Hippies

The hippie movement started in the United States and eventually spread throughout the world. If only more people would develop a hippie mind-set, the world might be a better place!

The word "hippie" was shortened from its original word "hipster", which was used to describe the new generation of youth who were moving in to the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco, California USA. These youth inherited the countercultural values of the Beat Generation. They created their own communities, listened to psychedelic music, embraced the sexual revolution, and used drugs such as cannabis and LSD to explore alternative states of consciousness.

It was in 1967, during the Summer of Love, that the Hippie culture was popularized at such events as the Human Be-In in San Francisco, and the 1969 Woodstock Festival on the East Coast. However, it wasn't just the United States experiencing the Hippie movement. In Mexico, hippies (called jipitecas) formed La Onda Chicana and gathered at Avándaro, while in New Zealand, nomadic housetruckers practiced alternative lifestyles and promoted sustainable energy at Nambassa. In the United Kingdom, mobile "peace convoys" of New Age travellers made summer pilgrimages to free music festivals at Stonehenge, and in Australia hippies gathered at Nimbin for the 1973 Aquarius Festival and the annual Cannabis Law Reform Rally or MardiGrass.

Hippies wanted to free themselves from the usual restrictions of society, they wanted to choose their own paths and find new meaning in life. One way hippies choose to distance themselves from societal norms was found in their way of dress and grooming. Hippies were instantly recognizable to one another by the way they dressed, which served as a visual representation of their respect for individual rights. Through their appearance, hippies showed their willingness to question authority, and distanced themselves from the "square" (i.e., conformist) segments of society. Hippies often chose to wear brightly colored clothes or unusual styles for their time, such as bell-bottom pants, colorful vests, tie-dyed shirts, peasant blouses, dashikis, and long, full skirts. Also popular among hippies are clothing with Native American, Asian, African, Indian, and Latin American styles. A hippies home or automobile would often be beautifully decorated with awesome colorful psychedelic art.

Hippie values had a major effect on culture as a whole. Hippies influenced music, television, literature, film, and the arts. Since the 1960s, many aspects of hippie culture have been absorbed by the mainstream. Much of the counterculture became culture. The religious and cultural diversity embraced by hippies has gained acceptance among a large number of humans around the world, and Eastern philosophy and spiritual concepts have reached a wide audience. The hippie influence can still be seen today in various parts of everyday life such as health food, music festivals, to contemporary sexual ideas, and even today in the internet age. Some of the technology pioneers were hippies, such as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The hippie legacy still is influential on Western society in many ways. In general, people are more open about education of sexual matters, and the idea of human rights is hopefully spreading worldwide. Some of the small hippie health food stores of the 1960s and 1970s are now large-scale, profitable businesses, thanks to the hippie movement and greater interest in natural foods, herbal remedies, vitamins and other nutritional supplements.