So who won, the hippies or commercialism?
You can’t sum up the hippie movement in one sentence, but if you could it would be this: The only way to envision a just and fruitful world is by taking drugs.
The median age of the prototypical, counterculture hippie is now, I suppose, about 72. This factoid is unnerving to me, because I can’t walk into a Cracker Barrel without picturing the clientele back in the day when they were wearing beads and headbands and giving the peace sign from behind the wheel of their Volkswagen bus.
People who used to rationalize a mid-day drink because “it’s five o’clock somewhere,” now justify going to bed at five because “it’s nine o’clock somewhere.”
I’ve heard people recalling their hippie days with wan fondness, but I’ve never heard anyone saying they wish those days would return. Well, no matter, because they’re back anyway.
People, per The New York Times, are reporting a “mass movement” around the world by people who did so many drugs the night before that they can’t remember what the mass movement is all about.
As evidence, the Times featured the DoubleBlind media company that “is tapping into this market of therapeutic and spiritual seekerdom with a website and instructional videos bearing titles like 'Ego Death: What Is It?' and 'Smoking Weed While Tripping.'”
The company recently sponsored a weekend glamping festival called Mycologia: “The price was $450, which included meals and swag, and attendees could bring their own tents or pay more for deluxe lodging,” the Times wrote. “The company promoted the sleep-away gathering with ads touting the chance to ‘connect with fellow psychonauts at our first psychedelic festival!’”
Um hm. All the greatest hits are back — meditation, gurus, flower power, and did I mention drugs?
Any genuine hippie will recognize the problem, but then this isn’t geared for genuine, aging hippies whose primary drug is now Motrin.
In the ’60s, the mere idea of a marketing company sponsoring any aspect of the hippie movement would have been an appalling, oxymoronic sham. The whole point was to get away from Mom and Dad’s commercialism, and any and all corporate presence was abhorred.
True, Coke and Pepsi were able to patch in with their “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” and “New Generation” ad campaigns, but these were more about young, vibrant kids holding hands, rock climbing and tossing Frisbees who happened to drink the favored soft drink.
It wasn’t the self-indulgent “I want the biggest steak you got and a bottle of Lowenbrau,” a beer that in the same time period faltered, was bought up and watered down by an American brewing conglomerate and was all but gone from the shelves by 1975.
But if, 50 years ago, commercialism and flower power were at odds, commercialism has clearly won. So if you’re a 2022 hippie, it’s OK to have a Samsung logo on the bowl of your hash pipe.
Also, minor point maybe, but seeing the words “hippie” and “glamping” in the same sentence gives me a case of the giggles. Hippies were pointedly dirty and unglamorous. Nor would or could they have sprung for a $200 overnight in a tent, even if it did have fitted sheets.
Hippies were broke and, much to their parents’ chagrin, proud of it — evidenced by George Carlin’s satirical but accurate hippie chant:
Don’t want no war
Don’t want no war
Don’t want no war
Don’t want no job, neither
Except, as the Times reports, “The use of psychedelic drugs is now teetering on the edge of respectability, with about one-third of American voters professing a belief in their curative effects.”
So maybe the hippies won after all. For 40 years, you never heard a peep about LSD, quaaludes or mushrooms; now all of a sudden they’re not only back, but accepted in general society.
Which means that a true hippie would no longer want them.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Corporate-sponsored hippie event leaves one dazed, confused
