The hippie movement has its roots in both the artistic movement of the Beat Generation, and the political philosophy movement of the Frankfurt School. Herbert Marcuse encouraged the uprisings of the youth during that time.
(I move the hippie topic here)
âHippies got a bad wrap by journalist interested in selling sensational stories.â
Could you tell more about that? I thought that was mainly some conservative outlets?
It is not limited to some conservative outlets? Was the negative coverage of the hippie movement very dense? Which outlet do that concern, for instance?
âthere were plenty of freeloader hippiesâ
What do you mean by âfreeloaderâ?
That reminds me of a testimony in this show by a French mucic player, the bassist Corine Marienneau, from the group called TĂ©lĂ©phone (famous during the 1970s, 1980s, very influenced by the Rolling Stones), who explained that she tried to live in little communes, but realized it was âalways the same who do the workâ (understand, the day-to-day duties, household, etc.).
Btw, I realize Corine Marienneau illustrates what I was saying above:
because she explained in another interview that Guy Debordâs book[1] was âthe reference bookâ when she was 16 (she says in this interview: âwe were not anarchists, I considered myself a situationnistâ). She comes for a middle class Parisian family, and had 16 years old in May 1968. She worked as au pair for one year in Princeton.
[1] Guy Debord is the leader of the situationnist movement, an heir of the surralist movement
Wanting a free ride, and not carrying their own weight; self-serving; on the take; never giving any back. Leaches - predators and parasites.
There was lots of âfree loveâ but in hindsight we guys were still old school womanizers, with all the traits we learned from watching American macho man movies & TV. Fortunately, I had a mother who taught me to respect, and like women, so I could recognize, even if in hindsight, when I was an ass, since deep down I did like women and could recognize the difference between honorable and dishonorable behavior and became classier as the years raced by. Besides, I was a very insecure and shy guy, fortunately wrapped in a decent body, yet sincere and actually interested in friendship - and it turned out women werenât shy and they love teaching receptive students. (You young insecure guys out there, let that be a lesson. Worry about getting to honestly know yourself, donât imagine any girl could do, sheâs not an object, relax, âstrategic passivityâ can get one much further that putting on pretentious airs that donât fit you. Women love teaching. Pay close attention to the eyes, they truly are windows into the personâs feelings, be it lady or man.)
But mainly I guess, it was just freedom loving young people taking advantage of a unique period in history. We had no grand plan beyond having a good time and âwouldnât it be groovy to make the Earth a better place.â In hindsight, itâs obvious for most that was just a jingle, rapidly forgotten after their short rush of hippiedom and they grew up and became more Bricks in the Wall, consuming without thinking about the damages Keeping Up With Jones was inflicting upon the Earth and her creatures.
Even defining hippy is impossible, too many independent âtribes.â I seemed to fall in with the DeadHead tribe up in Yosemite NP, which I think could arguably be considered among the most authentic collect of âhippies,â freaks, aka Deadheads. *
Still, at my core I was a well-raised hard-working (early on I learned that the better I did my job the less the boss hassled me, and if thereâs anything I hate is someone trying to micromanage me. So doing the best I could was a self-serving strategy, and served itâs purpose, keeping boss off my a§§. I may not âlikeâ going to work, but when I was there, I was all about getting the job done right and watching the day race by because I was keeping busy. Not that I always succeeded, but overall I did pretty well.
*Why the Deadheads? Attitude.
Grateful Dead by the numbers
Beyond that (and running out of time) I probably need to step back, I havenât done much reading up on philosophers opining and such, so canât keep up with that end of this discussion. All I got to go on is my memories of my rather unique lifeâs experiences.
The free loader problem is as old as civilization. Many hippies fit the bill, I know some personnally that went on to positions in government or started orgs.
I just missed the 60s, didnât like the 70s, feels like Iâm finally just getting the hang of life but the body is giving out.
Yup, probably goes back further than that.
Perhaps it time to cue up some Peter Godfrey-Smith.
Another example why thoroughly understanding evolution is the linchpin to grasping our higher level consciousness and behaviors.
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Could you develop on that point? What kind of self-serving and parasitism?
