Talk:Hippie/Archive 4

Merger_proposal

Can the information from Neo-hippies be brought into this article? Cheers, Ryo 06:34, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Removal of new Slang and Music sections

thus I think the addition of slang and music sections is needed, but I removed them due to several outstanding issues. There is no exact date listed for the source listed as "Putnam County Courier", and I need that to verify the source. Some of these things can be cited, and I will help out. As for the music section, it's entirely original research and misses the mark in several key areas, namely the absence of folk music and the selection of musicians. Also the addition of material from John Sinclair, "the early and influential guru of Midwestern hippies, heroin and alcohol were negative energy drugs and were disdained, while LSD and marijuana were positive energy drugs and recommended", lacks sources. Removed sections follow: —Viriditas | Talk 23:42, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Slang

An important part of hippie culture was linguistic. Part of establishing oneself as a hippie, and fitting in, was learning to use the hippie terminology. Most of the slang terms used by hippies were borrowed from black jive of earlier decades, as filtered through beatniks and hipsters. For example, to emphasize a point they often interjected the word, "man," and used other black jive such as "far out," "out of sight," "right on," "straight ahead," "dig" and "dig it," "I'm hip (to that)," "to ball" meaning to have sex, "boogie," "reefer," "joint," and most other slang terms for drugs. The most important hippie slang word was, "cool," and being cool was the backbone of hippie culture. The word "groovy" was borrowed from 40's black slang and was common among hippies in the 60's, but was dropped by 1970 as being too old and corny. Women and men were "chicks and dudes," although the word dude was not as commonly used as it is today, except in California. An interesting point is that while many jive words from the 40's and 50's were used, contemporary (60's) black expressions were not used as often. For example, 60's black expressions like "blood," "what it is," "I heard dat," "Uuuuuh, HUH," and "What's going down, Jack?," were not often used by hippies.

Music

The music of 60's hippies was rock and roll, which was starting to be called rock. The main musicians of hippie culture in the 60's were Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. There were many more, too numerous to mention, and many more came along in the early-70's, with Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin being two of the most important ones. Hippies sometimes listened to other music, but one thing they tended to avoid was top-40 radio, or AM radio, which was considered "pop" music. They preferred to listen to the more progressive stations on FM radio.

Remove unsourced geo data

This has been unsourced in the article for a lot longer than the Feb, 2007 cite needed date. I'm removing it to talk. —Viriditas | Talk 23:45, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Outside the United States, hippie culture has remained more visible as a counter cultural movement, especially in the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia.

Removal of OR concerning ROTC, violence, FBI, COINTELPRO, etc

I've removed this paragraph as it consists of OR supported by sources that do not seem to support these claims. I'm not saying it's false information, but in order to keep this in the article, it either needs to be rewritten or supported by actual, reliable sources. Removed content follows: —Viriditas | Talk 23:53, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Although hippies were sometimes accused of verbally attacking soldiers returning home from duty in Vietnam, or participating in the torching of ROTC buildings on college campuses, with the exception of a small radical fringe element, hippies did not verbally assault military personnel and did not condone acts of political violence. With the release of FBI records under the Freedom of Information Act, it has become clear that many such attacks were actually perpetrated by FBI COINTELPRO agents provocateurs operating on J. Edgar Hoover's instructions to discredit those who opposed the Vietnam War.

Removal of Lloyd Marcus OR

I would very much like to see this in the article, however the source is either not listed, misplaced, or lacking. Please help source it and add it back in: —Viriditas | Talk 23:56, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Other songs, such as Lloyd Marcus' "Welcome Home Brother," have given voice to Vietnam veterans who felt disrespected by hippies and who lamented that fellow Americans never properly honored them for their sacrifices in serving the nation.

Removed unsourced Diggers info.

I'm not sure who tagged this, but I will make an effort to source this myself when I have time. Until then, I'm removing it to the talk page: —Viriditas | Talk 23:58, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

The Diggers grew from two radical traditions thriving in the area during the mid-1960s: the bohemian underground art/theater scene, and the political movement encompassing the New Left, civil rights proponents and peace activists.

Remove unsourced Haight info

Please help source this info and add it back into the article. —Viriditas | Talk 00:00, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

While the Haight was the undisputed epicenter of a growing hippie culture, college campuses and cities throughout the United States and as far away as Sweden boasted a vibrant counterculture, including New York's East Village; Chicago's Old Town; Boston; Detroit; Lawrence, Kansas; Vancouver, Canada; and Paris.

Removal of Cold war, Leninist, etc

Please help source this info and add it back into the article: —Viriditas | Talk 00:02, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Some Americans, especially conservatives, military personnel, and veterans, saw hippie opposition to the war as a lack of commitment to the principles of American freedom in the Cold War battle against communism. They also felt that even non-violent public demonstrations against the Vietnam War were unpatriotic because they compromised the ability of the United States to prosecute the war. Many Leninist parties in the United States, including the PLP and CPUSA, also opposed or were at least skeptical of the hippie movement because it conflicted with their disciplined, puritanical standards and rigid dogma.

Sexual attitudes

I removed this section and replaced it with a main link to Sexual revolution. Please help source this information and add it back into the article: —Viriditas | Talk 00:10, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Hippies regularly flouted societal prohibitions against interracial dating and marriage. They were early advocates for the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws that the Supreme Court of the United States declared unconstitutional in 1967 (Loving v. Virginia), but which remained on the books in some U.S. states until 2000, albeit unenforced. With their emphasis on Free Love, hippies promoted many of the same counterculture beliefs that found early expression in the Beat Generation. Co-habitation among unmarried couples was the norm, open relationships were common, and both Beats and Hippies advocated for legal and societal acceptance of most forms of consensual sexual expression among adults. With regard to homosexuality and bisexuality, the Beats had demonstrated early tolerance during an era when homosexual expression of any sort was still punishable by stiff prison sentences. Hippies generally espoused the same tolerant attitude. Many hippies, as in the movie Woodstock and the photo (left), were casual about open nudity.

Removed lifestyle section (list to prose, unsourced)

I removed this section which is an unsourced list. It can be merged with the sections above (slang, music, sexual attitudes, etc) with sources. Please help accomplish this goal. Removed section follows: —Viriditas | Talk 00:13, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Any attempt to list the beliefs and preferences of a large group of people can be at best a generalization. Within any group, opinions and tastes will vary. Yet even among a group dedicated to non-conformity, many tendencies exist:

• The twin ideals of peace and love were and are paramount.
• Performing music casually, often with guitars, in private homes and outdoors in parks and music festivals
• Preference for any of the following types of music:
  • Psychedelic rock such as Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, early Pink Floyd, later Beatles, and Jefferson Airplane.
  • Blues such as Janis Joplin.
  • Traditional Eastern music, particularly from India, such as Ravi Shankar.
  • Rock music with eastern influences such as The Beatles.
  • Soulful funk such as Sly & The Family Stone.
  • Jam bands such as the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band.
  • Folk music such as Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.
  • Folk rock such as The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield.
  • More recently, reggae.
  • Bluegrass (in the case of neo-hippies).
• Interracial dating and marriage, rejection of anti-miscegenation laws (e.g. apartheid South Africa).
• Free love, including open relationships and most consensual forms of sexual expression, except sex with children. Traditional legal constructs and religious teachings that prohibited non-procreative sex outside the bounds of marriage were widely flouted--premarital sex, extramarital sex, bisexuality and tolerance towards homosexuals. (See also: Sexual revolution).
• Communal living.
• Recreational drug use (as opposed to drug dependence), usually limited to psychedelic drugs such as cannabis, mescaline, salvia, psilocybin and LSD. Tendency to reject the Establishment's psychoactive drugs, which were and are legal, including alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and psychiatric drugs.
• A fondness for nudity--especially being nude (naturism), as opposed to objectifying nude performers and images.
• Use of incense.
• Belief in Eastern spiritual concepts, such as karma and reincarnation; interest in Hindu and Buddhist religious philosophies is common.
• Belief that spiritual advancement leads to increased psychic ability, e.g., the ability to see the human aura. A vegetarian lifestyle was often considered important in this regard because it was thought to cleanse the body of impurities and "negative vibrations".
• Belief that a corrupt Establishment was abusing Mother Earth led hippies to participate in recycling and support environmentalism.
• Belief in astrology, tarot and I Ching divination.
• A mellow outlook on life, and a belief that the temporal world is a manifestation of human thought and consciousness.
• Elements of Romanticism and Transcendentalist philosophy are evident in hippie music, prose and other artistic expressions.
• Rejection of the typical American diet and, instead, exploration of vegetarianism, fasting, natural food (including whole foods and organic food), more foods from the Third World, and many other alternatives.
• Less competitive forms of exercise, such as foot bag (Hacky Sack), frisbees, handstands, dancing, snake-dancing (martial art), surfing, devil sticks (though referred to as "spin sticks" so as to not make a reference to the devil), and cycling.
• Alternative ways of making a living, especially not supporting the military-industrial complex, capitalism, wage-slavery, "keeping up with the Joneses", etc. For most hippies, reduced incomes or poverty.
• Female equality. The second wave of feminism was simultaneous with the hippie movement. However, the relationship between hippies (especially hippie males) and feminism was complex and often confrontational.
• Raising children more lovingly and peacefully, often with less coercive schooling and with more freedom.
• Natural birth, breastfeeding, no circumcision.
• Alternative media, including underground newspapers, the hipper rock 'n' roll radio stations, campus and community radio, movies promoting hip subjects and attitudes (art films, non-U.S. films, etc.). Tendency to reject television and to entertain themselves.
• Acceptance of those who participate in any of the above, even if they themselves choose not to.

Well this is all great Viriditas, but at some point you are going to have to turn over your dictatorial control of the Hippie article to people with actual knowledge of the subject. By that I mean, people who WERE hippies and speak from authority. Several of them are here, and have helped write the article, and have told you, they were there. If you weren't there, and weren't a hippie, you can't say anything with authority. Citing references? I suppose you think dropping acid in 1969 and living in a crab-infested crashpad in Berkeley is "original research" and doesn't count? Who else can write with authority? Some square who read a poorly written and flagrantly wrong book, and can cite it as a reference? Just because you can cite a reference doesn't make something true, what if the reference is grossly wrong? As a surfer dude in Hawaii No Ka Oi, your first-hand knowledge of hippies came from growing da kine bud and selling it to da kine hauli tourists with da kine long hair, not knowing anything about the hippie culture they can from on the mainland, and surfing some more while trying to score with hauli wahinis? Why don't you leave the artice alone and stop deleting everything? Learn from it. You deleted some really good stuff, dude. Mahalo. Morgan Wright 01:53, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Please review WP:NPA, WP:CITE, WP:V, and WP:NOR. For your information, I helped write this article, helped source it, and helped develop it. In your edit summary you claimed that I deleted 40 percent of the article "without contributing anything at all, not one single word." I suggest you look at the page history or an edit counter tool. I've made more than 450 edits to the Hippie article, so your assessment is mistaken. All of the material that is essentially unsourced original research has been in the article for a long time with tags. It has now been removed to talk. Feel free to help add it back in with reliable sources. —Viriditas | Talk 08:49, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, Viri, as others have mentioned, things which are common knowledge and undisputed don't need to be sourced unless their verity is challenged by somebody. You have deleted such common knowledge as unsourced, which don't need to be sourced, because they are not disputed, even by you. For example, the fact that hippies listened to rock and roll, do you think anybody on earth would challenge this? You deleted the statement that hippies used slang terms like "groovy" and "far out" and "outta sight" as unsourced, even AFTER I sourced it as from the Grey Lines glossary of hippie terms that the bus company distributed in 1968? How on earth can you delete such statements? You deleted somebody's statement that hippie women didn't use much makeup, you expect somebody to find a source for that? It's common knowledge, just look at any photo from the period. You really need to stop trashing this article, dude. You have reverted twice and if you do it again you will be disciplined.Morgan Wright 13:31, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Please consult Wikipedia's policy regarding WP:V and WP:TRIVIA. What you consider "common knowledge and undisputed" can be easily demonstrated with a reliable source. Nothing has been deleted, only moved to the talk page after spending months unsourced in the main article. It should be easy for you to source Hippie slang terms, so please do so. —Viriditas | Talk 13:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I already did! You can google Grey Line glossary and find it yourself. I'm reporting you to wikipedia for 3 reverts. (actually, 4).Morgan Wright 13:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Please read the statement above the edit summary before you blindly revert. It says, "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable." It does not say, "find it yourself". Please also note that your blind reverts are introducing original research and unsourced material into the article that has already been removed to talk and requires sources. Most of this material has been in the article for some time with citation requests having gone unfulfilled. Also, please stop removing the image from the lead section and replacing it with a broken image. This could be construed as vandalism. If you would like to add this material back into the article, please help source it. Thanks. —Viriditas | Talk 13:45, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Go ahead and remove material that you dispute, but most of what you deleted was fine. As for verifiable citations, all citations are "go find it yourself," in other words, to verify the source you need to find a copy of the sourced document yourself. I'm not going to the library for you and open the book and show it to you with my finger. The glossary of hippie terms is in libraries, and yes, you can find it. Try here for starters http://www.brautigan.net/chronology1960.html and go down to April 5, 1967, it mentions the glossary of hippie terms. Delete what you think is wrong if it's not sourced, but taking a 70,000 byte article and reducing it to 58,000 bytes, THREE TIMES, is vandalism.Morgan Wright 13:54, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that's not how Wikipedia works. It is the responsibility of the editor adding the material to source the content. You will also need to adhere to WP:RS and WP:TRIV guidelines. If you are trying to source a few slang terms, I would recommend developing a section on that subject before adding in unrelated OR. Here is the section you will need to source:

An important part of hippie culture was linguistic. Part of establishing oneself as a hippie, and fitting in, was learning to use the hippie terminology. Most of the slang terms used by hippies were borrowed from black jive of earlier decades, as filtered through beatniks and hipsters. For example, to emphasize a point they often interjected the word, "man," and used other black jive such as "far out," "out of sight," "right on," "straight ahead," "dig" and "dig it," "I'm hip (to that)," "to ball" meaning to have sex, "boogie," "reefer," "joint," and most other slang terms for drugs. The most important hippie slang word was, "cool," and being cool was the backbone of hippie culture. The word "groovy" was borrowed from 40's black slang and was common among hippies in the 60's, but was dropped by 1970 as being too old and corny. Women and men were "chicks and dudes," although the word dude was not as commonly used as it is today, except in California. An interesting point is that while many jive words from the 40's and 50's were used, contemporary (60's) black expressions were not used as often. For example, 60's black expressions like "blood," "what it is," "I heard dat," "Uuuuuh, HUH," and "What's going down, Jack?," were not often used by hippies.

