The Modern Hippie?
At first, the gardening led to a lot of assumptions about the rest of my lifestyle. So did the militant recycling, reduction of waste, and cultivation of compost. Doing the Towel Talk probably didn’t help. The accusations were becoming clear: this guy (me) is a damn hippie!
Said lovlingly, mostly, and it didn’t seem to drive anyone away. A lot of people have been free to throw around the word.
What does that even mean today? Hippie?
I have no idea how to play this
I live about a half hour drive away from Boulder, Colorado – a town that has been easily branded as a hippie town since lord-knows-when. Conversations about Boulder bring up the typical hippie charicatures: marijuana smoking, hemp-wearing, tye-dying earth activists who are a little too stoned to get anything done during the day.
The caricature of the hippie circa 1967 will probably never leave the cannon of popular culture. Long hair, free love, good drugs. Peace and love, man. That era of hippie collaborated over music, spoke out against a war, organized marches for equality among all races, genders and creeds. Sure, they developed a stigma of being the “crazy, stoner” people. But they managed to get things done.
The very word in itself, “hippie”, means a person who is aware of the world around them. Hippie, hipster, hip cats, and so on – throughout history the term has been self-acquried by subcultures who claim one thing: they are more aware than the mainstream.
What if the mainstream became the ones who were aware? What if we were all hip to what was happening?
Between what is happening on a legislative level, all the way down to the grassroot ideas behind farmer markets and urban agriculture, I feel it is nigh-time for a new definition of “hippie.”
I continually think back to meeting Annie Leonard – mind behind The Story of Stuff - when she said: “Bringing your own mug to the coffee shop, your own bag to the store, or carrying your own water container when you’re out of the house aren’t ‘green’ or even ‘eco’ things. These are things responsible people adults need to be doing.”
Survey’s say that a majority of American’s think alternative energy sources are key to the country’s future, as is lessening our oil dependence, driving less and developing more sustainable communities. Communities – everything from better kept roads and parks to the quality of our schools.
A lot of what I’ve been reading has a marked change in the context: we don’t necessarily want more, we want better.
What is the future of the hippie? While I think many of us will be small scale gardeners, fewer might replace our pet dogs with chickens and goats (unless dogs start producing milk or eggs, either of which mine is willing to do. I’ll keep her around just in case) but I don’t think that’s all we are going to be up to. I think enough traits of the modern hippie will be simple enough and logical enough to seep into the day to day life of everyone.
All it takes is a few people to do a few little things. Once the changes are noticed an avalanche of progress is set to go off.
Here is my proposed re-definition of the “hippie”:
A hippie should be about community. Whether it is helping cultivate the community you live in, voting on issues that matter, or cleaning up your curb – the small actions of a community can add up to something big.
A hippie should be nourished. With the purity of our food at stake, hippies the world around should care about the food they eat. Where it comes from, how it is prepared, how to make more of it, and so on.
A hippie should still be aware. Know the issues that affect everyone. Research. Learn new things. Learn productive and useful things
A hippie should know their place. Not: “know your place, and stay there.” But know that your actions, no matter what they are or how you direct them, affect everyone else in some manner or another. This includes showers – hippies should also be clean. Not necessarily sparkly, but clean enough.
What is the verdict then? Will the hippie stand to live a life of patchouli and hemp sandals? Or is there enough in our mainstream culture to incorporate everyone into the new definition?
read more