A Viable Hippie Movement in 2008

Airship's POD brings up an interesting situation: Utah survivalists and young, urban liberals united to fight surveillance. Certainly a different emerging counterculture.

It's true, but not without some tangential precedence. Consider environmentalism and attempts in the 60s at communes. Learning to live sustainably and shrink one's "footprint" is a growing concern. An ATL youth movement could easily focus on this.

It reminds me of Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels book, specifically attempts at hippies to identify with the biker gang. They had the drugs in common, and to some extent anti-social behavior, but the hippies never got that they were nationalistic as hell and generally reactionary.

Hippies had to learn to live with grumpy neighbors, so could this new movement.
 
Unlike the sixties, there is no longer a sharp generation gap (of values) between college students and their parents. A new counterculture, based on a movement against Big Brother, will attract people of all ages, including some of the original hippies nearing retirement age.
 
Unlike the sixties, there is no longer a sharp generation gap (of values) between college students and their parents. A new counterculture, based on a movement against Big Brother, will attract people of all ages, including some of the original hippies nearing retirement age.


And I strongly believe that I'm one of them. We're out there. Believe it.

Bobindelaware
 
Okay, this has always interested me, so I figured I'd subject myself to posting outside my home territory of ASB.

We all know who the hippies were. We also know, most of us, how they fell apart. So, tell me, would it be possible to have a viable hippie movement in 2008? Not a couple of guys living in communes, I mean a movement still in the Summer of Love.

Many teenagers today are pseudo-hippies, I think. After all, a lot of teenagers engage in free love[sex];), drugs, practice New Age, and have ultra liberal viewpoints.
 
Many teenagers today are pseudo-hippies, I think. After all, a lot of teenagers engage in free love[sex];), drugs, practice New Age, and have ultra liberal viewpoints.

Statistics show that this isn't true, though. American youth is probably the least likely group to engage in counter-cultural activities.
 
Statistics show that this isn't true, though. American youth is probably the least likely group to engage in counter-cultural activities.

Just asking but what do you exactly mean by counter-cultural activities? Do you mean leaving in agricultural communes or taking part in anti-war protests or what?
 
Many teenagers today are pseudo-hippies, I think. After all, a lot of teenagers engage in free love[sex];), drugs, practice New Age, and have ultra liberal viewpoints.

Conditionally true, because many of the values of the hippies have been absorbed into the mainstream. (I consider the hippies social libertarians, not political liberals.)

Statistics show that this isn't true, though. American youth is probably the least likely group to engage in counter-cultural activities.

Also conditionally true, because there is no longer an age-based generation gap between parents and students.
 
Many teenagers today are pseudo-hippies, I think. After all, a lot of teenagers engage in free love[sex];), drugs, practice New Age, and have ultra liberal viewpoints.

I think you're wrong. From what I see, teenagers don't do nearly as much of any of that stuff as they used to. But the analysis is more complicated than that. First, you need to seperate teenagers (12-18) from young adults (17-22) -- yes there's an overlap and it's intentional, since the real boundary is high school graduation rather than the 18th birthday.

Teenagers are having less "real" sex than in the past and doing more substitutes like oral sex and dry humping. The promiscuous "hookup" culture (at least in regard to "real" sex) is more of a young adult thing.

Drug use is way down among both groups and has been dropping since about 1990.

New Age practices, except for environmentalism, have been on the decline across society in general since about 2000. And even when they were more popular, it was much more among girls than boys (unless you count Satanism which is defintiely a boy thing).

Politics among the young is more liberal now than when I fit that category (the 1980s). Still, I don't see the revolutionary fervour of the 1960s coming back even though SDS has been refounded.
 
We need to consider the relative numbers of teenagers and young adults who were part of the hippie movement in the late sixties. As visible as they were, I would guess the radical "hippies" represented less than ten percent of the young population. Sure, the percentage varied from near zero in Muskogee to much more in northern California.

