Middle Sea Studios
__________
Richard C. Hayner

In George Orwell’s prophetic novel, 1984, the main character worked in a government office changing history. He would be given newspaper and magazine articles from the past that no longer agreed with the government’s version of history. His job was to rewrite each article so that it didn’t conflict with the new version of the past. It would serve to make heroes out of those the government wanted to see as heroes and villains of those who had become undesirables. It was observed in the book that whoever controls the past controls the present. 

You may have seen TV shows or movies about the hippies of the sixties and seventies.  They are portrayed as clueless teenyboppers identified only by the clothes they wore, the music they listened to (usually not the real thing) and the drugs. They are also often violent. I was disappointed in such an otherwise wonderful movie as Forrest Gump to see the hippie boyfriend who beat and cussed his girl on the way to a peace rally. It is important, I believe, to set the record straight.

In the sixties, there came a generation which contained a minority who saw the materialism brought about by the post war era of prosperity. With the popularity of The Beatles and other rock bands, this minority of youth found the conservative establishment unaccepting of the long hair and other styles that arose. Recent behavior by the government concerning the exploitation of third world countries and the violation of Americans' civil rights began to inspire a revolt. The Vietnam War added to the mix a catalyst and a motivator.

The hair got longer and became a medium for statement of rebellion. The fashions were inspired by a variety of cultures, some youthful imagination and the mother of invention herself, necessity. It had been found that the Army-Navy store was a good place to find clothes for a fraction of the usual cost. As you may know, the navy has used bell-bottom pants for years. These soon became fashionable.

If you have ever grown your hair long, you know there is a period during which the hair is too short to stay behind your back or in a ponytail but long enough to be in your eyes. This inspired the headband. Native American, Chinese, African and Indian art and fashion inspired the wearing of beads, sandals and moccasins. Flowers became the obvious symbol of opposition to violence. These were what the public saw of these youth and soon the title of "hippie," a term that had been around, however obscure, for years, found its way to the press. We often called ourselves “longhairs,” “heads” and “freaks.” In the beginning some of us were called flower children, which was quite appropriate.

Then there was the music. Art had become an important form of expression for this movement, and music was the art form that brought the movement together. Rock, folk and jazz musicians found the inspiration to begin a virtual renaissance of music. Lyrics gave them a chance to say publicly what was on their minds.  Experimentation and a blending of styles and instruments brought about a serious approach to music-making. The hippies saw the value of a style of music that was not always as commercially lucrative as the pop rock and bubblegum music that the Top Forty AM radio stations played. 

A new home was found for this new music on the FM airwaves, which were less crowded and in stereo. The disc jockeys that played this music could feel free to use their positions to reflect the attitudes of the movement. Instead of commercials with announcers practically jumping out of the radio and grabbing one by the throat to sell, you could listen to a calm voice bragging on the wonders of a local head shop or a record store where you could buy Bob Dylan, The Byrds or Donovan. News stories clued listeners in on the war protests and how the police were busting heads for fun in Chicago. Announcements of free concerts and demonstrations could be heard.

Timothy Leary did say “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” By “turn on,” he did mean use LSD. Leary, Ken Kesey and others, advocated the use of hallucinogenic drugs such as psilocybin, the “magic mushroom” and mescaline and, especially, LSD. Marijuana and hashish were widely used along with the hallucinogens. 

I must defend their use to a degree. In the first place, these are not killer drugs, nor are they addictive. (The use of the term, “dependent” was a ploy to imply something that was not true.) LSD could, on the other hand, cause psychosis in some people. But the addictive, killer drugs were not being used by most hippies, and their reason for doing drugs was basically for exploring the mind. Nevertheless, there were good results and bad results. Some people were estranged from the movement by the problems drugs caused them personally. Some were turned off by the problems others had with them. Many were scared away from the movement because the drugs did not appeal to them in the first place.

Drugs played a huge part in the demise of the movement by, in the latter years of the movement, attracting those who saw the drugs, but not the basic premise of the movement and wanted to use drugs for the wrong reasons. These people intermingled with the hippies, diluting and separating them from one another. They also chose their drugs with less forethought than they had once done as children standing in front of the cereal aisle. Once that began, many people who would have been attracted to the movement were repelled by it.

But, while notable cultural aspects of the movement, this was all on the exterior. The basic premise of the hippie movement was a philosophy that had stemmed from a disgust for the materialism that was then only in its infancy. Television commercials and an influx of products on the market, many of them frivolous (most of them making claims that were untrue and all of them trying to convince the consumers that they couldn’t do without them) seemed to be enslaving the public to work longer hours at jobs that only seemed to perpetuate the endless, mindless consuming. 

