Hippies Of The 1960s Essay

Around the same time within the late 1960’s, a new hippie movement was forming, which was often described as a counterculture.

Hippies are good representation of the counter culture movement, it usually involve drug abuse, sex and abortion. History professor Theodore Roszak points out the hippies and radical students have a same point, which is counter-culture. (Roszak, 1995) In his views, counter-cultural movement is all social protest movements in the United States, such as democracy movement, women's liberation movement, black civil rights movement, and anti-war movement.

The 1960’s experience multiple social revolutions throughout the decade, whether it be the New Left, Civil Rights Movement, Anti-War Movement and the Hippie Revolution. Many of the movements were focused on many different political issues in society and were solely focused on resolving the issue; however, the Hippie Revolution did not. They were different from the New Left. While in Port Huron Statement (Document B), the term New Left is coined and they pleaded that they would do everything in their power to permeate society and reform the issues needed to be reform. The Hippie Revolution was primarily uninspired youth who were only worried with pleasuring themselves through recreational sex, peace, and love, rather actively participating

Hippies represent the ideological, naive nature that children possess. They feel that with a little love and conectedness, peace and equality will abound. It is with this assumption that so many activists and reformers, inspired by the transformation that hippies cultivated, have found the will to persist in revolutionizing social and political policy. Their alternative lifestyles and radical beleifs were the shocking blow that American culture-- segregation, McCarthyism, unjust wars, censorship--needed to prove that some Americans still had the common sense to care for one another. The young people of the sixties counterculture movement were successful at awakening awareness on many causes that are being fought in modern

The mid 1900s gave birth to many counterculture movements. Some of those movements were Hip-Hop, Black Power, Beats, Punk, D.I.Y., and Hippies. The issues Hippies focused on were primarily removing the main religious standards on all things social and cultural. They were individualists who believed whatever people did, and that the choices that they made were up to them;not the church or anyone else. The Hippie counterculture was successful at freeing people from the strict societal rules on sexuality, because people in the United States are now allowed to sexually express themselves freely.

John Lennon of the famous rock band, The Beatles, once said, “If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace”. This quote essentially defines the 1960s and the counterculture movement in America. After WWII people had much more free time than they did during the war, and many people decided that they wanted to settle down and start a family. This caused a large boom in child birth. The children born during this boom are known as “baby-boomers”. “Due to the baby boom between 1945 and 1955, over half the population was under 30 years old” (The American Experience 1). During this time in American history, the children of the “baby boomer” generation started rebelling against the war in Vietnam and the

Hippie drug use was more than just use, it was the practice of psychedelic drugs, in order to spread love and happiness. Some of the many drugs hippies used were LSD (acid), mushrooms, DMT, marijuana, amphetamines, and narcotics. Hippies most often used the drugs and others that fall into the psychedelic hallucinogenic category. Hippies were referred to as “drug using counterculture shared belief in better living through chemistry” (Wesson). The hallucinogen drugs were for mind-expansion, seeing the world through colors. All in order to get crazy high to spread love, peace, and happiness. This was more of a spiritual practice for hippies. The easiest and most common way for them to use these drugs was by rolling them in paper and smoking them. As one can see, the drug use in the hippie culture was a very important toll for the peace, love, and happiness aspect of the culture.

The Hippie Counter Culture began in 1960. The hippie era was influenced more by personal happiness in which books, music, and fashion followed as result of their personification of a blissful society. Hippies did not care what others thought of them and their motto was “if it feels good, do it”. Hippies were seeking a utopian society. They participated in street theater and listened to psychedelic rock. As part of their culture they embraced more open sexual encounters amongst each other in their community and believed in use of psychedelic drugs which consisted of marijuana and LSD. The fashion choice that hippies dressed in was due to set them apart from the mainstream society. They choose to buy their clothing from thrift shops and flea markets (Haddock, 2011). Clothing choices are described as “brightly colored, ragged clothes, tie-dyed t-shirts, beads, sandals (or barefoot), and jewelry” (Haddock, 2011, para 7). Hippies also referred

The hippie movements of the sixties were driven by a plethora of factors. There were many new technologies that were being introduced in this period, a war against Communism around the globe, internal struggles against several types of injustices, a growing drug culture, and several other important developments. To say the least, it was a volatile period in American history and many sub-cultures were actively seeking to carve out new paths that were starkly different than the traditional norms. These generations who rejected traditional culture helped carve out a new trajectory for the United States and the movements influences can still be felt to this day.

The American hippie movement of the 1960s was strengthened by the increase of youth population. Many believe the official beginning of this cultural event started with the youth of the 1960's but it really started with their parents. In the late 1930s and early 1940s America was just coming out of a disheartening depression.(About the Great Depression.) America's unfortunate fate led them into another unlucky situation, World War II. Many youthful men and women joined the service, in fact over an estimated sixteen million total were sent into the war.( GI Bill History - U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs. ) In the late 1940s soldiers coming back at the end of the war were now onto the next stage of their lives and made families. This is what started the baby boomers. After so many hardships and losses the last thing anyone expected was an approximately seventy-six million babies born between baby boomer era of about ten to fifteen years. (BBHQ: Boomer Statistics. ) Many of these children had strict parents who had become disheartened from losing childhood

The Hippie Movement changed the politics and the culture in America in the 1960s. When the nineteen fifties turned into the nineteen sixties, not much had changed, people were still extremely patriotic, the society of America seemed to work together, and the youth of America did not have much to worry about, except for how fast their car went or what kind of outfit they should wear to the Prom. After 1963, things started to slowly change in how America viewed its politics, culture, and social beliefs, and the group that was in charge of this change seemed to be the youth of America. The Civil Rights Movement, President Kennedy’s death, new music, the birth control pill, the growing illegal drug market, and

The “hippies” of the 1960s had many effects on the American society. The visual appearance and lifestyle of the hippies were in sharp contrast to the conservative nature of the older generation, which defined them as a counterculture. The hippie lifestyle was based on free love, rock music, shared property, and drug experimentation. They introduced a new perspective on drugs, freedom of expression, appearance, music, attitudes toward work, and held a much more liberal political view than mainstream society.

During the sixties, there was a huge generation gap between the parents, who became adults around World War II, and the children, baby-boomers, who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s. Due to the generation gap, the younger generation grew farther apart from their parents and the older age group. The younger people believed that the older generation was too inhibited and too materialistic. For the most part, the baby boomers simply refused to accept the world-view of the older generation without questioning it. They broke with the political persuasions of their

The 1960’s impacted the United States in profound ways. With the seventy million baby boomers growing into their teens, they brought with them change that is still evolving in our society today. The sixties was a time where American culture moved from being conservative to new and insightful ways of thinking. With these changes, it brought a new counter culture that would be known as the hippie culture. The hippies led way into a new sexual revolution that would break the old fashioned boundaries. The hippies also ushered in a new era where drugs became popular to a large public as well as within their own culture. Drugs were becoming a part of American culture, as well as new scientific research, into the benefits

The 1960s Hippie movement was a major point in the American history. In the 1960s a certain class of young people associated their lifestyles with the ideas of freedom, peace, and love. Hippies acted against white upper middle class lifestyle because they thought it was based on the wrong ideology. Hippies were against consumerism and American suburban life of the late 1950s and early 1960s was embodied in itself the idea of consumerism. Hippies, on the other hand, felt better about communal life with equal distribution of social goods. Traditional “bigger share” and consumerist greed as concepts of American society were despised by Hippies.