This is why I think romanticism (hippie culture is one form of romanticism) can not stand as a framework, and is dangerous
A news recently in French media Viols, fuite et yoga Ă©sotĂ©rique: qui est le gourou Gregorian Bivolaru arrĂȘtĂ© ce mardi? (Translation from French with DeepL, checked bymsyself).
Gregorian Bivolaru was arrested in France on Tuesday, along with 40 other people, as part of a wide-ranging investigation into a movement suspected of using yoga to push women into non-consensual sex.
In 1972, Gregorian Bivolaru founded his first yoga school in Romania. He soon came up against his countryâs justice system.
It was on his release [from prison] that he founded Misa, based on tantric yoga, defined as âa meditation technique for people seeking solutions to live a fulfilled sexualityâ.
Courses, retreats⊠this movement is spreading beyond Romaniaâs borders. In the early 2000s, Misa, whose spiritual mentor is Gregorian Bivolaru, claimed over 30,000 followers in Romania and 200,000 worldwide.
According to a judicial source, the movement âwas centered around the practice of yoga based on Hindu traditions, in particular tantra yoga (allowing the awakening of spirituality via sexuality), enriched by the enneagram, parapsychology and astrology; that this teaching was intended to condition the victims to accept sexual relationsâ. A teaching akin to religious dogma.
"based on tantric yoga, defined as âa meditation technique for people seeking solutions to live a fulfilled sexualityâ: doesnât that recall you anything?
So my point is, how many such kinds of sects the hippie movement prompted and hindered?
Do the hippie followers or supporters discard these cases as âmedia sensationalismâ instead of facing the possibility that these cases are symptomatic of something inherently problematic in the hippie framework?
Takers. A lot of people looking for others to take advantage of, taking stuff and not reciprocating,
while too many others are looking for salvation and are easy pickings for a false smile and glad handing story.
The Gregorian Bivolaru thing is an example.
A framework for what?
Of course hippie culture (although it would be blast hearing you define that) is no framework for anything.
But donât get carried away, striving for better awareness of this Earth that created and sustains us, finding ways to be content with less, and such noble notions - should have provided some sort of framework, but never did, we were ALL too busy enjoying the good times and our respective parties.
We were young people at an amazing inflection point, it was a time of opportunities like never before, we were given freedom and possibilities. We had music like never before, we had each other, we took advantage of special fleeting moment in time.
I donât know, youâre creating something in your imagination. Sure there were plenty of varied âtribesâ, but calling it a movement is very misleading.
It was a happening. It was nothing like the movements for racial equality, womanâs rights, to stop the Viet Nam War, AGW awareness, or any âmovementâ.
It had to do with life style preferences, music preferences, where we came from, what we could suddenly get away with, it was all very organic.
All the grand reasoning, rationalizing, philosophizing came after the fact.
Guess there was Hermann Hesse books and such, but seems to me they were after-thoughts, a way to justify ourselves in the face of all the attention âhippiesâ were generating.
Who knows?
âhippie followers or supportersâ
It wasnât that kind of thing.
I donât know that anyone is holding up the hippy happening as a framework for anything, I mean partying to the music, skinny dipping at Big Creek and getting to know each other and grooving on the magic the day has provided, thatâs what it was about.
Look at the Magic Bus, of course that isnât any way to live a life or build a society, oh but man what a crazy invigoration glorious time it was just the same. Nothing like that total exhilaration in experiencing living, will ever happening again in this growing nightmare of a planet weâre actively creating.
Now itâs a memory for old geezers, and myths for others to do with as they will.
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What you describe seems to echo what bassist Corinne Marienneau described in the TV show about hippie communes (see my post above).
What kind of stuff that was taking advantage of?
For instance secular humanism is a framework, confucianism is also one.
A framework for social and individual life.
I donât know which is the proper adjective: philosophical framework? thought framework?
I disagree. You will find in my original post the features that define transcendentalism, an American literary movement, which is a major source of the hippie framework.
I pop @coffee because it might interest him.
(1) Is it the hippie culture which gave you this freedom, or the Enlightenment political and philosophical framework with is values: the rule of law, reason (science and technology), democracy, a liberal form of nationalism, etc.?
(2) Is it the hippie culture which gave you this freedom, or the military, the police, the intelligence services, who work everyday all day against foreign dictatorships imperialism so that the US can successfully preserve its values in the benefit of its people?