For each hippie, there were many more students concerned with getting to college and earning a high SAT score. For the "average" student, their exposure to the movement was some of the artwork, jargon, maybe dress; not the pot and promiscuity.

In 1970, the mainstream of society was run by veterans of World War II. Even though there is no room for a counterculture, today's students are more open as a whole, call it "liberal" if you will. Today, the average high school student can talk about "oral sex." That was not so much the case in 1970.

Today, girls can attend class in high school while visibly pregnant. In many locations in the sixties, they were not allowed. What I am saying is that the mainstream is far more open today, as a result of the counterculture of the past.
 
However true that may be, a counter culture bent on sex, drugs, and rock and roll could very much exist in the modern era. As "open" as they are in a "majority" of teen circles today, I think the counter-culture of the 1960s was a lot more open than it was today.

Although, looking at historical trends, I'd say that the next possible breakthrough of a counter-culture movement would be 2010s. Maybe even after 2012, just in time for Hillary's first term, Barack's second term, or another big-government Republican like John McCain (who would be too old to run in 4 years) to get elected.

Basically, I think the bigger the government, the more "organized" reaction you're going to have for it in terms of a counter-culture generation. Timing is crucial as well, which is why I think it would most likely take place in the 2010s.

It would also be issue based. While the Iraq War may be a likely source of conflict, it's not big enough. The Environment with hordes of young people trying to make a "return to nature" seems to be the most likely course to me.
 
Big Brother is overrated these days. Ours is a generation of digital self-exhibitionists unashamed of airing all of our dirty laundry and dumb ideas over electronic media. Hell, even before Web 2.0 there was the time of Reality TV which demonstrated how voyeuristic we are.

Who are today's anti-government grassroots movements of America? The Tea Party protests, 9/11 Truth conspiracy theorists, and the various loony left demonstrations as documented by Zombietime. Counter-culture is dead in this country.
 
Both hippies and punks constantly attract younger kids. its a hell of alot funner. i even recently started calling these 19-20 year old punks, the post 9-11 punks.
 
Oddly enough, even ultraconservatives have adopted some of the hippie lifestyle. A number of religious ultraconservatives distrust big government, leave the current cultural system, and have moved to the country to run organic farms.
 
I don't know. Obama's presidency might inspire youth activitism, and start movements with... aspects of the counterculture, but probably nothing with trying to start an alternative society.
 
hippies still exist if you know where to look for them, there are loads in Edinburgh. I should know, I am one! :D
 
Oddly enough, even ultraconservatives have adopted some of the hippie lifestyle. A number of religious ultraconservatives distrust big government, leave the current cultural system, and have moved to the country to run organic farms.

One issue we must remember is that the hippies of the sixties were "liberal" only because of the way the term was perceived at the time. History books were still defining "liberal" and "conservative" in terms of hard money and soft money. In the sixties the terms took on a different perception: liberals wanted change and conservatives wanted to keep the status quo. Hence, the hippies stood out as liberal elements of social change.

In retrospect, the hippies were not liberals, they were libertarians. In many ways, their principles have more in common with those of Mormon Utah survivalists than those of the liberals in today's political spectrum.
 
One issue we must remember is that the hippies of the sixties were "liberal" only because of the way the term was perceived at the time. History books were still defining "liberal" and "conservative" in terms of hard money and soft money. In the sixties the terms took on a different perception: liberals wanted change and conservatives wanted to keep the status quo. Hence, the hippies stood out as liberal elements of social change.

In retrospect, the hippies were not liberals, they were libertarians. In many ways, their principles have more in common with those of Mormon Utah survivalists than those of the liberals in today's political spectrum.

They were liberal in the true sense of the word - that is they took a liberal approach to social issues and the economy

The word liberal meaning left wing is a mainly American usage. Most other countries would use the word socialist (many hippies were socialists too). It should be remembered though that many socialists, especially the most left wing are extremely il-liberal
 
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