Quote Originally Posted by mrdevious
I've been thinking of this for a while, but I thought I'd make a post after reading the other hippie thread. Now I know a lot of people are discussing the resurgence of the hippie-days, and who knows it may happen, but I personally don't think it will be a clone of the 60's.

Anyway, the reason I ask "do hippies even exist" is because I've been thinking, isn't "Hippie" really a term given to the peace-loving generation by mainstream (north) american rulers? I mean, what we have here is a massive revival of a culture in which people experiment with all states of consciousness, encourage a back-to-nature type of pure lifestyle, and seek a state of loving peace and compassion through spiritual exploration, and rejection of what mainstream society has determined to be the norm.

This seems more like a natural human compulsion, however, as cultures all around the world have done the very same thing. Look at ancient India, China, the Native Americans, the South American Natives, all forms of meditation from around the world, the countless shamans who used Salvia, Mushrooms, Cannabis, Morning Glory Seeds, and countless other psychadelics all in the name of exploring higher forms of consciousness. Some of our greatest religious and philisophical minds, and other who were only important to those around them, basically adopted the same philosophy of releasing the mind from the homogenized state of the culture in which they reside. Instead they embraced a spiritual lifestyle of mental exploration and universal love, all done through self-exploration. Yet it would seem in a society in which "spirituality" means going to church every day and thinking through conformity, those who once again sought to do what people have done since the beginnings of humanity are called "hippies", "freaks", "losers", and so on. I would postulate that these terms are merely the product of a society which has been consumed by materialism and superficial lifestyles that are set as what's appropriate, and these "hippies" are in fact the same need for mental and spiritual exploration we have always looked for, though perhapse with less or poorer guidance than we had in the ancient days, when buying a car and getting an ipod wasn't the most important aspect of life.

thoughts?
Thoughts?

Yeah you're high. Thats the only thing I was thinking as I read that whole thing.