Please note that the source listed is incomplete and cannot be verified. —Viriditas | Talk 14:05, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

You are soo wrong on so many levels. If I cite a reference, my responsibility is to cite the publication, date, page, author, etc, and you are responsible for looking it up in the library. I GAVE THE SOURCE, but you say you can't find the source to verify it, when obviously you never went to the library or anyplace else, you just automatically deleted saying you couldn't verify the source from your computer keyboard at 11 PM. THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS! I give you the source, date and page, and you are responsible for finding another copy of the publication. I told you it was in the Putnam County (New York) Courier, they are still in business. You just call them up and see if they have back issues. If you don't have their phone number, call information. It is your responsibility to find a copy of the publication. If you can't find the back issue there, that DOESN'T mean it's not a verifyable source. Even worse, I gave the source for something which is so commonplace and such common knowledge, that it doesn't even need to be sourced, but you deleted the text anyway, and for no reason whatsoever!! Are you kidding? I give up on Wikipedia, it's just too much work, and when somebody like you is allowed to show up and destroy the work of so many others, it's just a waste of my time to fight it. You will just keep on doing it. There is no way to stop you from trashing people's work, so I just give up. I will go use Britannica because the editors have to actually be literate in that publication. Wikipedia is a nice idea, but when so many silly people feel the need to edit and pretend to be experienced editors, but obviously without having any qualifications as such, it makes the whole thing seem like a failure. Morgan Wright 14:11, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

You cited "Fine, Everett, 1973, Putnam County Courier", referring to a small newspaper out of Putnam County, New York. You need to give an actual reference, complete with full date and title. You should also give a second reference to either reliable linguistic sources, a popular book, or a reliable website. Please let me know what Britannica says on the subject of Hippie slang. —Viriditas | Talk 20:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I reverted and gave exact page number and exact date of the article, yet you deleted it anyway. But so what? The point is, it's common knowledge and a widely known fact and doesn't need citation, that hippies used slang terms. If it did need citation, who the hell is Everett Fine that he knows more than I do? Just because it was published doesn't make it true. So what, I cite what somebody else wrote. Who cares? He could be wrong just as much as you or I. And if you are arguing against or doubting that hippies used hippie slang, so much that you delete it from the article, then you are obviously.Morgan Wright 23:50, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry, you did not add the title or exact date for the source in question:[1]. Please read about WP:CITE, WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:NPOV. This will clear up the questions you ask above. —Viriditas | Talk 02:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I notice that the other contributors who you continuously deleted have given up. The article is yours now, since anything other people write will be deleted by you, any changes they make will be reverted back by you, but you feel free to write anything you want without adding references. You are what is known in the Wiki community as a tyrant. You must have your own edit, everybody else is wrong, only you can be right. Morgan Wright 03:07, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Is there something preventing you from adding verifiable, reliable sources for new content? —Viriditas | Talk 03:10, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes there is. It's the same thing that has prevented others from adding verifiable new content. It's name is Viriditas. Every time somebody adds verifiable content, you delete it, saying you don't like the citation, even though it's perfectly fine, and even though you never checked it. I have no interest in writing for Wikipedia anymore. It's a waste of my time.Morgan Wright 03:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

From what I can tell Viriditas is acting in good faith to help improve this article. In fact, Viriditas isn't deleting much of anything, just asking for helping finding sources! The wikipedia guidelines on original research are well founded, and all material in the article should be verifiable -- ideally easily. Morgan, feel free to jump in over at Wikipedia_talk:No original research if you have a questions about why the policy exists, or wish to change it. ∴ here…♠ 03:49, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

You are completely wrong. The article was 70,000 bytes and in one day Viriditas cut it to 58,000 by deleteing lots of good work by lots of people, much of which had citations. You say he's not deleting much of anything, that is insulting to me, because I said he did. And I don't have any "questions about why the policy exists" and saying I do is also insulting. I do have a major problem with a person who wants to commandeer an article like this. He made 3 reverts which is against the 3 revert rule, and nobody did anything. I'm going to go back on now and delete the photo of the Russian guy in the 1990's dressed up as a hippie and posing as one. There are many photos of real hippies, why use a staged one? Besides, it is unsourced.Morgan Wright 09:39, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Please read WP:DISRUPT. —Viriditas | Talk 11:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

You are the one who is disrupting. And you also made 3 reverts and should be blocked for doing so.Morgan Wright 12:28, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Your approach here, Morgan, is not productive. You have some valid disagreements with Vir., but the tone of this conversation is alarmist and aggresive. I've looked over some additional history and see only good faith edits. If Vir. did remove sourced content which was not irrelevant or otherwise inappropriate for the article, please show me where and I will certainly help re-insert it. As an aside, the term Hippie did not die in 1969 and there are individuals and philosophies characterized as hippies today. It is not for you to determine what a real hippie is or isn't, thus the original research policy. If you would like to contribute here, please calm down and try proposing a specific change here on the talk page. Try not to be discouraged if your ideas are not met with agreement, all editors here have had their work removed. Content which is well written, well-sourced, and relevant will typically meet little resistance when proposed for an article. ∴ here…♠ 16:33, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

He deleted the section that says hippie women didn't wear much makeup. He says it was unsourced and OR. Huh? Everybody knows that, and there is no "source" that can be cited that would prove it. Did Revlon do a consumer summary of makeup sales to hippie women? Of course not. He deleted the part that says hippies used slang terminology. Idiocy. He deleted the section that says hippies listened to rock and roll and that they liked the Beatles, Stones, Jimi, and Bob. To me, that is so unbeliebable, I have no more time for this idiocy. If you think he was right to delete those things, then I have no reason to talk to you, you are as much of an idiot as he is. I'm outta here, this is sheer stupidity. Peace, man.Morgan Wright 01:01, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

• I thought you were out of here? Your most recent deletions are disruptions to prove a point, and if you do it again, you will not like the results. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 01:22, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

All of the deletions I made were of unsourced original research, by your own definitions, as there were no sources whatsoever for any of it, and I am stating that much of it was simply wrong. Yet, you are defending Viriditas in his deletions of large amounts of good writing that HAD sources. Yet when I delete tracts of unsourced and irrelevent and mainly erroneous content, you revert it back. The net result is that the "hippies" article is horribly written, wrong on most counts, and boring. The photo you use to represent hippies of the USA in the 60's is a photo of a Russian guy in 2005. All the citations of miniscule events that happened in California, yet not a word about Ann Arbor, Boulder, Austin, or Greenwich Village, all of which had thriving hippie scenes by 1965, is very very wrong. You mention one band (forgot who) and say it was the first band to play on stage tripping on LSD? How could you possibly know such a thing? And where is the source?? Yet when I delete this silly information, you revert it back.Morgan Wright 01:42, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

• Yep. WP:POINT. Find something else to edit for now; you've managed to anger people here pretty quickly. Maybe something about animals, or maybe about astronomy. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 01:45, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I angered people? Look above for all the people that Viditas angered. Me, for instance!Morgan Wright 01:48, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I must say that this is exactly why it is difficult to write an encyclopedia article on something such as hippies. Yeah, it's common knowledge what hippies do, wear, smoke, say, etc., but that of course will vary from generation to generation.. from region to region... and most importantly from individual to individual. Afterall, I know old hippies, young hippies, activist hippies as well as hippies who just sit around and get high. No one will have the difinitive definition for this and for all intents and purposes, the article is fine how it is. Also, the only judgement that I feel compelled to make, is that this argument is NOT very hippie-like!—Preceding unsigned comment added by Faraway420 (talk • contribs) 18:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I completely disagrea the removal of this part of the article. For me these facts were the essence op hippydom. In Amsterdam, Europe, there was in the sixties a full mixture of music and politics, like the Vietnam war or cold war. A monthly like "Hitweek" brought this up, as did the Provo's who opposed "truttigheid". As an elderly hippy I still believe in these things, as do my children. The removed part must be restored. If needed, more sources will be found.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Johannes49 (talk • contribs) 09:22, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Great. Add the sources and convert it to prose. Problem solved. —Viriditas | Talk 09:34, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

photo of Russian guy in 2005 dressed in hippie costume

I vote that the guy is a bad parody of hippies. He's in Russia and 4 decades off. The caption is a joke, ("Singer at a modern Hippie movement." What's a hippie movement?) and it contains no citations. How do we know we even have copyright license for that photo? Being a hippie is not about how you dress or hold a guitar pretending to be a guitarist. That guy is a hippie like Dobie Gillis was a beatnik. That guy is a hippie like a speghetti western from the 1950's had real Indians. He's a joke of a hippie, in costume only, a bad parody and insulting, and the way he's fingering the frets you can see he can't even play guitar. His clothes are clean, he has no lice and he is not stoned. I vote to get rid of the photo and replace it with a more relevent photo of a stoned, dirty, screwed up freak from California in the 60's.Morgan Wright 04:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

We had better photos for a brief period shot by famous '60's photographer, Robert Altman. These were great shots (not not lice-infested, nor even dirty--you have an attitude guy!), however Wikipedia would not protect Robert's copyright, and he depends on his 60's shots for much of his current income, so we had to remove them. Apostle12 05:11, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

P.S. You can see some of the photos here: http://www.summeroflove.org/altman.html Apostle12 05:21, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I was only kidding about being dirty, I actually cleaned by jeans about once a month by swimming with my pants on. Then, every two years or so, after the patches on my patches started falling off, I panhandled up enough to get a whole new pair of jeans at Salvation Army for $1, and they were totally clean for a few weeks. But I never wore underpants and slept with my jeans on every night so I don't know how dirty they got, patchouli took care of the smell. Too bad we can't add anything to the article, you-know-who will just delete it. But that Russian guy has got to go, he's an actor.Morgan Wright 13:31, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

The SF Chronicle is collecting stories, albeit the thing is growing so large one gets lost. However, I think that Angela characterizes something about the brilliance of that one summer that seems to get lost. I was there, by the way. But, I was in my mid-20s, yet more in tune with the younger crowd than others my age. It would be good if Wiki could be true to the times; however, Wiki rules may inhibit that. 12.39.133.130 16:23, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

There is a problem with Wikipedia's "Original Research" policy, especially when it comes to describing hippies and the Summer of Love. The problem is that "Time" magazine, "Newsweek," and most of those who wrote about what was happening wrote from a perspective of non-understanding. Some were better than others, but most had to pander to a "straight" agenda; even if they actually "grokked" what was happening, they couldn't write it that way.

An extreme example was outright, purposeful distortion. During People's Park I had a friend whose apartment was on Telegraph Ave., and the "Time" and "Newsweek" reporters used her telephone to call in their stories. One "Time" reporter attempted to report--accurately--that the police were engaging in violent, unprovoked attacks against those protesting the destruction of the park. She could overhear his editor, who was screaming at the reporter from his office back East, insisting "We can't run the story that way. It has to be a riot thing, with out-of-control, drug-crazed freaks attacking the police and destroying property. Go back and write me something decent."