(3) Is it the hippie culture which gave you this freedom, or the scientists, the engineers, the innovators and the entrepreneurs who create and make available at low prices extremely sophisticated products for communication, transport, health, etc.?
(4) Is it the hippie culture which gave you this cultural freedom or the political, philosophical and economic framework described above, allowing many different cultures over the world to collaborate (principles of toleration and freedom of speech, freedom of assembly), inventing products for the massive democratization of culture (the radio, the vinyls), and the very musical instruments that the artists use (the electric guitar)?
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the hippie movement overtly attacked each and every (1), (2), and (3).
This is incorrect.
There were many political organizations that accompanied the hippie movement such as the Students for a Democratic Society (launched in 1960) and the Youth International Party (YIP) (launched in 1967).
There were also more radical political organizations such as the Weather Underground (created in 1969), a group which broke from the Students for a Democratic Society.
The hippie movement was preceded and heavily influenced by the Beat Generation movement, with people such as Allen Ginsberg, who was a supporter of communist regimes.
The Beat Generation was closed to pop stars representative of the hippie movement such as Bob Dylan, who supported the political movements mentioned above (The title of the song Subterranean Homesick Blues (1965) comes in part from the name of the Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac, and the lyrics âYou donât need a weatherman to know which way the wind blowsâ, is a reference to the organization Weather Underground).
_Beat Generation writer Allen Ginsberg first influential publication Howl and Other Poems dates 1956.
_Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac first influential publication On the road dates 1951, although its got published only in 1957.
_Beat Generation influenced pop star Bob Dylan first influential protest song âBlowinâ in the Windâ dates 1962.
The hippie movement was accompanied and publicly supported by New Left thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse (first most influential book Eros and Civilization dates 1955). Herbert Marcuse was born in 1898.
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It is maybe because you were not part of the political fringe of the hippie movement. As we discussed with @coffee, this movement was made of many different fringes.
But that does not go in contradiction with the fact that the less political fringes were part of a larger movement, itself very framed by very precise intellectual and political agendas.
Here I think we are touching another interesting aspect of this movement, which is a natural and legitimate social reaction to something problematic, aka, the conservative (and institutionnally racist) American society, and the authoritarian and conservative French society of the 1950âs and 1960âs.
My point is that: yes, we need to provide an opposition (as you say, a wind of freedom) to (American, French) conservatism, but not with the hippie framework, which is a problem against another problem.
If you had noticed, the 2020âs can be seen as a return match of the 1960âs, with many symptoms of a new Cold War, new civil rights movements, etc. This was very clearly identified in this article [âNous sommes Ă lâaube dâune rĂ©volution romantique insurrectionnelleâ](Nous sommes Ă lâaube dâune rĂ©volution romantique intersectionnelle - Manifesto XXI, Costanza Spina, 2020, originally pblished in âCensored n°4, âChrysalideââ) (translation from French with DeepL, checked by me):
Admittedly, talking about Love with a capital L, about the legitimization of lost spiritualities, about a sense of commonality, may seem a nostalgic new age drift nourished by the heritage of hippie parents and the current fashion effect which has succeeded in labelling as âcoolâ not only witches but also astrology, elves and esoteric inventions of all kinds. But we donât live in the economic boom of the 1970s, and peace & love is tinged with an urgent survival instinct. If we live in a world where "everything can collapse "* and collapse theories abound, itâs legitimate to talk about "dark new age "* And it would be even more legitimate to ask how we can love each other when everything suggests weâre witnessing the end of the world?
Yes it is âŠ
And during the preceding dark age, our societies had enough defenses.
Right now, fascism is rising everywhere and main politicians cooperate or help it
Argentina, Trump, Italy, Swede, Netherlands, Hungary, Spain among others âŠ
One of the reasons is that the left forgave the workers, employees and so, rallying to main stream capitalism, or has become inaudible.
Forgave or insulted and humiliated them for 60 years?
Lozenge - ask Morgan who is âthe leftâ ?? I did with no answer
The left political parties and figures since the 1960s in the West.
Can you name a few? ???
Nope because this is not the topic here, and this question is long and difficult, which would require more thorough time to prepare a valuable answer. Also because I think you know very much which were the main left political parties and figures since the 1960âs.
No i dont . Thats why I am asking
For now I am not sufficiently prepared to provide a valuable and thorough answer.
