….I’m going to say, “Damn right!” and hand them this article:
In his piece, The Hippies Were Right, Mark Morford explains how the ’60’s counterculture values laid the groundwork for much of the “to-do” nowadays over our planet:
There is but one conclusion you can draw from the astonishing (albeit fitful, bittersweet) pro-environment sea change now happening in the culture and (reluctantly, nervously) in the halls of power in D.C., one thing we must all acknowledge in our wary, jaded, globally warmed universe: The hippies had it right all along. Oh yes they did.
You know it’s true. All this hot enthusiasm for healing the planet and eating whole foods and avoiding chemicals and working with nature and developing the self? Came from the hippies. Alternative health? Hippies. Green cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMA seeds? It came from the granola types (who, of course, absorbed much of it from ancient cultures), from the alternative worldviews, from the underground and the sidelines and from far off the goddamn grid and it’s about time the media, the politicians, the culture as a whole sent out a big, wet, hemp-covered apology.
Morford goes on to point out the many, many issues and issue-based projects that are rooted in the hippie culture. He has a very enlightening (is that a hippie term?) way of bringing to light what hippies have done for our world today.
It was, always and forever, about connectedness. It was about how we are all in this together. It was about resisting the status quo and fighting tyrannical corporate/political power and it was about opening your consciousness and seeing new possibilities of how we can all live with something resembling actual respect for the planet, for alternative cultures, for each other. You know, all that typical hippie crap no one believes in anymore. Right?
Yup. Peace. Love. Planetary respect. Resisting corporate power. I’m a hippie. And proud of it.
(And yes, I have a job!)
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 