The "hippie" article has, at times, told the story more accurately and more eloquently. The problem is doing so with sourced material. And Viriditas is a stickler on that. In this case I believe Wikipedia's "Original Research" policy works to the detriment of the article. It may become a "Good Article," or even a "Featured Article," but I doubt it can become truly "good"--in the sense that it conveys the spirit of those times and tells the truth about who hippies were. Apostle12 17:43, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. See WP:V. —Viriditas | Talk 07:19, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, not truth (Kant, Popper, et al, apply here). From what I've seen, verifiable in Wiki means supported by citation. Yet, we know that articles can be wrong. In fact, not a few technical articles that were heavily cited were shown to be wrong, however noone went back to track all the citations and footnote these (it's like the retractions of the press being buried in small print inside the pages somewhere - retractions on Wiki can be handled bold face (or is that bald face?)). Citation-able is not sufficient. Since the 'hippie' thing was so central to the US mindset (obvious distinction between the 'norm' and a more insightful view) and to what we see as progressive (yeah, boomers are now going to play their havoc with Medicare) and since it will not go away (we have the 50 down the road), perhaps the set of pages related to hippie (60 style or the more modern wannabes) might be a good place to look at what's allowed in Wiki. The page needs to be re-arranged into new categories, one of which would be devoted to this early boomer phenomenon. Let's face it; the majority of the boomers and all succeeding generations were either too young or only of potential prior to the main events. Yet, the pre (beats) and the posts (continuation of the energy because it DOES (or did) touch the 'truth') views need to be aired too. Perhaps, after we get all that collected then a general view of the disinterested 'observer' (which Wiki is trying to maintain) could be written (it cannot be found in the old press clippings - or even the newer media reviews). We have too many views and fingers in this pot, yet from what I've seen of most scientific (and religious) controversies as handled on Wiki, there's nothing better. I use Wiki as reference all the time (There is no written document on the planet that covers the ins and outs of mathematics and its foundations better, for instance, yet those pages are still evolving. They'll be truly remarkable in the future.). 12.39.133.130 15:44, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

To address your point, content disputes often require multiple citations, so we never rely on just one source for controversial or odd claims. So if Charles Perry says one thing about San Francisco in the 1960s, I should be able to find the same thing in a book by Fred Turner, or an interview with Stewart Brand. Evaluating sources for authority, accuracy, and currency is very important, and is part of the process of choosing sources; not all sources are equal. —Viriditas | Talk 20:04, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

It would be so cool if we could get somehow permission to use this pic:[2] It is contemporary, not an after-the-fact reconstruction, and it shows the miniskirts, etc., but not the (optional) lice...! Blockinblox 17:49, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

It may be contemporaneous, however it is obviously posed and looks quite artificial to me. Altman's photos, by contrast, are spontaneous and joyful--really convey the spirit of the times.Apostle12 07:02, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Flickr has lots of free hippie images, some from the 1960s, others from later in the period. —Viriditas | Talk 07:20, 4 June 2007(UTC)

Some months ago Altman did have a number of photos in this article, however they were withdrawn on the basis of a breach of copyright according to the edit summary.Mombas 11:05, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Lead section

Per WP:LEAD, "introductory summations in any information source should not introduce significant material that does not appear in the main text." This is a problem with the current lead, and an additional problem is that the sources cited in the lead section do not reflect or support some of the material. Somebody has been playing around with the citations again, adding material that is not supported. —Viriditas | Talk 13:47, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

• After 1965, the hippie ethos influenced the The Beatles and others in the United Kingdom and Europe, and they in turn influenced their American counterparts.
  • Citation 10 for this statement links to an excerpt from Brown and Gaines book, "The Love You Make. An Insider's Story of The Beatles", which doesn't support this claim directly, but merely states that Dylan got the Beatles stoned; if this is supposed to support the statement that "the hippie ethos influenced The Beatles", I would suggest that this is a stretch. Also, the incident takes place in 1964, so the source contradicts the statement in the article. —Viriditas | Talk 12:06, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Citation 11 links to a Chamber of Commerce website for Languedoc, France that merely claims that Hippies moved into the area in the 1960s. This doesn't support the statement directly, but it does show that the hippie movement was in Europe. No connection is shown between the the hippie ethos in the U.S. influencing Hippies in Europe. —Viriditas | Talk 12:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Citation 12 links to an article in an obscure webzine named Swans, written by someone named Karen Moller. On the plus side, the article is fairly current (September 25, 2006), topical ("Tony Blair: Child Of The Hippie Generation"), and describes British hippies in the early 1960s, presumably from the author's book, Technicolor Dreamin': The 1960's Rainbow and Beyond. The writer claims that the hippie movement in America was mostly a political protest movement while in the UK it became a way of life, however, other authoritative writers on the subject have not made that observation, and in fact contradict it (Writer Charles A. Coulombe and many others). The writer gives an interesting, first-person portrait of UK Hippies, but I don't see how it supports the statement in the article. —Viriditas | Talk 12:22, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Citation 13 links to an article in the "Road Junky Travel Guide" blog entitled, "The Beatles Travel to India". I am having great difficulty figuring out how this article supports the statement in the Hippie article. The blog entry purports to show that after 1968, The Beatles popularized India as a destination and Hippies followed in their footsteps. —Viriditas | Talk 12:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• So that's four citations, none of which support the content in question. If someone wants to rewrite the statement so that it is supported, that might be preferable to outright deletion. —Viriditas | Talk 12:31, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Beat Generation

Around that time, Ginsberg connected with Ken Kesey, who was participating in CIA sponsored LSD trials while a student at Stanford. Neal Cassady was the bus driver for Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, and he attempted to recruit Kerouac into their group, but Kerouac angrily rejected their invitation and accused them of attempting to destroy the American culture he celebrated[citation needed].

• Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac and other sources place this around October 1964 (need exact date), so the phrase "around that time" should be cleared up as that refers to 1963 in the text. Kerouac said he didn't want to be ogled like a "dinosaur" and accused hippies of being communists several times: "Finally in New York City, Cassady secured an apartment for a meeting between the original white hipsters and the new crew, "The environment was typical for the Pranksters, with tapes echoing and lights flashing off mirrors. An American flag covered the sofa. [...] Kerouac walked over to the sofa, carefully folded the flag, and asked the Pranksters if they were Communists." (p 123)" Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams [3] —Viriditas | Talk 20:19, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Just as Der Wandervogel formed around German folk music, and the Hippies rallied around rock music, it should be mentioned that the Beat Generation developed around Jazz music. —Viriditas | Talk 09:16, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Places other than California

Who is going to write about other places than California in the early formative years of hippies? Ann Arbor and John Sinclair, [4], Greenwich Village (a hippie spot since way before 1967) "The Hill" in Boulder in 1965. The article makes it look like it all started in one place, SF, in 1967. This is obviously not true, because these guys traveled around constantly, hitch-hiking everywhere. The Pranksters lived on a bus for crissakes. 1965 had hippies all over, even the Beatles were hippies in 1965, just look at the Rubber Soul album. Bob Dylan turned them on to pot in 1964 in New York City. The hippie thing was around for years before 1967 but the media pegged it as SF, and that's why millions of hippies congregated there in 1967. Almost everybody in the summer of love in SF was from someplace else. They read it in Newsweek. But they were already hippies when they got there. So all the details about the goings on in SF need to be downplayed and other places need to be mentioned. There were hippies all over by 1965 but this article has it all starting in SF. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Check out the White Panther Party if there is an article about it and Lawrence (Pun) Plamondon but you never heard of these people because they are not mentioned in the square press that we have to verify citations from, that it all started in San Francisco. Wrong, they went TO san francisco because of the song about Flowers in their hair.Morgan Wright 00:53, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Good eye and good points, Morgan. I've requested expansion regarding some of these points before. All we need are good sources. —Viriditas | Talk 02:06, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Lawrence, Kansas was on the list via the Gaslight Tavern. Could that pass the test (the page is full of cites - note that one source has disappeared due to a disk crash that did not have a backup (tsk)]? If so, then bring it back. Also, if so, what other sites could be added? For instance, Morgan could find, no doubt, all sorts of references to Boulder's situations from which to write an acceptable page. If the Gaslight page is not acceptable, why hasn't it received attention? Are only particular pages or types of pages getting their 'overlord' (sorry, Viriditas, but the 'imprimatur' nature (okay, I'll agree, this is my viewpoint) of all this trampling, etc. can grate. What is your interest in the 'hippie' phenomenon(a) or have you been assigned the topic? Consider the query to be rhetorical, if you want.) By the way, isn't citing other Wiki pages of sufficient value or does one need to duplicate citations? That is, a page may be a summarization (integration) across topics on several other pages (I can show several examples). Is that not allowed? 'hippie' has gotten extraordinary attention of the oversight type. Why? 64.119.36.136 10:00, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Can you just choose one or two good refs and post them here to make your point? Or, just add it to the article in the appropriate place with sources? —Viriditas | Talk 10:03, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Travel

Hippies traveled light and could pick up and go wherever the action was at any time; whether at a "love-in" on Mount Tamalpais near San Francisco, a demonstration against the Vietnam War in Berkeley, a party at Ken Kesey's "Acid Tests", or if the "vibe" wasn't right and a change of scene was desired, hippies were mobile at a moment's notice.

This should be easy to source. Since it isn't disputed, and seems to reflect the overall tone of the article (hippies traveling all over the country and the world) I'm leaving it in the article for now. —Viriditas | Talk 06:25, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

There is no reason to source anything which is common knowledge and is not disputed. Since this is a fact known by anybody with an IQ above 6, and not disputed by anybody, even Viridictator, then why do we need to cite it? 151.205.170.214 02:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Amazing, you just repeated what I wrote above. Meanwhile, it should be possible to verify everything in the article, and if we can't find any sources for this mobiility, then we would have to remove it. My guess is that there are a lot of sources and I hope to find some. What you consider "common knowledge" may not be so common to others. Try to see the world outside of your own POV for once. WP:V solves the problem. —Viriditas | Talk 02:55, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The reason people write encyclopedias is so people who know a lot (adults, scholars, smart people) can pass their knowledge to people who don't know a lot (kids, people from other cultures, dumb people). The people who know about hippies, mainly ex-hippies, write what they know, and the 10-year-old kid who just moved here from China can look it up. There doesn't have to be a citation that hippies had long hair, for example, but the kid from China might not know that. Don't remove common knowledge. Don't force people to find a citation that hippie women didn't wear gobs of makeup, (there is no reference for it because nobody wrote it down), or that hippies listened to rock and roll or talked in jive slang. Don't be so strict about citations for commonly-known things like this, especially since it's not the sort of thing people write down. And you should never assume that just because something is true there is a reference for it. Nobody knows, for example, where the word Yankee comes from. That's because nobody wrote it down, and centuries later the "scholars" have no clue. Everybody back then knew where it came from, but they are all gone. When the hippies are all gone, people would be left scrambling to figure out all the stuff the hippies never wrote down. That's why you should let hippies write this article, soon they will be dead and where will you be. Hippies rarely wrote any of the stuff down, the only people who wrote about hippies were the straights, the outsiders, and the squares.Morgan Wright 13:27, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

About sourcing, in this case, which deals a lot with a cultural affair which it is known that the 'square' press could not get, there has to be another type of source and a way to populate the thing. For instance, an auxiliary site could be developed to collect the 1st person accounts (Hippie Tales, as an example). The SF Chronicle is allowing comments related to the SoL (s___ out of luck, from one view). Too, if the 'square' press (or some more enlightened variant that is not 'square') does not have supporting material on the web, it may exist in notes, etc. Morgan argued that a source existed in some location off the beaten path. Where do we find all this stuff that is pertinent? The question is whether there is sufficient interest to round out all the hippie material. But, in the meantime, I do not see why it would hurt wiki to allow inclusion with the cite being to a class that points to 1st person experience. At least, for the period of the 40th, as people are awakening to their pasts, or (and get this) people who suppressed awareness of their youthful deeds (or misdeeds) are allowing things to poke around the wall. Who knows what will come up from a few more months of collection? Morgan mentions a bottom-up approach for an encyclopedia as we ought to have for 'science' too (wiki embodies a new type of science whether the collection of current editors realizes this or not (it cannot be suppressed)). What top-down view is there for the hippies that is well-founded? That, dear editors, is the issue. Applying your procedural baggage in this case may be more counter-productive than you can believe possible. 64.119.36.136 14:08, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I encourage you to participate in the discussion behind the community policies in places such as Wikipedia:No original research, or found a new wiki-based project without these requirements. For many reasons, the community here has chosen to base the contents of this encyclopedia on a specific subset of available information, which of course involves some disadvantages. However, ranting against established policy on an article talk page will get you nowhere. Best. ∴ here…♠ 18:26, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Rasatafari movement

Another influence were members of the Jamaican Rastafari movement who, while openly espousing Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia as God, also wore long hair (called dreadlocks), smoked cannabis as a sacrament, rejected the establishment (which they called Babylon) and espoused a back-to-nature and back-to-their-African-roots philosophy. Due to large scale immigration from Jamaica to the UK during the 1950s, this movement influenced the developing UK hippie movement, with contacts often formed when young whites would buy cannabis from black communities.