The left did not âforgetâ the workers and employees.
They deliberately droped them out and despised them because the left considered the middle class was not a potential mass of people available to make their communist revolution, like in Russia in the 1910s, and China in the 1920s.
This is because they acknowledged the fact that the middle classes were quite satisfied with the way of life that was provided to them by liberal societies. In the left words, they became âbourgeoisâ, even âcapitalistsâ, understand: the worst disgusting thing that the planet can ever borne.
They also acknowledged the fact that, with the news of horrors that were coming out from communist regimes, communism as described in Marxism will not be appealing to the general public.
They therefore completely reframed their software (see Herbert Marcuse and the New Left, and also the memo of the socialist think tank Terra Nova in 2012).
They purposely chose to replace these masses of people by âminoritiesâ (women, students, immigrants, etc.). See this article here on the link between New Left theorist Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis and the 1968 students movements in Paris âAngela Davis on Protest, 1968, and Her Old Teacher, Herbert Marcuseâ by Nick Thorkelson.
The middle class became for the left an object of disgust. They started to be depicted as beaufs, rednecks and losers.
See how they are depicted in/by movies, TV shows, and artists such as Taxi, Coluche, Training Day, les Deschiens, etc.
The character of the âbeaufâ, short for "brother-in-law "1, was coined by cartoonist Cabu in Charlie Hebdo in the 1970s1, and later used in a column in Le Canard enchaĂźnĂ© and in several albums of cartoons by the same author (Le Grand Duduche, Mon beauf, Ă bas toutes les armĂ©es, Les nouveaux beaufs). (Wikipedia, DeepL Translation)
At the same time, middle classes which were going along this New Left program (which concerns artists, journalists, teachers, etc.) were elevated as the new cultural high-class, benefiting from large amounts of public subventions, and the cultural/intellectual support provided by the left-dominated media system. See also Gramsci and Dutschke for the theorization of this strategy (âthe long march through the institutionsâ). For recall, the left journal LibĂ©ration was created in year 1971, by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Ironically, all of this is now backlashing against them:
(1) The new cultural high-class (bobos) are going bankrupt. See this very good article by sociologist Ălie GuĂ©raut Raconter le dĂ©clin de la petite bourgeoisie culturelle.
(2) The far-right, of which one main ideological component is anti-leftism, is rising everywhere all over the place, and the far-right uses as a strategy the very theories of Gramsci and Dutschke (âthe long march through the institutionsâ). See Alain de Benoist who is openly influenced by Gramsci, see also Ăric Zemmour who explicitly copies the left by inventing heavily connotated words/concepts (âfrancocideâ) to dominate the linguistic/conceptual realm (as the left did for 60s years with which was called âpolitical correctnessâ).
(3) The yellow-jackets crisis is also an irony for the left, who historically and theorically fully relies on the masses uprisings (see the Montagnards during the French revolution for instance, who, to gain power, gave what the sans-culottes wanted, and once in power, killed hundreds of adversaries and suspected adversaries), but who this time had far-rights flavors. And at the time we saw the left indeed not knowing what to do with it, supporting and despising it at the same time, but standing away from it in any case. The yellow-jackets had nothing to do with them anyway.
The Trump election was very similar in some ways.
(4) By insulting the working middle classes as idiots for decades, the left ended up really taking them as idiots, therefore not forecasting the election of Donald Trump, the yellow-jackets crisis, and the actually very concrete rise of the far-right.
(5) And Trump and other far-right movements are supported by this working middle class they had despised and droped out for 60 years. And now they are one the first target of this very monster.
The election of Donald Trump was a backlash against the cultural left, with the left media being attacked everyday all day (see this very famous episode with the CNN reporter).
So, no, the left did not âforgetâ the working class, and no it is not a light topic. It is extremely dangerous.
Now the left is acknowledging this rise of the far-right and tries to react against it (see Street Press, and Institut La BoĂ©tie). At the same time, they are acknowledging that humiliating/abandoning the working class was a mistake, and try to re-integrate them back in their framework (see the last book of activist Houria Bouteldja « Beaufs et barbares » : Gramsci mĂ©ritait-il dâĂȘtre rĂ©veillĂ© pour si peu de chose ? | Le Club).
But nothing tells that it is not too late.