Wrongplanet.net like a "hippy" heaven

Post Reply New Topic

Sorry, that double posetd.

Wow man, where's the one with cow ???

HEY ! ! Who spilt the bong and didn't clean it up ???

Dooood ... I got da muntcheez sumpn feerce!

Granola, anyone?

I hate hippies.

My parents were hippies, not sure if they are AS though. They seemed into it, but they're pretty genuine and from the 60's hippie generation, not the '70's. If I know anything about the difference, the '70's hippies were the copycats and thus not as genuine.

When I was younger I was into the goth thing in NYC in the '80's. I fit in pretty well because we didn't need to talk much, just look cool and like the cure and what not. We were all pretty monotone and in our own world. For all I know we were all a little AS.

Man I'm out, and the town is dry right now. Guess I'll have a beer and listen to some tunes until something happens. Hope I don't have to wait too long.

My parents weren't hippies... but we did a lot of hippy stuff when we were growing up.
When I left home, I discovered punk...and immersed myself in the subculture until the mid 80's.. when punk...umm... diversified.
Despite the often quoted punk mantra "never trust a hippy", many had a foot in both camps downunder...
(I hitchhiked to the last hippy festival I went to on top of a truck...7 feet to the tip of my 'hawk... leather & studs... riding shotgun on 45 tons of superphosphate...lol)
So... I've been a hippy-punk ever since... ( I look like a hippy now, but I can still only get into extremely energetic music)

"good vibes" means something else these days

I don't know anything much about modern hippies (I thought the rednecks had shot them all by now).

But back in 1980 when I was obsessional about getting the social thing right, they did me a lot of good. Their ethos seemed to be total acceptance of any human being, which contrasted favourably with the cold-hearted ways of "straight" society. For a time they were the only people I could really open up to. There was a commune just down the road with a policy of leaving the door permanently unlocked because they felt they'd rather be burgled than accidentally exclude a needy stranger from their home. Any food brought into the house was common property. Everybody was so incredibly friendly, with no ulterior motives apart from they liked being that way.

But labels can be misleading. Very few of those people would have called themselves hippies. Like myself, if asked, you'd get an answer like "well I'm just me really, a bit of hippie, a bit of anarchist, a bit of socialist, a bit of surrealist, a bit of Reichian, but mainly I'm just me." What they had in common was that they all felt that mainstream society was a dystopian mess that wasn't worthy of their participation, and they were proud to turn its rules upside down and to blow raspberries at conformity. Nor were they wimps - a group of feminists trashed the local porn shop late one night, simply out of principle.

I don't say it was the answer to everything, but I'll never forget what they did for me. They built my self-confidence when the rest of the world didn't give a damn about me. If everybody was like them, my life would be sublime.