Please add references for this claim. I've never seen any evidence for this in the research that I've done. —Viriditas | Talk 08:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Neither have I, and I think it's bogus. Never saw a rastafarian in Haight. But maybe it's true for London, I wouldn't know.Morgan Wright 13:21, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

How do you feel about starting a new section about Hippies in the UK, using Karen Moller as one source? I talked about her comments in the above section. —Viriditas | Talk 23:49, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I generally avoid geographical sub-culture sections, which leads to hippies in antarctica and at least hippies in australia... If possible, work this into the general flow of the article? If not, go for it. ∴ here…♠ 03:11, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

You're right. And, we can work it in by chronology as well. —Viriditas | Talk 21:35, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Punks vs. Hippies

Don't the punks hate hippies? Like The Casualties song "Kill The Hippies" And Guttermouth's song "Fucking Hippies"The Clydelishes Clyde 02:31, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Source the conflict with a WP:RS and add it to the article. Just don't add trivia. —Viriditas | Talk 02:52, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The answer is no, most punk rockers were hippies. Definitely.Morgan Wright 02:18, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Most? Where can I read more about this? I can see some subcultural overlap to be sure, in fact I agree that there is an overlap, but is it accurate to say that most punks were hippies? Where do you draw the line? Yes, they were both countercultural subcultures, but they had clearly distinct philosophies, don't you think? I'm studying the Goth subculture right now (as I plan to help improve that page as well) and I see more similarities between them and the punks. —Viriditas | Talk 23:41, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I would say there is definitely overlap, but also contrast; sometimes even conflict. Though both hippies and punks tend to hate all generalizations (labels), punks usually hate it more. Most true hippies strongly disavow ALL violence, while many punks embrace milder forms of it (usually non-lethal). So in general, hippies value relaxation, peace, love, nature, spirituality, etc., while most punks yearn more for being in control of their own destiny and seeking thrills and challenges. Stylistically, hippies value natural, pre-industrial, or non-western (Asian, Native American, African, etc.) fashions, while punks go for their own over-the-top versions of 20th/21st century (post-) modern-industrial fashions, although members of both groups have been known to wear both leather and denim, especially in the 1980s. Hippies value togetherness and don't mind being leaned on or leaning on others; punks insist on independence. Shanoman 19:51, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Harry Gibson autobiography

Morgan added a link to an "auobiography" by Harry Gibson [5], but I can find no published autobiography of Harry Gibson. Perhaps someone can point me in the right direction. Or, is this an unpublished autobiography? —Viriditas | Talk 23:53, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Since there has been no answer to this question, I'm considering removing the link. —Viriditas | Talk 07:55, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

It's right there at the link! According to the text, this brief autobiographical sketch was published in 1986 as liner notes to one of his albums. --Orange Mike 13:41, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. It's likely that I missed that the first time around. I'll make the formatting change to the ref. —Viriditas | Talk 21:11, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

{{Cite album-notes}} added. —Viriditas | Talk 21:23, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Declined in the 1970's

I replaced the words "before declining in the 1970's" with "before declining in the mid-1970's". I think the former phraise kind of suggests its strictly 1960's... which isn't exactly true, the hippie era continued at least into the early 70's.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.155.160.28 (talk • contribs) 00:51, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

POV tag

User:SqueakBox placed a section dispute tag in the article at 01:55, 16 June 2007.[6] If there is no explanation for this tag, I will remove it. —Viriditas | Talk 02:08, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

See WP:DRIVEBY. I have waited more than 24 hours for an explanation of the tag. As of 03:15, 17 June 2007, I have removed it.[7] Please do not add it back in without explanation. —Viriditas | Talk 03:16, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Unreasonable requests for citation

I agree with the editor who commented, "Why would one need a citation for that?" Your removal of major parts of the article and your entirely unreasonable requests for citation have literally sucked the life out of this article. If you were to apply this standard across the board for all Wikipedia articles, Wikipedia would die on the vine. It's time you acknowledge that your perfectionistic attitude is destructive. Apostle12 05:29, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Please address the topic, not the editor. A source request was made for the statement that Hippie ideals were "best epitomized by The Beatles' song "All You Need is Love". If this is true, it should be very easy to source. Pretend for the moment, that you know nothing about hippies, nothing about the counterculture of the 1960s, and absolutely nothing about the Beatles. Where would you go to verify this statement? —Viriditas | Talk 07:09, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I've found the sources, and I'm in the process of adding them. —Viriditas | Talk 07:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I am very glad you added the sources you found. I believe your assertion--that what is true is easy to source--is unfounded in many instances. In my opinion your considerable talent might be better employed researching and adding sources, rather than engaging in wholesale removal of material that you consider inadequately sourced. The topic I am addressing is such removal--and I believe my comments are apropos. Apostle12 09:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

All the guidelines and policies make it clear that the burden of proof is on the claimant. And, the material was never removed, so your objection is misplaced. My unstated assertion, that what is true is easy to source, is directly related to notability, so if something cannot be sourced, then it is most likely not notable and therefore, unencyclopedic; this is especially true for popular culture articles like this one. However, in terms of niche or specialist subjects, what is true may not be easy to source: sourcing becomes a valid concern that needs to be addressed. For example, the article Ogura Yonesuke Itoh was recently deleted because the only source that has been offered by the original editor is somewhat obscure. Google and other search indexes turn up nothing, and as a result, the article was deleted (and recently recreated). In any case, the material you are referring to went unsourced in the article for a long time - with citation requests unmet. If you want to help get them back in the article, let's work together on a point by point basis. Last time we talked, we were going to work on the sexual mores section. Let's get started. The unreferenced material is located at Hippie/temp. —Viriditas | Talk 09:32, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I would maintain that moving this material to Hippie/temp constitutues "removal" for all practical purposes--especially from the point of view of the reader using Wikipedia as a reference. Not sure where the other material is located (except in history), but the same objection applies. I may eventually contribute further, however my time is extremely limited at present and I find your approach discouraging. Others have expressed the same sentiment. Apostle12 16:41, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

The Beatles material was never removed from the article. —Viriditas | Talk 20:50, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

True. However your pattern has been to systematically remove anything that remains unsourced for a period of time. A lot has been lost that way. Apostle12 05:12, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not my pattern; it's official policy. Nothing has been "lost"; it can either be found on the talk page or in the page history. There's a number of current discussions (particularly threads 27.1, 28, 29 and 33) that discuss this topic on Wikipedia talk:Verifiability and would benefit from your participation. —Viriditas | Talk 06:19, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

This seems to me an important discussion. I agree that we should source as much as possible, as dictated by Wikipedia policy. However, I would also point out that for a phenomenon that occurred within recent history, but before the advent of the Internet, it will sometimes be hard to do. I was the editor who asked why we would need a source for the statement that hippie ideology was epitomized by All you Need is Love. My view remains that while it is nice to have a source, it wouldn't have been unreasonable to make such a claim without a source. After all, the tenets of the ideology had been sourced, and the Beatles song was very much a part of the scene, as anyone who was around then can attest.

That having been said, we do have a problem with this article. At 60 kb, it is waaaaay too long. That kind of wiki-bloat occurs when lots of folks stop by and, knowing something about the subject, happily add their bit to the article. Having guidelines for the article, moving some material to sub pages, and requesting sources are all good ways of arriving at a more readable, and ultimately, better written article. Do not lose heart Apostle12, we need your clearheaded approach here. Sunray 19:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Sunray. Regarding objections to the length of the "Hippie" article, I think the problem may be due to the fact that the movement was so ambitious. After all, hippies set out to challenge every established order; they literally wanted to change the world. Given such an objective, every aspect of life was affected worldwide. Unprecedented actually, and not easy to condense without losing the spirit of it all....idealistic and arrogant, perhaps even delusional.Apostle12 05:12, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

We should be able to split the history section right now,. —Viriditas | Talk 20:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

That's cool. How do you propose to do that? Sunray 21:13, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Copy the entire section to History of the hippie movement, and replace the current section with a condensed summary that mentions all the key points. —Viriditas | Talk 21:29, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. Sunray 21:47, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, and a summary could merely contain a link tio the history article, especially at first. I dont think 60kb is even too long let alone weigh too long but the section is inherently problematic, SqueakBox 21:50, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't find the section "inherently problematic", and as you've explained your position on the talk page before, I understand and respect your POV. I've been working on expanding La Onda and I plan on adding some of that information to the history page. If you have any other good sources to add regarding worldwide hippie movements, please do so. —Viriditas | Talk 22:18, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Research paper....

I am doing a research paper on divorce. One of the points we have to discuss is how "hippies" had an effect on divorce. I am thinking that it is because hippies married at age 19 and 20 and then realized when they were older that it wasnt right person...so to say. Any ideas?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.250.194.244 (talk • contribs) 16:14, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't know where you got that impression. Hippies were often prone to the idea that marriage was just another dead Establishment concept, a meaningless piece of paper. Early marriage was quite common among all demographics in the hippie era; indeed, it was more likely to be stereotyped as poor-white behavior than hippie behavior. Hippies were part of the broader counter-cultural movement that challenged traditional thinking on these matters, leading to looser divorce laws; maybe that's what your teacher was talking about. --Orange Mike 16:19, 17 July 2007 (UTC) (didn't marry until his mid-20s)

I'm only going on what the editor has said, but it seems that the word "hippie" is being used loosely as a synonym for free love. —Viriditas | Talk 01:58, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Hippie vs hippy

Someone changed the lead to read "Hippie or hippy... This doesn't scan well for a number of reasons. Back then, the word was spelled "hippie" by those in the know. Here's what Paul Brians says about that in Common Errors in English:

A long-haired 60s flower child was a “hippie.” “Hippy” is an adjective describing someone with wide hips. The IE is not caused by a Y changing to IE in the plural as in “puppy” and “puppies.” It is rather a dismissive diminutive, invented by older, more sophisticated hipsters looking down on the new kids as mere “hippies.” Confusing these two is definitely unhip.

A comparison of the Internet usage of the terms shows that "Hippie" is used 11,200,00 times vs. 5,760,000 for "hippy" (including descriptions of folks with wide hips). I think we should standardize on "hippie" and let the redirect gently wise up those unhip enough to spell it the other way. Sunray 00:44, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, Sunray, here's the problem: in the U.K., as well as in parts of the world that prefer British spelling of English words, the term is spelled "hippy." Those who favor making Wikipedia more global in its perspective insist on the inclusion of "hippy" (though they would prefer it be primary rather than secondary). "Hippy" has been there for a long time now, and if we remove it entirely they will be upset. Apostle12 01:07, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

"Hippie" is used by media such as the Times and the Guardian, though, I can see that "hippy" is also used. The term is also misspelled hippy by plenty of American sites (though usually in more recent usage than earlier). Can we get some sources on usage in the UK? Sunray 01:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

How about being inclusive? Quite a number of English words have alternate spellings, one predominating over the other and neither considered "mispelled." This applies especially to British variants. Not worth an edit war, though I am sure "hippy" will reappear in due course. Apostle12 01:44, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Right. Well, I did manage to find a fairly authoritative British source for "hippie". I also found a source for "hippy". I think that the best resolution for this is to go back to a statement such as the following: "Hippie (sometimes spelled hippy)..." How does that strike you? Sunray 08:46, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks good to me. --Orange Mike 14:40, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

It's fine. Did drop the commas though, since you used parentheses.Apostle12 16:23, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Hippie POV

The hippie article reads like everything hippies did was good and that hippies did nothing wrong. Not all hippies had non-violent protests. Some hippies were violent, which is not stated in the article. Both sides of hippies protesting the U.S. government and its involvement in the Vietnam War are not written equal. The legality of the drug use should also be included. The article seems to make all hippies seem innocent. Hippies had positive effects on the world but also had negative effects on the world that should be stated in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.109.225.182 (talk • contribs) 12:19, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

This article isn't about the anti-war movement or the legality of drugs. If you have some good sources for the "negative effects" hippies had, by all means share them. I recall seeing some good ones pertaining to drug misuse/abuse. —Viriditas | Talk 12:39, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

This is an article about Hippies, and it should discuss what they are and what their movement was about, and the history and legacy of the same. It is irrevelant whether "some were good hippies and some were bad". An article about African-Americans, or Republicans, or Christians should not list specific behaviors of members of those groups whether good or bad, nor offer value judgements. Let's remember that this is supposed to be an encyclopedia article, not an advocacy or editorial one. It should report that hippies advocated the use of mind-expanding substances, opposed the war in Viet Nam, and preached (for the most part) civil disobedience in protest, not whether it was right or wrong for them to do so.Rosencomet 18:29, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Well said, Rosencomet! Sunray 18:48, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

And yet, the issue of drug misuse/abuse was a serious and notable one for the hippie community, is covered in every major work about hippies, and was said to be one of the factors that led to its decline in the U.S. Particularly noteworthy is the effect hard drugs had on the Haight-Ashbury hippie community. I'm afraid I don't see this as a value judgement, but rather as an historical fact as organizations like the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic were created to deal directly with this problem. This is like saying we shouldn't cover the issue of doping in sports because it is a value judgment. —Viriditas | Talk 01:14, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

You misunderstand. I was commenting on the statement by the previous poster about everything some hippies did wasn't good, and some hippies were violent, etc. An article about a movement like, say, American democracy, shouldn't include a list of individuals who, on their own, professed to be patiotic Americans and democratic, but actually broke the law or behaved improperly. An article about those individuals should discuss that, but this is an encyclopedia article about the movement, not a scold about individuals who were (or professed to be) part of it but "did things that weren't good".

Doping in sports is an intentional practice used to cheat at sports and circumvent the rules. It should be discussed, but I wouldn't put it under an article defining, say, "football". But this is more like including a section on blown-out knees or head injuries; certainly not uncommon, but hardly an inherent part of football.

The issue of drug use being promoted for consciousness exploration and the like is certainly fair game, including the degree (if documented in an encyclopedic way) to which the movement may not have sufficiently accompanied cautionary statements along with their support for the practice. But Hippies did not want these substances to be used to the detriment of their members or the movement, and sports dopers do. Certainly, Timothy Leary made it clear that he did not consider these substances to be for everyone, and that there were safeguard practices that should be in place, especially for first time users (set, setting & dosage). He even often advised that a psychologist, and one who had used these substances him/herself, be present.

Not so Ken Kesey, who handed out spiked kool-ade at the Acid Tests with only a vague reminder as to which plastic garbage can was the spiked one ("this one is for the cool cats, this one for the little kitties"); no real control over dosage, no attempt to disciver whether the user had previous medical and/or psychological conditions, etc. But this was not done maliciously; these were young people acting irresponsibly due to an unrealistic belief in their own invulnerability and of how wonderful these substances were for the world. Hippies, as a whole, opposed drug abuse; they just defined abuse and use differently than the government did. They usually put down heroin, speed, and other particularly harmful drugs (by their lights), and decried the illegalization of drugs because it left the purity and contamination of these drugs unregulated. As Arlen Riley Wilson said, you can't regulate a substance by illegalizing it; only when it is legal can you control it.

