The 1960 Hippie Movement

The 1960’s presented Hippies with the chance to express their beliefs and attitudes in a number of diverse

Drugs highly influence music in the sixties with bands such as The Byrds, The Doors, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and The Beatles. These bands took inspiration from the affects that the drugs had on them with their psychedelic properties. Drugs were also just starting to get introduced and people were highly influenced with positive drug propaganda (“The 60 's”). So, the positivity about drugs were influencing the bands and the bands were influencing the people and the more dugs being bought, the more people heard about them, and the more people heard about them, the more they were used, so basically it was just an endless cycle of drug positivity.

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.

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

Hippies are the real activists of freedom who love each other in a positive way. The word hippies generally invoke sterotypes that involves drugs, sex and bare feet. Though it is true that many hippies did practice these sterotypes, they were people who fought for rights and freedom without violence. They gave up the traditional morals and values to promote new values that were about freedom of experssion and loving each other. After getting the attention, they expressed their needs, hopes and wants in a piercing yet nonviolent way. The hippies made great, positive changes to the Canadian society through their

“Hippies were called Flower Children because they gave flowers to communicate gentleness and love” (Salge). The Hippie Movement was a popular counter culture during the 60’s-70’s. Hippies are best known for their practice of psychedelic drug use, interesting political views, where they took up living quarters, and their unique fashion sense.

From the 1960s to the 1970s, the Hippie Movement was apart of the counterculture era. This was an age of renewal and change amongst society. People known as Hippies focused on pursuing a life different from the one proposed by mainstream culture. Hippies followed transcendentalism, which influenced their idealism of their understanding of nature and society. They often used drugs such as psychedelics, amphetamines, methamphetamine, and marijuana to experience spiritual and artistic awareness as well as self-fulfillment. They created a new culture of teenagers and young adults who dressed and acted differently from those before them. Hippies focused on experimentation and redefining themselves. Hippies helped influenced music, television, film, literature, and the arts and changed the societal norms.

These include popular music, television, film, literature, and the arts. The music industry in particular was helped tremendously by the Hippie movement. They help many rock festivals including Woodstock which was free to get in and featured performers such as Jimmie Hendrix and . Hippies help set the standards for cultural and religious acceptance. Even fashion was impacted as the popularity of the necktie and other business apparel declined and was replaced by more casual dress standards.

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.

The hippie counter- culture brought with it many new things in large. It brought a new style of music, new opinions about equality, and many new experiences. However, most of these experiences stemmed from something else popular in the 1960s: drugs.

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 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 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.

Hippies- known for their love of drugs and sex, they often misguided the common folk of their intentions. In their minds, what they were doing was guilelessly standing up for themselves and what they considered was theirs; what they believed in. They believed in their rights, and they wanted to do what they pleased; not to conform to the requirements of living in the average society of the time. They wanted to create a culture where spiritual awareness was highly regarded (sometimes through psychedelic drugs), where everything was given freely, where everyone (even strangers) were thought of as one's brother, where everyone valued peace, and where rights were given freely to everyone. (Express Thyself. (n.d.)) These rights would include