We had been told that these new products would make our lives better and soon we would see a shorter workday and more time to enjoy life. Just the opposite was being proven to be true, and we were becoming slaves to the products we consumed. The industrial revolution seemed to be a revolution against the people, their individualism and their freedom. 

The answer seemed obvious: stop consuming. That is what is meant by “drop out” in “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” It was not simply to drop out of school, but out of society, out of the clutches of the industrial complex that was taking charge of our lives. Firstly, this would liberate oneself, but it would also serve to combat that industrial complex which survives only by the virtue of the participation of its victims. As the saying goes, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

The baby boomer generation was a result of, as the name implies, the boom of marriages, and hence families being begun, following World War II. Not only was this generation’s numbers influenced by the mood after the war, but so was its attitude. Americans came out of the war feeling (and rightfully so) that they had served good to overcome a great evil. They had stopped a madman who used the horrors of war to further his own power over others.

This new generation felt both a strong feeling of duty to what is right for all humankind and a hatred for war and the disgrace it brings to humanity. The former meant they felt strongly about topics such as the environment, civil and human rights, responsible government and responsible behavior regarding foreign affairs. The latter brought about the feeling of pacifism, not only concerning war, but in everyday affairs. Peace was not only realized as the lack of violence, but as an attitude toward fellow human beings. It was this feeling of peace and brotherhood that allowed us to bring thousands together at pop festivals such as Woodstock without any occurrences of violence. 

This pacifism also inspired some of the fashions worn by hippies. After all, a man wearing strings of beads and sandals with a flower in his hair just doesn’t come off as a threat of violence. But some did feel threatened simply by what they were ignorant of. Many hippie guys were beaten up by rednecks who often took it upon themselves to make fashion decisions for others by taking a knife and forcibly cutting off another man’s hair. Most of those rednecks were jealous that so many girls had become attracted to guys with long hair. It was an insult to the rednecks’ macho.

Hippies weren't saints, nor were they all legitimately concerned about these ideals. There were many who sought personal gain and took advantage of those who did seek the betterment of the world. We had a lot to learn. We had just come from deep within a society where many things were so imbedded in our heads, we didn’t recognize them as wrong. Women, for instance, were still often treated as subservient. But as these things were recognized and brought forth, they were added to what we stood for. Ideas evolved into other ideas.

Before long, there were so many issues it was difficult to sort them all out. As the word spread and our numbers grew, growing long hair and doing drugs became the fashion of the masses. The people who moved in to be a part of these things only saw the superficial elements, the hair, the drugs, the clothes and the music. Once, we could talk to the new people and explain things, teach them our ways. Suddenly, as we became accepted as the coolest thing around instead of freaks, we found ourselves overwhelmed . 

There were too many to teach, and they were usually not of the same mindset as were we when we first joined the movement. Many of us had been predisposed to the ideas and ideals of the movement. We were usually individuals who, for one reason or another, had already been hippies inside and just needed to find others like us. These newcomers were mostly people who wanted to join in on whatever was the fashionable thing to be doing. They would soon enough desert their ragged threads for slick duds they showed off on the disco dance floor. 

Then, with the end of the war in Vietnam, it seemed that things were not so cut and dry. People seemed to drift into the midst of society and found themselves in a more self-centered world. Others were disillusioned or tired of being mixed with the people who had jumped on the bandwagon.

   Photo by Paul Johnston (note the peace sign from the poster on the balloons)

At one time, some of us would talk of a day when our generation would take over and how different things would be. What we failed to realize was that we were a minority in our own generation. It had not simply been us against the older generation. They were not the establishment. Most of our own generation was the establishment just as well. Some of us realized that when we saw, in 1972, signs held by the new eighteen- year- old voters that read, “Youth for Nixon.”

Today, the predicament that had inspired us to “drop out” has increased in proportions that we could never have imagined. The consumer is expected not only to spend all of the money he makes, but more than he has, using credit to imprison him and indebt him to the industrial complex. When we allow the pressures of society to force us to think of all the things we want to consume, we begin to be self-centered. It is then that we lose compassion for others. George Orwell made one huge error. In his book, the government was Big Brother, running everyone’s life. Big Brother is that industrial complex.

There are still some of the “original” hippies out there. There have been others to experience the same revelations, some calling themselves hippies, others simply seeing things as they are. Hope is not lost yet, but the youth of today must pull their heads out of the video games and wake up to what is being done to them.

There is another mission for hippies of today, however. That is to regenerate the escape from the inhibitions with which our society has burdened us. Once again we need to have the playful flower children dancing to the music, slinging the beads around their necks and flinging flowers from their hair. The laughter and the love and holding of spread fingers into a peace sign meant for anyone who would look need to be scattered once again across parks and down sidewalks everywhere. The barefoot children of innocence and idealism would put a sweetness into our bitter world.

Peace

Toon by Dennis Harper