To expect a section discussing drug abusers who admired Hippie values and leaders in this article, is like expecting a section on reckless drivers who had accidents in an article about Nascar. Yes, there was a general level of carelessness, more in certain portions of the movement that others, about the dangers of these substances among those attracted to the incredible praise they were getting from the spokespeople within this young movement. Fair enough. But drug abuse, when it led to problems, was an UNINTENDED side effect of an honest desire to explore the realms of consciousness and human experience the hippies had heard were available through this practice, one which began thousands of years earlier among mystics of every culture on Earth. What was so unique was that for the first time such exploration was a popular youth phenomenum including millions of people, rather than something limited to a rarified portion of the society like shamans, mystics, ascetics, sorcerors, and others who usually had to go through training by others with similar interests before they engaged in such adventures.Rosencomet 17:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

We are mostly in agreement, and while the original editor may have chosen his words haphazardly, I think it is important to address the opinions of editors who see POV issues with this article: they are there just beneath the threshold of a tag. I myself have tried to balance the article on the drug topic in the past, only to have the material removed. A focused, penetrating eye will notice glaring omissions, with what can only be described as "negative" perceptions of hippies all but removed. There is a huge difference between consciousness exploration and young men and women running away from home to join the hippies only to be found homeless and addicted to drugs upon their arrival. These things are documented and did happen, and there were casualties of the movement. Some naive, trusting young girls were raped with flowers still in their hair, and the heroin, speed, and crime epidemic that swept through the Haight and other hippie communities is documented in the literature. Don't try and sell us the sweetness and light angle. The burning white light of the counterculture was eclipsed by the darkness of men even as the greatest minds of their generation fastened wings of wax and flew too close to the sun. Historically, Leary is considered just as irresponsible as Kesey, perhaps even more so, and many people blame Leary in particular for the crackdown on legal LSD. Owsley Stanley called Leary "one of the most destructive actors to appear on the scene". (Forte 1999) According to the New York Times, Albert Hofmann "said he disagreed with Mr. Leary's popularization of psychedelic drugs" and he was "frustrated by the worldwide prohibition that has pushed it underground". According to Hofmann, "It was used very successfully for 10 years in psychoanalysis" but "was hijacked by the youth movement of the 1960's and then demonized by the establishment that the movement opposed." Frankly, there's no advice about tripping with a psychologist in the phrase, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". And if you're not already familiar with Greenfield's book, you should be. I'm afraid there is a POV problem here, and I intend to get to the bottom of it. —Viriditas | Talk 00:36, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

You both make valid points here. The original editor made comments that were blatantly POV and unacceptable—we all agree on that. What we are talking about has to do with the weight given to particular aspects of the hippie saga. Viriditas makes the point that there are issues just beneath the surface that elide certain realities. That is undoubtedly true. However, there are also things left unsaid about the manufacture of imagery about "the hippie" that the Nixon administration (for example) convinced the media to employ in order to counter the menace of the drug culture. We cannot get at much of this on either side of the equation in an encyclopedia article. We do need to ensure proper balance in the article, however. That always means that the subject must be presented well, and accurately, and that criticisms are not given undue weight. Sunray 02:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

If the article is already POV by only stating everything hippies did was right and that hippies did nothing wrong. You need to even it out with the opposite POV. The article also needs to show the negative effects of hippies. When both of these views are in the article the article will become NPOV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.109.225.182 (talk • contribs)

Three editors addressed your points. We currently have a section on Charles Manson in the article, and I suggest carefully expanding a section on the social effects and implications of the movement, such as homelessness and drug misuse/abuse. If you can be specific, then your concerns can be met. Speaking in generalities isn't going to help improve this article. —Viriditas | Talk 03:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Viriditas for the most part, but the Unsigned poster above has totally missed the point when it comes to objectivity. You do NOT arrive at a NPOV article by expressing both the POV view that everything someone did was right "evened out" with the opposite POV. You maintain objectivity by simply reporting what someone did without any such judgements, and frankly I don't see this article as saying anywhere that "hippies did nothing wrong". The purpose of an encyclopedia article is not to judge whether someone's actions were "right" or "wrong", or whether a movement or philosophy was "good" or "bad", but just to accurately describe it.

I'm not trying to "sell us the sweetness and light angle". I have added nothing to the article to imply that the hippie movement was good or bad, or always resulted in desirable outcomes. But you don't do an article about motion pictures with a section about young women who got raped travelling to Hollywood to become stars or exploited on the director's couch or addicted to drugs or alcohol, no matter what was "in their hair". You define motion pictures, and present their history and notable features, and leave the judgements to the reader. Should an article about automobiles include whether everything drivers do is "good" or "bad"? Will you judge their motivations, the destinations they chose, their success at arriving there, ad infinitum? How about the "dark side" of power tools?

I think the crime and homelessness found in Haight Ashbury belongs in an article about Haight Ashbury, and it was due to the unexpected effects of the enormous public youth response to the publicity/hype coupled with NOTHING in place to deal with this unique mass migration of starry-eyed and clueless young people, NOT due to the nature of the hippie movement IMO. I agree that an article about "The Haight Ashbury Experience" should certainly include references to both those who saw it as an attempt at a social experiment and those who reported on the problems that arose.

On the other hand, to say that 'there's no advice about tripping with a psychologist in the phrase, "Turn on, tune in, drop out"' is to ignore the body of literature Timothy Leary published and the lectures he presented. That is one sound bite, you know, and it also doesn't say "use far too much drugs of any sort in an irresponsible way". All of which really belongs in the article about him, not about "Hippies", as does IMO the material about Charlie Manson (hardly a spokesperson for hippies in general, or characteristic of them) - or should an article about "African-Americans" include sections on notable black criminals, and one about "Jews" include a section on "Son of Sam"? And there are few books more POV than Greenfield's, which has been resoundly panned by nearly everyone personally associated with Timothy Leary (myself included). IMO, it is a mistake (no matter how popular a mistake) to equate the irresponsibility of Leary and Kesey; when did Leary ever distribute massive amounts of drugs at high school gymnasiums, or anywhere for that matter? All Leary really did, besides his personal behavior choices, was to speak his mind in public, and he did it after years of study as a respected psychologist with real credentials. Kesey was just a novelist, and a good one who's works I enjoy, but he had no background to distribute random amounts of powerful drugs to strangers in uncontrolled situations. It's a miracle how little harm resulted.Rosencomet 17:13, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

You speak my mind, Rosencomet, so I won't add a lengthy comment. However, I think you have hit on how this article: a) is relatively neutral, and, b) could be further improved. It is time to do that, and I think you have added the missing piece: A litmus test of what could be added, what stays and what goes. I will zero in on Manson for starters. I've never liked that section. Manson has nothing to do with hippies, except that he, like the "starry-eyed and clueless young people" fed into/on the hype. From previous discussions I've had with Viriditas, I'm pretty sure he wants to further improve the article. Let's do it! We could start with a "To do" list. Sunray 20:36, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Keeping my comments brief and to the point per talk page guidelines: the valid part of the point made by the unsigned editor is that the article lacks a critical analysis of the hippie movement. I don't think there is any need to continue to address the false part of his argument. The question that remains is, does this article accurately describe the hippie movement? I think we are all agreed, no matter which side you are on, that it does not. I'm not going to address your point about adding information to imply that the movement was good or bad, because this again, addresses the false part of the unsigned editor's argument. As for representing the Haight: "It is largely accepted that [hippie culture] was born in the early 1960s on the West Coast of America, and particularly in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco." (Muncie 2004). So we see that that the locus of the hippie movement is the Haight (Ford 2005) and should be briefly addressed in this article. Regarding Leary, nobody has ignored his body of literature. I read all of it, in fact. The point is, Leary did not advise hippies to trip with psychologists. His supporters have made it very clear that the "Turn on, tune in, drop out" is the call of the muezzin, a religious rallying point for sacramental gnosis; no psychologist is needed. Perhaps you are confusing the early Learly with the late, messianic stage Leary. There is no intermediary needed for direct experience, nor is one required. You say, "All Leary really did, besides his personal behavior choices, was to speak his mind in public," and yet evey single major professional and academic associated with LSD has decried this as irresponsible on Leary's part, including not just Albert Hofmann, but also Ralph Metzner, Sidney Cohen, and Humphrey Osmond. Metzner asked Leary to consider adding "...and come back" to the end of the "Turn on" mantra, but Leary refused. (Stevens 1998) Like Hofmann and Owsley, Cohen blamed the LSD crackdown on "irresponsible enthusiasts" like Leary and Kesey. (Stevens 1998) Osmond went so far as to describe Leary as someone who "lives in an almost totally hypothetical future", comparing Leary's "millennialism" to Hitler's. According to Greenfield, Osmond and Aldous Huxley, "handed the future of psychedelic research to the wrong man." Haight-Ashbury hippies even ran Leary out of the Digger free store in 1967, telling him "You don't turn us on!"(Sante 2006) I can go on and on and on like this. Clearly, there is a POV issue as some people are completely ignoring evidence that contradicts their sacred assumptions about the past. A lengthy discussion about including Charles Manson in this article can be found in the talk archives. Feel free to ressurect it any time. As for Greenfield, please address the flaws in his book here, so you can educate me on the subject. I've read the book, read the reviews in the media, and followed the associated commentary. I haven't seen a single bad review or a "panning". The book shows without a doubt that Leary was human, with all the little flaws one would expect. It's time to stop the hagiography, the hero worship, and the historical revisionism. —Viriditas | Talk 00:37, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Gasp, that was brief! I'd hate to see a lengthy comment ;-) All good points, though. Tell me: You come across as someone who has read a great deal about it but who wasn't there. Your POV seems somewhat negative about the hippie phenomenon. Not that that is a bad thing, there is much chaff to get through and a sharp eye is needed. As to Manson. I know the debate, because I participated in it. I backed off because I could see that your mind was entirely closed about it. But I think it is fair game to raise it again, since people obviously see mention of him as out of place. Much of the above discussion about Leary is tangential to this article, though important, and should be dealt with in other article(s) about him. However, Leary was very influential to the movement and absolutely has to be covered in this article as well. Hitting the right note on such a controversial figure will be a real achievement. Sunray 00:57, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Of course I wasn't there, as I wasn't yet born. And, my mind isn't closed about anything. —Viriditas | Talk 01:00, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I WAS there, at least at the end, and have spoken with and worked with Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna, Paul Krassner, Ralph Metzner, Nicki Scully, R.U. Sirius, Stephen Gaskin, and Robert Anton Wilson (among others), who all agree that the Greenfield book is full of one-sided crap. Jay Stevens (Storming Heaven), who is no hero-worshipper of Leary by any means, is far more objective than Greenfield. Furthermore, I am not hero-worshipping Leary or saying he was always a responsible individual; if you review my statements, I merely said that Leary has repeatedly mentioned the dangers of individuals with psychological problems using psychedelics outside of a controlled therapeutic setting, has published his well-know guidelines concerning set, setting and dosage in the use of such substances, and warned that they are not for everyone. I am not saying this is sufficient to save him from being called irresponsible, but it does not rise to the degree of Kesey's actual DISTRIBUTION of such substances without even a conversation with the THOUSANDS of strangers who took unmeasured doses in settings like high school gyms which implied that there WAS no need for caution. I think considering Osmond and Cohen to be definitive and objective experts on Leary, or that they know better than he, is ridiculous, though I have no problem with someone who considered Leary an "irresponsible enthusiast", or that the notoriety of Leary and his adventures helped cause the crackdown on legitimate research. I have no idea WHAT "lives in an almost totally hypothetical future" means, or it's relevance here; who cares what Osmond's opinion of Leary's view of the future is, anyway, or Leary's of Osmond's for that matter? Any comparison between Leary and Hitler is, of course, ridiculous inflammatory rhetoric, and serves only to reinforce the judgement that Osmond spoke out of personal animosity for Leary rather than objectivity.

May I say that I have not revised any history nor changed any text, but I reiterate that no matter HOW irresponsible you may think Leary's IDEAS were, or HOW many other people you can quote who share your poor assessment of them, all Leary did was express them. He did not hand out massive amounts of drugs hap-hazardly at large open-to-the-public events held on high school property. All of which, I agree, belongs in discussions about Leary, not about the Hippie movement, of which he was a famous member but not a founder. I know that not all members of the counter-culture supported Leary; so what? Why would hashing over either the words of Leary hero-worshipers or Leary demonizers belong in an article about Hippies? Are you going to add a section on hippies' reactions to Dylan's born-again period, or Alpert's transformation to Ram Das, or Jerry Rubin's sell-out to Wall Street, or any other example of someone admired by hippies who had feet of clay? To what end? Does one trot out controversial people admired by members of other movements and sully their memories in articles designed to describe those movements, or shouldn't one at least reserve such information to the articles concerning the individuals? And I'm not being one-sided here; I don't think a bunch of quotes about what a great contribution to psychology, sociology, or popular culture Leary may have had in the opinions of this or that colleague or journalist belongs in the Hippie article either. My argument remains that the job of the editors is to help create an article that objectively describes Hippies, not one that reports on different people's judgements of their worth, or that of those they admired.Rosencomet 18:29, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Terence McKenna died in 2000, so I fail to see how he could "agree that the Greenfield book is full of one-sided crap" when it was released in June of 2006. And don't try and wiggle out of your tall tale, because you used the words "who all agree". Putting aside your wild, necromantic exaggerations for the moment, who was "there" or not "there" has nothing to do with this discussion, nor could it. I don't even believe you can substantiate your statement regarding Paul Krassner, Ralph Metzner, Nicki Scully, R.U. Sirius, Stephen Gaskin, and Robert Anton Wilson with published reviews in reliable secondary sources. I'm not going to fall into your mud puddle and start name dropping because it serves only one purpose: distracting from the topic at hand by trying to make it seem like this has to do with my personal opinion ("no matter how irresponsible you may think Leary's ideas were") when I don't recall ever offering my opinion on this or any other subject. The subject is not what dead people think of recently released books, nor what you think I think, nor what popular figures think behind closed doors. The topic is the perceived bias of this article as expressed by other editors, including myself. There is no discussion of criticism, controversy, or balanced analysis of the hippie movement in this article. Please stick to that topic, and do not persist in communicating with the dead for advice. —Viriditas | Talk 20:49, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

O.K., O.K., Terence McKenna should not have been in this list of people who thought Greenfield's book was crap. I've discussed Leary with Terence, and anyone who held the opinions he expressed would think Greenfield's book is crap, but I agree that's not the same as saying he actually called it crap, so I apologize on this point (which you have certainly beaten into the ground). And I'm not going to "substantiate" everything I say on a talk page "with published reviews in reliable secondary sources" any more than anyone else does. I remind you again: I did not add any such data to the article. YOU started the name-dropping with Metzner, Osmond, Cohen, Huxley and Hoffman, and you introduced the line "of course, I wasn't there", so let's not have the pot calling the "mud puddle" black.

