Former hippies are loathe to admit this, but they FAILED. Yes, we have more reckless sex now and drugs are cooler, but those really aren't good things are they. And it wasn't the hippies' peace and love that ended Vietnam. It was the student protests and that the war was unwinnable that did that. And we lost. Hippies didn't give us Civil Rights. Blacks and, again, students protesting did that and the politicians who wanted to be reelected gave the people what they wanted to stay in power. Hippies made art that was ok, but most of the meaningful songs were either written by professional song writers working for the record companies or by sober musicians. And drug induced movies made even less sense. Head anyone?
Hippies take credit for liberalism, but that's a feel good myth. Liberalism was born out of college protests. Liberalism was invented by kids who refused to go to war and who marched for equality while hippies were holed up in their communes tripping on acid.
But more than that, when the mid seventies arrived and the last of the hippie movement effectively died out, the world was left unchanged. There is no utopia. Reckless sex just gives you STDs and drugs will kill you. There's still war and inequality. The former hippies even gave up their peace and love mentality for the very money they claimed to despise in their youth. It was the hippie generation that brought us the greed and avarice of the 1980s, that became the Me Generation and that eventually brought us war in Iraq. Never forget that. They sold out.
The hippie movement was a giant failure. Why? Because you can't make meaningful changes in the world when you're too stoned to work out all the details. You can't be a world leader when you're hallucinating from LSD, but you weren't a hippie if you didnt do drugs. Drugs were the corner stone of the hippie movement and also it's biggest crutch. Maybe hippies could have made a real impact if they had paid attention to the world around them instead of ignoring it.
We like to immortalize the 1960s, to reminisce as though it was the good old days completely ignoring the fact that the they were one of the most violent decades in our nation in the 20th century. It was not a pleasant time and we shouldn't be trying to reclaim them. We should take what painful lessons they taught us and work on a better future.
But the hippie doesn't deserve that much credit because they didn't really do that much and that's just something they'll have to live with.
