and through their actions they expressed the frustration, rage and alienation felt by many of the young about racial inequality, social injustice, the Vietnam War and the economic and political constraints of conventional life and work.]

(July 7, 1967)

The hippies have emerged on the U.S. scene in about 18 months as a wholly new subculture, a bizarre permutation of the middle-class American ethos from which it evolved. Hippies preach altruism and mysticism, honesty, joy and nonviolence. They find an almost childish fascination in beads, blossoms and bells, blinding strobe lights and ear-shattering music, exotic clothing and erotic slogans. Their professed aim is nothing less than the subversion of Western society by "flower power" and force of example.

Although that sounds like a pipe-dream, it conveys the unreality that permeates hippiedom, a cult whose mystique derives essentially from the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. Unlike other accepted stimuli, from nicotine to liquor, the hallucinogens promise those who take the "trip" a magic-carpet escape from reality in which perceptions are heightened, senses distorted, and the imagination permanently bedazzled with visions of teleological verity.

The key ethical element in the hippie movement is love--indiscriminate and all-embracing, fluid and changeable, directed at friend and foe alike. SUPERZAP THEM ALL WITH THE LOVE! proclaims a sign in Los Angeles' Sans Souci Temple, a hippie commune.

Today, 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. There are outposts in Paris and London, New Delhi and Katmandu, where American hippies trek the "hashish trail" to get cheap but potent hallucinogens and lessons in Buddhist love.

They are predominantly white, middle-class, educated youths, ranging in an age from 17 to 25 (though some as old as 50 can be spotted). Overendowed with all the qualities that make their generation so engaging, perplexing and infuriating, they are dropouts from a way of life that to them seems wholly oriented toward work, status and power. They scorn money--they call it "bread"--and property, and have found, like countless other romantics from Rimbaud to George Orwell, that it is not easy to starve.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the hippie phenomenon is the way it has touched the imagination of the "straight" society that gave it birth. Hippie slang has already entered common usage and spiced American humor. Department stores and boutiques have blossomed out in "psychedelic" colors and designs that resemble animated art nouveau. The bangle shops in any hippie neighborhood cater mostly to tourists, who on summer weekends often outnumber the local flora and fauna.

San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district--a throbbing three-eights of a far-from-square-mile--is the vibrant epicenter of the hippie movement. Fog sweeps past the gingerbread houses of "The Hashbury," shrouding the shapes of hirsute, shoeless hippies huddled in doorways, smoking pot, "rapping" (achieving rapport with random talk), or banging beer cans in time to ubiquitous jukebox rhythms.

A major new development in the hippie world is the "rural commune," some 30 of which now exist from Canada through the U.S. to Mexico. There, nature-loving hippie tribesmen can escape the commercialization of the city and attempt to build a society outside of society.

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