Frankly, my comments were about the notion that there is a "need" for material showing that "Hippies had negative effects on the world that should be stated in the article" because "The hippie article reads like everything hippies did was good and that hippies did nothing wrong". I disagree with both statements; I don't think this article says any such thing, nor do I think it "needs" judgements on the "goodness" or "badness" of Hippies, nor do I think such material would be encyclopedic. I don't think you actually disagree with this, Viriditas. So let's leave any arguments about Leary and what his detractors have said about him to the Leary article if necessary. Why continue here when we really don't disagree on the issue this thread began with?

As for Krassner, Metzner, and other's reactions to the Greenfield book, just search on the topic. And bad reviews are not hard to find, like this one [8]. Here's something from Metzner:

"Robert Greenfield’s recently published biography of Tim Leary — a sensationalist hatchet job of character assassination — has resulted in a slew of mainstream media review articles which basically echo Greenfield’s cynical, so-superior, moralistic put-down. Apparently, Leary’s message was so threatening, that even 10 years after his death, mainstream media still find ways to negate it. In an ironic development that Leary would have found uproariously funny, a second biography, by English writer John Higgs, also appeared this year — a very different and admirably balanced portrayal." - Ralph Metzner

And this one: Subject: Neal Pollack on Greenfield on Leary (Aug 14/21)

"Neal Pollack’s review inanely parrots the hatchet-job that Robert Greenfield has penned as a supposedly “comprehensive biography” of Timothy Leary. Apparently main-stream publishers and national magazines still can’t resist the temptation to pontificate in moral judgment over a generation of seekers who were turned on by the creative possibilities of consciousness expansion, and turned off by their culture’s addictions to consumerism and militarism. (Pollack approvingly quotes Greenfield’s condescending dismissal of the sixties counterculture as “a freaky mirror image of mainstream celebrity-obsessed America”.) Pollack thinks Greenfield’s book is “an epically thrilling, wicked epitaph for the vain, bizarre, self-promoting guru”. But you have to wonder, why spend 600 pages on a sustained job of character assassination of a man who’s been dead for almost ten years and presumably no longer a threat to anyone? Greenfield has zero understanding nor, apparently, real interest in the potentials of psychedelics, nor of Leary’s bold and irreverent attempts to explore these potentials. As a close collaborator of Leary and Alpert, both at Harvard and Millbrook, and a life-long friend of both men, my regret at having naïvely agreed to talk with Greenfield is only tempered by the realization that he would have written his hit-piece anyway. Of course Leary had his faults, like any man. One thing I do know is that he also had the capacity to laugh at himself and his failings, to treat everyone he encountered with total respect and generosity, and without malice. At a time when university research projects are starting to replicate studies that our Harvard project published over 40 years ago, those who would like a deeper understanding of the man and his visionary work should read the eminently fair and balanced biography, only published in the UK so far, by John Higgs, -- I Have America Surrounded."

Ralph Metzner, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus, California Institute of Integral Studies

Co-author, The Psychedelic Experience.

Rosencomet 22:14, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Unlike Jesse Walker's naive review and Metzner's self-interested editorial (Metzner is the co-author of The Psychedelic Experience with Timothy Leary), Paul Krassner's interview with author John Higgs regarding this very issue hits the target. Perhaps Walker and Metzner can learn a thing or two from Higgs:

"Most of the mud that has been slung at Leary is perfectly true, but you can be factually accurate and wildly misleading at the same time. For instance, if someone asked me to describe Winston Churchill, I could say he was a mentally ill drunk who lost the 1945 UK General Election. And I'd be factually correct, but that wouldn't mean I was being fair, or that I'd nailed the essence of the man. With Leary, for everyone with a complaint against him, there are countless people who credit him with enriching their lives on a very profound level, and I don't understand the desire to ignore this. Ultimately, you can't hope to understand why he did what he did if you refuse to look at the ideas that drove him. Leary was too complicated a figure to dismiss as either a saint or a moron, as many people try to. He's probably the best example of the "trickster" archetype that the 20th Century produced, and his ambiguity is key to understanding him. The crux of his philosophy was the extent to which the reality that appears to be external to us is actually a model constructed by our own minds, a model that we are responsible for and which in certain circumstances can change. This is a frightening and unsettling idea, but it is also liberating. The implication is that if you hear someone describe Leary as a saint or as a moron, then they are not really telling you anything about Tim, but revealing something about themselves. Leary used to say, "You get the Timothy Leary you deserve." (He was being willfully antagonistic here, I think. It would perhaps be fairer to say that you get the Timothy Leary you want.) The upshot of all this, of course, is that it is only right and fitting that we hear so many wildly different opinions about him. Perversely, it validates his ideas."

—Viriditas | Talk 00:46, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

More

Maybe be more specific. Put more images. 170.185.232.10 17:52, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Please specify; more specific about what? What kind of images? —Viriditas | Talk 21:07, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Removal of Road Junky

I removed the Road Junky citation from the lead.[9] This was in reference to the claim that the "Beatles gave tens of thousands of hippies the dream their answers were to be found in the East". The lead section really needs to be trimmed and the article body developed to include WP:RS to these types of statements. I don't think an anonymous blog post on Road Junky qualifies as reliable. —Viriditas | Talk 02:52, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company

The lead section previously linked to this reference which supported the theatre detail in the lead; However, there is no mention or discussion of theatre in the article, specifically concerning Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, the group that the link refers to. Per WP:LEAD, section zero should only summarize the article, not introduce new information. Please help add this information into the article if it is notable. —Viriditas | Talk 03:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll work on adding a section. Floating Lotus was indeed one of the most notable creations of the late 60's hippie community and found its main inspiration in the trauma of the Vietnam War. As such it was both cultural and political. Performances were well-structured, beautifully performed and well-attended. There was also a communal aspect to Floating Lotus, since the group (which numbered approximately fifty persons) lived communally for a time on virgin redwood acreage located just south of San Francisco. Apostle12 20:00, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it needs its own section. What we need is a discussion of the inextricable theatrical components of the hippie movement. This is a very interesting topic for expansion, as it looks like there is a historical continuum of development with origins in the history of theatre, especially the influence of traveling theatrical groups in the Commedia dell'arte style, happenings in the 1950s, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the breaking down of the fourth wall in the Acid Tests and early music festivals, leading to the establishment of the modern rock concert. Aside from summarizing this in the main article, the meat and potatoes should be split off into the "culture" article (or whatever you want to call it). —Viriditas | Talk 02:44, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, in the Lotus productions we made a conscious effort to break down the fourth wall.

One night in particular comes to mind during a performance of "Apocalypse Bliss" at John Hinkle Park in Berkeley. At the end of the last scene, the cast members emerged naked through the palm frond "curtain," moved up into the audience and brought the entire audience down to the area in front of the stage to share food and drink and to dance. One elderly couple remains fresh in my memory, radiant white-haired octogenarians dancing with naked twenty-somethings. Apostle12 07:46, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I can genuinely appreciate the beauty of that scene, Apostle12, as well as the metaphorical nature of the relationship between the baby boomers and their parental audience. There's a rich tapestry here on so many levels. Perhaps you can help integrate the theatrical aspects of the movement with the current article; this is very much needed. I think you (or another editor) mentioned the "playful" aspects of the hippies before; this is a primary theme we should see throughout the article, as I find it emerging from the text in every analysis. Thank you for sharing your memories. —Viriditas | Talk 04:34, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Remove unsourced about women, afros, long hair.

Please source this information before adding it back into the article: —Viriditas | Talk 23:48, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Hippie women tended to wear little or no conventional makeup, preferring a more natural look; when makeup was worn it was generally for dramatic effect. Many white people associated with the American Civil Rights Movement and the 1960s counterculture, especially those with curly or "nappy" hair, wore their hair in afros in earnest imitation of African-Americans. "Long-hair" became a pejorative term among those who disliked hippies.

I've been able to source some of of this in a tertiary source: Secondhand Clothes and Tie-Dyed Shirts: Antifashion and the Hippie Influence." American Decades. Ed. Vincent Tompkins. Vol. 7: 1960-1969. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 10 vols. Gale Virtual Reference Library. I'll add back in what is stated in that citation. —Viriditas | Talk 21:05, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to add a section called "Culture of the Hippies"

"Culture of the Hippies" sounds somewhat overblown to me, because the movement proper lasted such a short time and I see culture as something that develops, and becomes deeply rooted, during many generations.

However there was such a thing as "hippie culture" and, more specifically, a "hippie ethos." Hippiedom was, after all, an idea--something along the lines of:

"We are each conscious creators, and we can choose to re-fashion the world we live in along more loving, compassionate lines. We must not be limited by the societal, governmental and cultural structures we create--such structures are often antithetical to the essential, moment-to-moment practice of loving one's fellow man. Life is a banquet and most poor folks are starving (quoting Auntie Mame)."

The remarkable thing about the hippie phenomenon was that this idea did indeed take root, to the extent that contemporary Western culture would hardly be recognizable had hippies never existed.

I have attempted in the past to add information regarding the beautiful, central idea of the hippie ethos from works authored by Stewart Brand, Stephen Gaskin and others, sourcing same as best I can. Perhaps you might better tolerate the addition of such information in the section you propose.

What exactly to call it? I am open to suggestion.Apostle12 20:23, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

The article needs a section summarizing the most notable people in the hippie movement. If Stewart Brand is one of those people, then let's add a Stewart Brand section with that quote. I also want to see a short section about Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, and anyone else you think deserves mention. The "Culture of the hippies" title pertains to splitting all the culture-related information out of this article and into a new one, leaving a summary in its place. —Viriditas | Talk 02:32, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Syn and or tags

The citations provided do not say anything about the legacy of the hippies and interracial dating, hence the syn tags. I will add these tags back in and/or remove the material unless it is properly supported. The Red Dog material has the same problems. A quote from one musician needs a RS, and has been interpreted to read something beyond the sources offered. —Viriditas | Talk 19:26, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to find specific sourcing for the multiracial nature of the hippie world. I have objected previously to the characterization of hippies as "white," since they were white, asian and other in about the same proportion as the general population. (Yes, I know there is a source who wrote that hippies were mainly white, but this characterization distorts the reality nonetheless.) In fact one of the most notable features of hippie culture was a marked willingness to see others as simply people, with little attention paid to race. Interracial dating was practiced by a large percentage of hippies, far beyond what was prevalent in the general population. It was definitely considered 'cool.'

I'm not sure what this means: "A quote from one musician needs a RS.." Apostle12 20:38, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

See this diff and this external link. The quote refers to Chandler Laughlin, but the wiki text adds George Hunter, and I haven't found a source that states that the Charlatans were the first psychedelic rock band to play live on LSD. Sources generally agree that they were innovative: one sources writes, "...many feel they were the first acid rock band" (McCleary, 2004, p. 89). The multiracial sources said nothing about hippies, and this has more to do with the civil rights movement. I removed the following: "Interracial dating and marriage have become common and generally accepted. Multiracial children of such unions—like Tiger Woods, Keanu Reeves and Barack Obama—enjoy a certain cachet." There's nothing about hippies in either of those links. Something that should be added: Due to its proximity to the Fillmmore, the Haight-Ashbury on the West Coast was an interracial neighborhood during the counterculture of the 1960s (Echols, 2002, p.42; Lee & Shlain, 1992, p. 41). The subject of interracial relationships was expressed in the music of the counterculture, in hippie musicals like Hair (1967), (Perone, 2004, p. 10) and in hippie films such as Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). —Viriditas | Talk 14:02, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

The Laughlin source is a partial substantiation of the "proto-hippie" line. I might well have added the "Works" source, since in the film both Luria Castell and Ellen Harman refer to Laughlin AND Hunter as "the first hippies they ever saw." (I have now done so.) This is not synthesis, this is summarization and writing about something in one's own words. Why did you eliminate the Laughlin quote? All it needed was something more about Hunter.

Did you read "The Red Dog Saloon And The Amazing Charlatans"? The author clearly states that the ingestion of LSD before the Charlatans' audition performance was "unprecedented."

The article used to contain material that referred to the fact that hippies were active in the civil rights movement, and specifically it spotlighted their opposition to anti-miscegenation laws. Rather than just request a source, you deleted this entirely, thus removing the antecedent for the material (also now deleted) underscoring the fact that interracial dating is now generally accepted and multiracial children are considered somewhat "cool." Now this very important aspect of hippie culture, and the legacy attached to it, are entirely missing. How discouraging!

