Hippie - Legacy

Legacy

See also: List of books and publications related to the hippie subculture and List of films related to the hippie subculture

Newcomers to the Internet are often startled to discover themselves not so much in some soulless colony of technocrats as in a kind of cultural Brigadoon - a flowering remnant of the '60s, when hippie communalism and libertarian politics formed the roots of the modern cyberrevolution...

Stewart Brand, "We Owe It All To The Hippies".

The legacy of the hippie movement continues to permeate Western society. In general, unmarried couples of all ages feel free to travel and live together without societal disapproval. Frankness regarding sexual matters has become more common, and the rights of homosexual, bisexual and transsexual people, as well as people who choose not to categorize themselves at all, have expanded. Religious and cultural diversity has gained greater acceptance. Co-operative business enterprises and creative community living arrangements are more accepted than before. Some of the little hippie health food stores of the 1960s and 1970s are now large-scale, profitable businesses, due to greater interest in natural foods, herbal remedies, vitamins and other nutritional supplements. Authors Stewart Brand and John Markoff argue that the development and popularization of personal computers and the Internet find one of their primary roots in the anti-authoritarian ethos promoted by hippie culture.

Distinct appearance and clothing was one of the immediate legacies of hippies worldwide. During the 1960s and 1970s, mustaches, beards and long hair became more commonplace and colorful, while multi-ethnic clothing dominated the fashion world. Since that time, a wide range of personal appearance options and clothing styles, including nudity, have become more widely acceptable, all of which was uncommon before the hippie era. Hippies also inspired the decline in popularity of the necktie and other business clothing, which had been unavoidable for men during the 1950s and early 1960s. Additionally, hippie fashion itself has been commonplace in the years since the 1960s in clothing and accessories, particularly the peace symbol.

Astrology, including everything from serious study to whimsical amusement regarding personal traits, was integral to hippie culture.

The hippie legacy in literature includes the lasting popularity of books reflecting the hippie experience, such as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In music, the folk rock and psychedelic rock popular among hippies evolved into genres such as acid rock, world beat and heavy metal music. Psychedelic trance (also known as psytrance) is a type of electronic music music influenced by 1960s psychedelic rock. The tradition of hippie music festivals began in the United States in 1965 with Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, where the Grateful Dead played tripping on LSD and initiated psychedelic jamming. For the next several decades, many hippies and neo-hippies became part of the Deadhead community, attending music and art festivals held around the country. The Grateful Dead toured continuously, with few interruptions between 1965 and 1995. Phish and their fans (called Phish Heads) operated in the same manner, with the band touring continuously between 1983 and 2004. Many contemporary bands performing at hippie festivals and their derivatives are called jam bands, since they play songs that contain long instrumentals similar to the original hippie bands of the 1960s.

With the demise of Grateful Dead and Phish, nomadic touring hippies attend a growing series of summer festivals, the largest of which is called the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, which premiered in 2002. The Oregon Country Fair is a three-day festival featuring handmade crafts, educational displays and costumed entertainment. The annual Starwood Festival, founded in 1981, is a seven-day event indicative of the spiritual quest of hippies through an exploration of non-mainstream religions and world-views, and has offered performances and classes by a variety of hippie and counter-culture icons.

"The '60s were a leap in human consciousness. Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, they led a revolution of conscience. The Beatles, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix created revolution and evolution themes. The music was like Dalí, with many colors and revolutionary ways. The youth of today must go there to find themselves."

— Carlos Santana

The Burning Man festival began in 1986 at a San Francisco beach party and is now held in the Black Rock Desert northeast of Reno, Nevada. Although few participants would accept the hippie label, Burning Man is a contemporary expression of alternative community in the same spirit as early hippie events. The gathering becomes a temporary city (36,500 occupants in 2005, 50,000+ in 2011), with elaborate encampments, displays, and many art cars. Other events that enjoy a large attendance include the Rainbow Family Gatherings, The Gathering of the Vibes, Community Peace Festivals, and the Woodstock Festivals.

In the UK, there are many new age travellers who are known as hippies to outsiders, but prefer to call themselves the Peace Convoy. They started the Stonehenge Free Festival in 1974, but English Heritage later banned the festival, resulting in the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985. With Stonehenge banned as a festival site, new age travellers gather at the annual Glastonbury Festival.

In New Zealand between 1976 and 1981 tens of thousands of hippies gathered from around the world on large farms around Waihi and Waikino for music and alternatives festivals. Named Nambassa, the festivals focused on peace, love, and a balanced lifestyle. The events featured practical workshops and displays advocating alternative lifestyles, self sufficiency, clean and sustainable energy and sustainable living.

In the UK and Europe, the years 1987 to 1989 were marked by a large-scale revival of many characteristics of the hippie movement. This later movement, composed mostly of people aged 18 to 25, adopted much of the original hippie philosophy of love, peace and freedom. The summer of 1988 became known as the Second Summer of Love. Although the music favored by this movement was modern electronic music, especially house music and acid house, one could often hear songs from the original hippie era in the chill out rooms at raves. In the UK, many of the well-known figures of this movement first lived communally in Stroud Green, an area of north London located in Finsbury Park.

Popular films depicting the hippie ethos and lifestyle include Woodstock, Easy Rider, Hair, The Doors, Across the Universe, Taking Woodstock, and Crumb.

In 2002, photojournalist John Bassett McCleary published a 650-page, 6,000-entry unabridged slang dictionary devoted to the language of the hippies titled The Hippie Dictionary: A Cultural Encyclopedia of the 1960s and 1970s. The book was revised and expanded to 700 pages in 2004. McCleary believes that the hippie counterculture added a significant number of words to the English language by borrowing from the lexicon of the Beat Generation, through the hippies' shortening of beatnik words and then popularizing their usage.

In 2005, journalist Oliver Benjamin founded The Church of Latter-Day Dude, a website-philosophy and mock religion inspired by the character "the Dude", a former hippie, in the 1998 movie The Big Lebowski. Dudeism, as it is known, holds many connections to the hippie ethos, from its “take it easy” attitude and rebel shrug, to its come-as-you-are sense of individual freedom and expression. Dudeism is very much influenced by the hippie movement, maintaining that the "revolution is not over", that it actually began a very long time ago, and will continue far into the future. Dudeist literature even claims that Dudeism has provided a contemporary spiritual home for the hippie philosophy.