Do you think a lot of us were hippies?

I'm not buying it.

an aversion to drugs,inability to be programmed.I work hard,

Hippies were not interested in studying or in preparing themselves for careers. Droping out and tuning into drugs was the order of the day.

Money is only a need to me, things don't matter, just love.

I'm not buying it. Sorry.

except the shallow selfish nature of society

do you mean ACCEPT? to receive with approval or favor? So you're not accepting that society is shallow and selfish? Because you label the world as being

In a world obsessed with self, materialism and power

.

[desert rat]

Not me I was a young boy in the 60s,

Originally Posted by B-bird

Hippies were not interested in studying or in preparing themselves for careers. Droping out and tuning into drugs was the order of the day.

Wow. You've been caught up in the myth. In fact, many hippies were college students. Most worked (school or jobs) and were productive. What you seem to buy is the tiny subset of hippies who got the media attention. Do some serious research and you'll discover sit-ins at universities among other facts that belie the post-hippie myths. In fact, the movement began on college campuses in opposition to the Vietnam war.

In fact, the movement began on college campuses in opposition to the Vietnam war.

No actually Allen Ginsberg is credited with starting the counterculture and that was in the 50's,The concept actually started as far back as the 40's.

sit-ins at universities

And what about the Human Be-in, protesting California banning the psychedelic drug,LSD.

Originally Posted by B-bird

No actually Allen Ginsberg is credited with starting the counterculture and that was in the 50's,The concept actually started as far back as the 40's.

I guess you had to be there or study it more extensively. The generation before the hippies were "beatniks" (The Beats). Hippies were similar to, but not the same as beatniks. To be sure, there has always been a counterculture subset since time immemorial, long before Ginsburg, Kerouac, and the others, but I was addressing the hippies specifically.

Hippies picked up the counterculture "culture" but it was a specific outgrowth of antiwar sentiment. (For example, a lot of us knew back then that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was fabricated. It just took a few decades for it to become general knowledge.) So we have "antiwar" for the hippies as opposed to anti-militarism for the Beats. Similar, but not the same. The anti-militarism of the Beats became strident anti-war for hippies, entirely due to Vietnam.

Nearly everything is an outgrowth of something earlier. Few things are truly spontaneously unique. Addressing the hippies specifically doesn't deny the Beats or any other counterculture group. Before the Beats were the Bohemians. Before the Bohemians...etc., etc., etc.

[Howla Dark]

People don't seem to realise that the Hippies of the late 60's and 70's didn't start that type of movement. It was around since the early 20th Century. Perhaps it was started before. During the Mazdak movement in Persia in the Middle Ages, with free love and vegetarianism. In the 16th Century was the "Merry Mount" colony of English settlers to the Americas, who danced around may poles and wore little clothing. Some dressed in leaves and flowers. There was Wandervogel in France and Germany in the late 19th century and early 20th who loved nature, paganism, free love, nudity and rejected society.

In a way it's like never new but always around.

[Internal Queries]

i self identify as "hippy" but it's just a general label affixed to certain concepts and ideals that are held close by all styles of people.

the culture began from rejection to the conformists view of the 50's of how one should live their lives. Hatred of hypocrisy,corruption,conformity and authority, which then leads to the rebellion to the draft and the war. Which overall isn't a bad thing. Lets not forget how some treated the returning soldiers. I was there, to pick up my uncle ( only 8 years my senior) to have people make remarks as they passed by us. Where's the LOVE? And where are those hippies today? Working 9-5. All grown up? Their rebellion made for a very tumultuous time. Remember the race riots?

Where there predecessors? Yes

I have to add to the op, it is good you have a heart full of so much love. Born in 76, I am sure your parents were the true hippies.

deleted it, I second thought my post, it wasn't cool. I'm learning.

[Internal Queries]

the media sure played up the rare incidences wherein "hippies" dissed the returning Nam vets as "baby killers". but let's face it... they were killing babies and other assorted unarmed civilians at the behest of the US government. remember The Mỹ Lai Massacre? and it was the first time a war was televised in gore splattered color. quite a shock to the American collective consciousness or more precisely the collective "conscience".

you might note that the government and the media learned a valuable lesson from Viet Nam. not only were the massive worldwide protests against the trumped up, for profit wars on Iraq and Afghanistan virtually ignored by the media but also by "imbedding" journalists in with the military we were only shown what the government wanted us to see. all we saw were those heroic soldiers fighting to save us all from terrorists (iow, killing and maiming and being killed and maimed on the behalf of Big Oil and Military Industrial Complex). the American public was spared the conscience invoking discomfort of actually seeing the bloody horrors our military perpetrated on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. what a shame that the much more valuable lesson of "make love, not war!" wasn't so successfully digested.

you can hate on "hippies" all you want but those courageous youngsters, armed only with flowers, were often savagely beaten by the police, even mercilessly shot down by the National Guard, for exercising their freedom of speech. see Kent State. "hippy punching" is a 55 yr old tradition in America. the status quo always demonizes those who seek to motivate societal change.

the race riots were the fault of the "hippies"? had nothing to do w/ the way black people were/are treated in America?