It is important to remember that no civil rights leader during the 1960's (including MLK) could come out in favor of interracial dating and marriage. To do so would have played into segregationist warnings, e.g. "You wouldn't want your daughter to marry one..." Of the three 1960's counterculture groups, hippies were the most prominent in arguing for the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws...AND they just went ahead and dated outside their race. These were black hippies, white hippies, asian hippies and native american hippies (can't recall many latino hippies). They didn't just talk about it, in true hippie fashion they went ahead and did it, flouting convention and the law, and it became commonplace. Now society accepts it. What do you want, a source that says, "Thank God for the hippies, otherwise interracial dating would still be taboo and multiracial children would still be ostracized"? Founders4 19:53, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

We need good sources for this material. —Viriditas | Talk 21:51, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Of course.Founders4 22:00, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced etymology content

Removed to talk page. Please provide sources. —Viriditas | Talk 20:30, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Ironically, many of those involved in the developing counterculture scene latched onto the gratuitous use of the term "hippie" by the largely un-hip media, and began labeling each other with it in tongue-in-cheek fashion. The jest eventually became so ingrained that they came to identify with the label. In the same way, non-narcotic drugs came to be called "dope" through the habitual imitation of those who used such catchall terminology out of ignorance. Put-ons and goofs were a common trait of hipsters, who took great pleasure in living up to bizarre stereotypes when confronting the outside world.

Proposal regarding the "Red Dog" section

I would like to suggest that the Red Dog section is split in to two separate sections, one dealing with the Berkeley coffee shops and one with the Red Dog Saloon - as it already touches on both subjects. I would also be please to assist in any way that I can. I have already included a correction about the involvement of Chan Laughlin with the Jabberwock. Thanks, RossChickenOnAUnicycle 00:02, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I think a short mention is appropriate as an introduction to the connection between the beat/coffee house/folk scene in early to mid-1960's Berkeley and developments at the Red Dog. Such an introduction establishes a clear link between late beat culture and early hippie culture. However, the level of detail recently added to the article seems inappropriate to me, so I have deleted much of it

It is good information, though. I think it would better fit separate articles on the Cabale Creamery and the Jabberwock. Thanks for contributing. Apostle12 04:35, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite

I think as a small term project parts of this article should be edited as most of it is written as if the hippies have totally disapeared this is biased against the remaining communes and groups. just my opinion

84.71.53.76 20:11, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Speaking as a self-described hippie, I'd have to disagree. The article accurately reflects the comparative rarity and cultural insignificance of the remaining hippies, while addressing the influence of the hippie movement on the broader culture. Compared to our heyday, we are just a vanishing memory. --Orange Mike 14:24, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Festivals

I added the OR tag to the festivals section due to a number of unverified claims; it is claimed that the "tradition of hippie festivals began in the United States in 1965 with Ken Kesey's Acid Tests" however this exact claim has yet to be substantiated. For example, from 1958-1965 the Newport Folk Festival was popular with the youth culture, and according to Britta Sweers, "folk music was increasingly integrated into youth activism such as the demonstrations against the Vietnam War" and began "mixing with the hippie movement" and contributed to new "hybrid" forms of music. Before and during 1965-1970, American Folk Rock was "played by groups related to the hippie movement". Folk Rock became a term "for the various bands of the hippie culture who experimented with drugs, and would go, like Jefferson Airplane, in the psychedelic direction." (Sweers, Britta, (2005). Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195158784) —Viriditas | Talk 06:35, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes, these historical perspectives might well be incorporated into this section. Nothing stands on its own, after all. Depends, I suppose, on how one defines "hippie" festival, as opposed to "folk music" festival. The religious quality that characterized Grateful Dead performances (much noted and easily referenced) did begin with the "Acid Tests, and it was this spirit that kept people coming back for more. Thirty years of "more," much in keeping with Miller's description of hippies as "a new religious movement." Apostle12 08:28, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I'm glad you explained. I'll attempt to help source the section in a little bit, but as it stands right now, it reads as OR. Luckily, I have some sources that I found while doing some research a few months ago, and I'll see if we can use them. —Viriditas | Talk 08:37, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it does read as OR and that sourcing is needed. As you may have noticed, I was moving things around in this section to try to create some sense of order, since I had been less than pleased with the changes that were introduced some months ago. As I was trying out various options, I realized that the historical perspective was completely missing. Having little time, I simply added what I thought was one well established fact that might at least hint at a "beginning."

Making mention of the precedents (again we have a tie-in to the Beat era and the '50's folk scene), would much improve this section. Look forward to seeing your revisions. Apostle12 15:40, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

History of the hippie movement

I've split the history section off to History of the hippie movement. Please make an effort to expand that article and to use this article as a general overview of the most important aspects of the movement. I've summarized the antecedent section, however much of the lead section should be moved into an overview of the history and the lead replaced with a summary of this article. —Viriditas | Talk 07:13, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Reliable source

Just wanted to call attention to a sample of some of Viriditas' recent verdicts on hippie-dom, as gleaned from his most recent round of edit summaries; I think we can all learn from his wisdom and authority. Remember, these are not opinions, they are solid facts, because Viriditas, being Viriditas, IS a reliable source.

• "If there is one thing we don't need, it's a 250 pixel image of an art car" -- says Viriditas.

• "Please stop adding 'later renamed San Francisco State University'. Nobody cares." -- says Viriditas. Viriditas just clearly stated that "nobody cares", so remember - if you think you care, you are either wrong, or just a nobody, by definition.

• "Removing Image:Freespiritartcar.jpg. It's a terrible photo." -- says Viriditas.

Viriditas has spoken. A note to everyone else. Who are you to question Viriditas? You are not Viriditas, therefore you do not OWN this article, so please, do not even attempt to challenge him. Thank you. 70.105.19.171 12:47, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad you picked up on my sense of humor. Or did you? Adding a lead that adheres to WP:LEAD (summarizes the article and globalizes the lead per talk page criticism), removing duplicate content (do we need to state that the hippie movement was incorporated into the mainstream three separate times), removing insignificant parentheticals (it is not important to the history of the hippie movement to tell the reader that a certain University was renamed, perhaps you should check the subject of this article), and removing poor images (a photograph of a car bumper from the distance!?) is not WP:OWN; it's called editing - why don't you try it? BTW, all content is still intact in the split article, History of the hippie movement. —Viriditas | Talk 13:08, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Alas, not being a Reliable Source myself, whenever I try editing, my changes are always subjected to little bothersome things like "consensus". We are indeed privileged to have someone here who can render these decisions, without having to bother with the whole rigamarole of sounding others out first. 70.105.19.171 13:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Why would I need consensus to add an actual lead section, remove duplicate content, and horrible photos? Perhaps you enjoy looking at a low-res photo of an ugly car bumper from a distance, but I'm sure most people don't. Perhaps you enjoy reading that "hippies wore long hair" in two consecutive paragraphs, or looking at "citation needed" tags without adding references, but I certainly don't. I've also brought the article down from an unreadable 69 kilobytes to a reasonable 60. You want to make some changes? Go right ahead: there's a missing section on the year 1968 that needs to be added to both History of the hippie movement and summarized in this article. —Viriditas | Talk 13:32, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Nah, obviously nothing exciting or notable of mention happened in 1968, it was a pretty boring and uneventful year for hippies (especially in Chicago!). See the article? Wikipedia would never lead you astray, would it? 70.105.19.171 14:50, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

This is the most important section of the article, and has yet to be written. I'm not just talking about the context of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, as well as the 1968 Democratic National Convention, but how hippies felt and responded to these events. —Viriditas | Talk 15:02, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Really? The most important? Funny, the way it reads at the moment, it would appear the consensus is that there is no need to waste our readers' time trying to inform them about trivial events that ought not to concern 'em, such as the year 1968. 70.105.19.171 15:06, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

It's one of dozens of things missing. The popularity of the Carousel Ballroom in 1968 is yet another. —Viriditas | Talk 15:12, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Dear Anon 70.105.19.171, all this energy you're expending picking fights with other editors surely could be put to better use if you focused on improving the article and collaborating, yes? --MPerel 15:48, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Recent changes

I don't have time adequately to address the issue this morning, however I want to express my outrage that Viriditas has (once again) initiated a wholesale takeover of this article, completely ignoring compromises worked out over the past two years among several main editors.

This is an outrageous, arrogant approach. To leave the article for a single day and then to come back and find that it has been completely re-written is maddening. In the past Viriditas' approach has driven away several competent, conscientous editors. It threatens to do the same once again. I will be referring this matter to an administrator.Apostle12 15:42, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

All I see are improvements. Why not tone down the emotions, try not to overreact, collaborate reasonably, and communicate what specific edits you disagree with? btw, are the comments under ip 70.105.19.171 yours? --MPerel 15:48, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

No, those are not mine. Ironic that you are asking ME to "collaborate reasonably." Apostle12 16:56, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I will say that the "bold" tactic of turning nearly every aspect of an article upside-down overnight with a minimum of discussion, has, in the past on wikipedia, usually turned out to be problematic. Nigel Barristoat 17:02, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Please point out a single aspect of the article that has been turned "upside-down". All changes previous to my edit are completely intact, either in a split history section that we have talked about splitting for a very long time or in other sections (discussed previously on this page and a tag recommending splitting has appeared in the article for a long time). The previous "lead" appears as an overview completely unchanged, while the new lead attempts (still needs work) to actually summarize the article without requiring sources. Apostle12's claim that my changes are "completely ignoring compromises" is not supported in any way. Lastly, my attempts to globalize the lead have been supported by multiple editors on the talk page, while another previous editor discussed the inclusion of GLBT, which although I am having trouble sourcing, I have nevertheless added to the lead to represent their view. So contrary to the claims made above, I have endeavored to edit this article from the perspective of other editors rather than myself. The article was previously 69 kilobytes and now is hovering around 60. Any material that was removed can still be found in the newly split section, History of the hippie movement. —Viriditas | Talk 20:59, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Please don't try to pretend that you have not repeatedly turned this article upside down. As for the new lead, and your retention of the old lead as an "overview," the article now reads as though it has TWO leads--really a problem. I think one lead that incorporates all the relevent information would be much better.

Also, please don't try to pretend that you have been in the forefront of trying to globalize the lead--you had to be dragged by multiple editors, kicking and screaming, before you allowed the lead to move in that direction. It became a true "edit war," with you doing your usual dance--reverting every attempt to globalize the lead based on unreasonable, literal demands for verification.

"Viriditas works well with others"--NOT! Apostle12 03:28, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Adding sources, removing original research, and splitting the article into subtopics to manage readability is not "turning this article upside down". It's part of the process of improving Wikipedia articles, and it's something you've objected to from the very beginning as the discussion archives show. I suggest reading Wikipedia:Article size. I split the history section at 69 kilobytes when it is recommended by the guideline to do so at 60. This has been discussed previously with at least two other editors suggesting a split, making it 3-1 in favor. There has also been ample warning of the coming split, with the use of the split tag recommending the action for over a month. I've brought the article down to 58 kilobytes and will continue to split as much history out of this article as possible. I'm going to ignore your usual litany of personal attacks which only serve to distract from improving this article, and I will instead focus on responding directly to each of your points: 1) The new lead attempts to follow WP:LEAD by summarizing the article. It needs improvement and I'll hope you'll help edit it. The old lead was a detailed, sourced overview that did not summarize the article nor reflect the basic requirements of a lead section. It will also become necessary when I add a series header template (Hippie series) as well as a footer (Counterculture of the 1960s see also section). Furthermore, the overview will be expanded to include new sections, as more of the history section is removed to the split article, summary style. So, as the lead changes with the article, the in-depth overview will remain relatively static. 3) I have "pretended" nothing, and I would ask that you consult WP:AGF. I have attempted to improve the article by globalizing the lead. Past attempts by other editors did not do this, but instead tried to change the dates and places of origin. "Demands for verification" are still ongoing, and cannot be considered "unreasonable" - they are official policy. 4) I will ignore your continued attempts to go off-topic by baiting me with WP:PA. When you are ready to discuss the topic, please do so. I also want to add that you have made it very clear on my talk page and on this talk page, that you personally disagree with Wikipedia policies and guidelines and that you have no interest in helping this article reach FA-Class. —Viriditas | Talk 04:52, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Right....as usual, you will concede nothing. I am not baiting you; I AM complaining about your behavior. You use Wikipedia policies and guidelines as clubs when they suit YOUR purposes, yet you feel free to ignore them whenever you wish. You belong to that special category of people for whom argument and conflict are addictions; you relish being the object of others' resentment. Apostle12 07:05, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Please don't try to pretend that you have not repeatedly turned this article upside down, yes that's a bait. I will concede that the current lead sucks, and I look forward to your edits which improve it. Please leave the overview for right now, as I am in the process of adding a series header and navbox footer. —Viriditas | Talk 07:51, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I guess the point I was trying to get at is: Even if the changes end up being considered good ones, often the most considerate way to effect them, is to do things gradually and patiently, as opposed to overnight unilateral transformations and overhauls that leave many editors confused -- especially on those articles that a very large number of editors seem to be watching. This approach may take a little bit longer, but it tends to save a lot of problems and misunderstandings, and is an example of what I would consider being more collaborative, that is, to keep in step with other concerned editors. There's something to be said for "being bold" on occasion, but sometimes it has the potential of causing more problems than it solves. Nigel Barristoat 11:00, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful comments, but I just finished explaining above that these changes have been discussed, planned, and announced for some time. The tag announcing the split had been in the article for more than several months and was previously discussed on this page. Per article size, 69 kilobytes has been brought down to a more readable 58. Please see WP:SS for more info. The old lead did not adhere to WP:LEAD and has been moved to an overview section which will continue to expand and spiral out. I am also very close to eliminating all OR and unsourced material which has been defended by a few stubborn editors for years. These changes are necessary to move the article beyond B-Class where it has been stagnating for a long time. —Viriditas | Talk 11:32, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with Viriditas' creation of a "history of" article to help stop this one from becoming too bloated. Nothing is stopping anyone from further editing either or both articles in any properly-supported way.

