Where Have All the Hippies Gone?

In a liberal oasis like Missoula, the question “What is a hippie?” should be as easy to answer as “Got yer elk yet?” Missoula’s always been known, especially to other, more conservative parts of the state, i.e., everywhere else, as Montana’s hippie enclave, a granola gathering ground for unemployed longhairs and sandal-clad stoners who reek of patchouli and bong water.

But it’s not so easy, especially viewed through the lens of history and socio-political significance, to come up with a pat answer. “What Is a Hippie?” was the title of an entertaining, free-wheeling panel discussion on the U of M campus last night, where 40 people gathered to see if they could put a definitive classification on that not-so-elusive critter, groovius microbus.

I sat in on the discussion but feared that it was doomed when the panel was introduced. Of the sixty queries that were sent out to UM faculty, asking for professors to participate, only a handful were returned. Most of those said “Oh, HELL no. I got my tenure to think about. Hippie.” Thus, only three brave, intrepid faculty members showed up. The oldest one was born in 1967, the Summer of Love. (In 1967 I was more concerned with eating endless bowls of Kaboom! cereal while watching Jonny Quest, wondering where I was going to come up with the money to buy my next Matchbox car.)

So I resigned myself to the prospect of discussing not the real hippies, who began as direct descendants of the beatniks, but of neo-hippies, like Widespread Panic fans and earth mamas who wear cornstarch underwear and don’t shave their pits. But, lo and behold, the panelists displayed a grasp on the concept of the Real Thing. Panelist Brent (I have changed their names to prevent a lawsuit and possible ass kicking) had gone to college as a football jock, but was soon meandering down the groovy path, morphing into a Phish head and following that band for about 60 shows. His run-ins with violent and drugged-out Phish fans, though, turned him off to the whole idea of hippies. Then he moved to Eugene, and the deal was sealed. Everyone dressed like a hippie, he said, and then went out panhandling all day. It’s enough to make you vote for Ron Paul.

The other two panelists described their first exposure to the hippie culture, and “Tim” even went so far as to say he considers himself a hippie. With this short hair, scruffy goatee and hipster skinny glasses, he looked more like a high school civics teacher than a free love revolutionary, but it’s the hippie ideal that burns within, he said. I was heartened and impressed that he was able to suss out the truth beneath the fashion.

I looked around the room, and there were no love beads, no brightly colored sarongs, no patchwork bell bottoms, no Guatemalan ponchos, not even a decent Bob Marley knit dreadlock hammock. You can’t walk down the sidewalk in Missoula without bumping into a hippie, (“Hey, man. Wanna buy a bracelet?”) but none were in evidence here.

Then, after 45 minutes of talk from the panelists, someone in the audience spoke up. From directly behind me, a sonorous voice filled the room with the admonition that no one had spoken the two most important words: “love” and “peace.” These were the ideals, he said, that drove the early hippies into gathering and creating a movement in the first place. The speaker went on for a good fifteen minutes, providing a fascinating, detailed history of the movement and its implications. He was there at Haight-Ashbury. He knew about the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park. He knew about the Beats, he knew about the Revolutionaries, he knew about the Brown Berets. He knew about the CIA introducing hard drugs into the scene, cutting the legs out from under them before the hippies could hit their stride.

The mainstream media, he said, had pounced early and created a mass-marketed image of what a “hippie” is, which ultimately gave the term a negative connotation. (Hmm. Same thing that happened to phrases like “liberal” and “tea bagger.”)

He spoke with such eloquence, with such authority, that everyone in the room took him at his word. I turned to look, and saw that he didn’t have a ponytail, a headband, John Lennon granny glasses, a peace sign medallion or a tie-died shirt. His short, salt and pepper hair was swept back on his head, and he sported a closely trimmed beard. He wore casual but stylish business attire, and his demeanor was that of a man who is used to speaking to a group without being interrupted. A professor? Perhaps. He had that air. Maybe he was just a guy in the audience. But he also had the gravitas, the articulation and the self-possession that weighted everything he said with The Truth.

At one point Brent lamented that he’d become a sellout, even though he still believed in the hippie principles. His kids eat organic foods, he said, and they don’t watch TV. But he also wanted to keep them away from drugs. That comment caused Audience Guy to pipe up and caution the panelist from making blanket statements. “That’s a statement that discounts the value of the periodic use of psychotropic drugs in a spiritually guided quest, to help transform the mind.” I was liking this guy more and more.

I spoke up also, saying that nowadays you couldn’t be a bona fide hippie any more than you could be a real leprechaun. Hippies were a product of the times, and those times are long gone.

Modern hippies are a horse of a different day-glo color. Original hippies were natural and necessary descendants of the beatniks. Like the Beats, they spurned the square conventions of American culture, but where the Beats turned their focus inward, the Hippies were a holistic phenomenon, mobilizing a generation to foment societal change. They would end the war. They would eradicate racism. They rallied under the twin flags of peace and love to end social injustice. Nowadays being a hippie seems to be more about where you buy your eggs, or how many festivals you go to. It’s nothing more than assuming one of dozens of ready-made social identities we can adopt, like Angry Punk Rawker or Intolerant Christian Grandma or Meth Lab Biker With a Glass Eye.

We tried to explore the idea of the Empty Poncho in the discussion last night, and someone made the point that here, on Montana’s most liberal college campus, you never see protests. In places like Berkeley, say, people get up in the morning, scarf a whole grain bagel, march in a demonstration, and snag a mocha at Starbuck’s on their way to class. It’s a way of life, but today it’s more of a tradition than a change agent. Besides, in our fragmented, shallow, celebrity-obsessed society, it’s damn near impossible to rally the troops and get a movement underway. People might have to turn off their cell phones or miss an episode of TMZ.

As last night’s discussion was winding down, Brent, the self-proclaimed sellout, was addressed by a woman in the crowd who managed to wrap up the entire evening with her polite but passionate assertion that he hadn’t sold out at all. She was there, she said. She survived the turbulent sixties, and carried the hippie ethic into her adult life, into parenthood and a middle class existence. She spoke of her two adult children, and her delight that they also promoted the hippie creed of peace, love, and the sharing of wisdom. “My daughter is the most real hippie I’ve ever met,” she said proudly. As long as Brent still believed in the hippie credo, she said, he was effecting change from within the system. They’re still hippies at heart, only now they have the money to back it up.

The hippie ideal, born in the Summer of Love and carried forth only to be trampled and savaged by the Vietnam war, the Charles Manson murders, and the anti-hippie policies of Richard Nixon, is an enduring lodestar that continues to provide hope for our society, our culture, and hell, for the very survival of our species. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.

So what is a hippie? Sorry, brother, you’ll have to rephrase the question to “what WAS a hippie.” Because, although the ideology of peace and love lives on, the hippie is dead.