BTW, shouldn't there be something like a "See also" link to the History of the hippie movement article somewhere in this one? I don't see any indication of it's existence except here on the talk page. Also, shouldn't it be redirected to the right page when the other spelling, "hippy", is used?Rosencomet 19:39, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

The link appears in the appropriate place, at the start of the history section. I'll create the redirect per your suggestion.[10] —Viriditas | Talk 10:28, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see it now. Thanks.Rosencomet 19:15, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

History section still needs serious pruning as it doesn't meet the FA criteria with its current overabundance of "unnecessary detail". —Viriditas | Talk 00:38, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I would like to ask Apostle12, Rosencoment, and whomever else to take a stab at removing unnecessary detail from the history section in this article before I get to it. —Viriditas | Talk 07:58, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Why should we bother? You will just do what you want with it anyway in complete disregard of our wishes. You have effectively driven away anyone willing to invest much time in developing this article. I will continue to make minor changes from time to time, however I find your unwillingness to collaborate discouraging.

I would request that "when you get to it" you refrain from over-pruning the history section. The details are often what convey the spirit of the hippie era to Wikipedia readers; in removing what you consider "unnecessary detail" you have often eliminated much that is worthwhile.

By the way, I cannot let some of your previous statements stand uncorrected. You did far more than just add an anticipated "History of the hippies" section--you wrote a new lead and revised nearly everything. You are the one "stubbornly defending" the correctness of your actions.Apostle12 04:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Start with the "Early hippies (1960–1966)" section; at least four of the paragraphs in that section can be condensed to between 1-2. It's fine for History of the hippie movement, but the level of detail concerning Laughlin et al. is just too much for this article. Plus, we are still missing essential information about 1968, sexual mores, and Stewart Brand's view on the legacy of the hippies and their impact on the development of the information society. —Viriditas | Talk 09:03, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Is that an order sir?Apostle12 04:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'll have a large fries and a small Coke, light on the ice, please. —Viriditas | Talk 09:02, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I think it might be wise to avoid arguing the tepid people skills of the editor in question and focus on the edits, Apostle12, as you are nearing (if not surpassing) the line of civility. You certainly aren't going to be able to change his behavior, so it might be best to address the edits as per the rules and guidelines that everyone, including Viriditas is supposed to follow. If you feel he has violated these rules, report him and be done with it. If he hasn't, I suggest that you stop complaining and find a way to make your edits bullet-proof. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 07:47, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Arcayne has articulated an approach that should work. I would add that Wikipedia is written collaboratively (from Wikipedia:About). It is up to us to use the policies as tools for achieving consensus on article changes. Sunray 15:17, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I suppose you are both correct. Even bloody A-holes must be tolerated in Wikipedia. Apostle12 06:53, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Civility is important too, Apostle12. Sunray 07:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Semi-automatic peer review

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

• There may be an applicable infobox for this article. For example, see Template:Infobox Person, Template:Infobox School, or Template:Infobox City.^[?] (Note that there might not be an applicable infobox; remember that these suggestions are not generated manually)
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 45 km, use 45 km, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 45 km.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Build the web, years with full dates should be linked; for example, link January 15, 2006.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), headings generally should not repeat the title of the article. For example, if the article was Ferdinand Magellan, instead of using the heading ==Magellan's journey==, use ==Journey==.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), avoid using special characters (ex: &+{}[]) in headings.
• This article may need to undergo summary style, where a series of appropriate subpages are used. For example, if the article is United States, then an appropriate subpage would be History of the United States, such that a summary of the subpage exists on the mother article, while the subpage goes into more detail.^[?]
• Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
  • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
• The script has spotted the following contractions: couldn't, didn't, wasn't, if these are outside of quotations, they should be expanded.
• As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space in between. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2]^[?]
• Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.^[?]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, —Viriditas | Talk 06:23, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Repeating lead

Regarding an edit that "eliminated sentence already stated in the lead". The intro is a summary roughly corresponding one or two sentences to each of the subsequent sections, there *should* be repeat, with citations ideally being in the repeated more-in-depth sections. Notice the next sentence in the intro repeats what is said in the Etymology section. And the next sentence repeats what is in the History section. An introduction tells you what the article is going to tell you. --MPerel 15:11, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

You seem to be arguing that on should repeat, verbatim, what has already been said earlier in the article. That certainly doesn't seem to conform to good writing practice. Perhaps you could point out the source that suggests to you that it is good practice. Sunray (talk) 07:41, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think MPerel is saying that at all. Following WP:LEAD, the lead section is summarizng the referenced, main points of the entire article; one of these main points happened to be in the "origins of a movement section". —Viriditas | Talk 09:02, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I think having two leads sucks. Ventured this opinion when the editor in question added it recently. Apostle12 (talk) 07:59, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

We don't have two leads. Due to the growth of the article, the old lead has become a separate section. Article development is a fluid process; we don't have a static, unchanging document. Try to be a bit more flexible. —Viriditas | Talk 09:02, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Viriditas lecturing me to "try to be more flexible"...what fun! Has more to do with my distaste for redundancy than lack of flexibility. Apostle12 (talk) 01:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

See WP:BETTER and how summary style is used to distribute information to the reader. —Viriditas | Talk 02:39, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Please.....spare me the pedantry.Apostle12 (talk) 06:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Just a friendly link, nothing more. BTW, there seem to be some new sourcing problems. An editor has linked to a history of Whole Foods [11] in order to support the statement that "Interest in natural food, herbal remedies and vitamins is widespread, and the little hippie "health food stores" of the 1960s and 1970s are now large-scale, profitable businesses." Unfortunately, the link says nothing of the kind. As I've pointed out earlier on this talk page, this seems to be a recurring issue. Sources need to support the claims, and if they don't, the material may be removed. Google books turns up Baer, 2004, pp.2-3, so I'll add that for now. —Viriditas | Talk 10:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

History vs. Legacy

Apostle12, much of the section you added back is pure history, and does not concern "legacy". Referring to the new age travellers of 1974 and Nambassa of 1981 as a "legacy" is just out of place and belongs in the history section. —Viriditas | Talk 10:22, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I see your point. I'll try to find a place in the history section for the historical aspects you mention. Apostle12 (talk) 19:26, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm trying to envision how to separate out events that began after the heyday of the hippie movement, which we generally agree was 1965 to 1975, at least in the United States. In particular, perhaps we need to refer to New Zealand's Nambassa as kind of a "second wave" of the original hippie movement (beginning and cresting later) rather than a neo-hippie or legacy phenomenon. The same problem exists with the Grateful Dead, since their touring history began in 1965 and continued through 1995--1965 to 1975 is clearly "history," however 1975 to 1995 might be viewed as "legacy." Phish is more clear, since they didn't get started until the 1980s, so I suppose that's "legacy." A bit problematic...any thoughts?Apostle12 (talk) 20:16, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm looking forward to any historical expansion in the History of the hippie movement article. Simply mentioning the legacy of jam bands is fine if you can find a source (I bet there's a few and I'll help look). I like what you did with the Brand quote, and we need more of that in the legacy section. —Viriditas | Talk 22:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Restored the "deviant behavior" as it is both the correct term in the appropriate context, and is sourced to a professional in the field. —Viriditas | Talk 00:23, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

French hippies

In France, "les hippies" participated in the anti-authoritarian May 1968 protests that nearly toppled the French government.

This was added to the lead section, which is only for material that is directly sourced in the article. I will help look for sources, but please do not add unsourced material to the lead. —Viriditas | Talk 06:07, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I didn't add the material discussing "les hippies" to the lead, though I did condense it after someone else added it. I need to point out that you yourself added "In Mexico, the jipitecas formed La Onda Chicana and gathered at Avándaro," which also is material not directly sourced in the article. Apostle12 (talk) 09:09, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I didn't say you added it, did I? And you're right about La Onda - that needs to be added to the body - however, it can easily be confirmed from the citations in the subarticle: the material about "les hippies" cannot. —Viriditas | Talk 09:13, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Encylopedic tone and sourcing

Small enclaves of original hippies continue to pursue their lifestyle, mostly in rural locations. And some younger neo-hippies have adopted hippie ways.

First, this does not appear to be sourced. Second, this does not have an encyclopedic tone, but reads like an op-ed piece. The neo-hippies article was deleted because it was completely unsourced - not a single reliable source was used for this material. Let's stick to the facts, please. —Viriditas | Talk 06:12, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Family Dog

When the summer of 1965 ended, participants in "The Red Dog Experience" returned to San Francisco and spread their new sense of community with the creation of the Family Dog by Luria Castell, Ellen Harman and Alton Kelley.

The source cited doesn't seem to support the claim. Please find another one and add it to the history subarticle. There is too much information about the Red Dog Saloon and the Family Dog in this article, and not enough about the hippie movement. It's fine for the history article but this article needs to keep a broad focus and not get caught up in too much detail. —Viriditas | Talk 06:27, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

You are correct that the remaining source didn't support the claim. It was originally supported by the "Works" source, but that was deleted somehow. I've added the "Works" source back in here so that readers will understand the direct relationship between the "Red Dog Experience" and the creation of "The Family Dog" collective.

I would submit that the events at the Red Dog Saloon, the creation of the Family Dog (and its derivative Family Dog Productions) were all part of the hippie movement. Have looked for a way to condense it (it should probably be expanded for the history article), but see no way to do so without losing meaning. Apostle12 (talk) 09:37, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Good job, we're almost there. Can you help fix/source/expand the politics section? Thanks. —Viriditas | Talk 12:40, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Neo-Hippie movement

On The Movement: I still maintain that any author is going to have a tough time covering the modern (post 2000) Neo-Hippie movement selectively, as I did on the other dedicated page. It was difficult for myself to document new and verify old sources in all three attempted rewrites I tried over there; and I am one (both self described and secondarily labelled) myself. The modern movement, as it exists today, is intentionally decentralized and intertwined into other various "progressive" and "liberal" groups, from (at lest in the USA) the PDA to PETA to the American Communist Party, to Young Socialists. They (we) stay away from media coverage, and rarely use the label themselves. It's probably best to lightly cover the existence of a related movement of philosophy as it merged into other groups, rather than cover the group on its own, at this point. You just won't be able to source it if you try to cover the group on its own; it nearly dictates and demands OR rather than an existing field of coverage, despite it's large, behind the scenes activity.

On Music: As I attempted to cover on the dedicated page; the standard stereotype music of hippies does not apply to the modern movement who has slowly expanded into acceptance of many other (though still non-mainstream) genres. There was a large? (427 people) hippie retreat at Bone Fest 07, which I attended. Those not familiar, Bone Fest is an annual show held in Mexico or the South-West US (with the exception of the one-time merge with Milwaukee Metalfest) focusing on new and up-n-coming death, dark, black, and doom metal bands, with the occasional addition of known groups. Though it's advertised by word of mouth only, for the most part, (which is the only direct connection it maintains to the style of olde), it still draws a fairly large crowd into the thousands each year, and always has a hippie retreat in attendance, though not related to the show itself. A most extreme case as it is, it does show that the movement has branched in interest way beyond rock-n-roll.

Good luck to whoever takes on the task of doing the movement justice! Lostinlodos (talk) 05:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

History of the hippie movement could certainly use this material if you can find sources. Have you tried Gbooks? —Viriditas | Talk 12:56, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Etymology - TIME Magazine

TIME Magazine has very graciously put their entire back issues as far as 1924 online, and it is a true Time Capsule. I did a search for "Hippie", sorted from oldest, and found very interesting results:

• All of the results (which also bring up hits for "hippy) from 1924 through July, 1964 refer either to persons who actually have the surname "hippie", or adjectivally to an attribute of (usually a woman's) hips.
• The reference for Nov. 27, 1964 seems suspiciously like it means a group of people, could this be an earlier reference than the Fallon article?
• The next reference, for Nov. 12, 1965, says in a play review "William Goodhart converts a Greenwich Village loft into a sparring ground for the Establishment and the hippie, the parent and the child." This is certainly a reference to our hippies, but it seems to be predated by the September 5 1965, Fallon reference mentioned in the article.

Anyway there is a mine of interesting stuff on all topics, albeit with Time's usual biases! Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 14:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Please review WP:OR. Unless we have a source (like Tompkins et al.) explicitly claiming that this was an early use of the word to refer to the hippie subculture, we cannot pick and choose occurrences of the word to refer to this article. It may be acceptable to add the trivia to Hippie (etymology), but the references are still primary sources, and without secondary sources backing it up (many in the case of Fallon) it can be problematic because we don't know how the word is being used. —Viriditas | Talk 23:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

This is definitely not Original Research, it is relevant to the article and Fallon is by no means the first usage, any source that says it is is sloppy. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 23:36, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

No, you have to have a secondary source that says this refers to the subculture. You cannot pick and choose primary sources and interpret them. Please read the OR policy. —Viriditas | Talk 23:38, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I advise you check for consensus with other editors on whether the wording here actually meets OR, before unilaterally deciding what standard constitutes OR, per WP:OWN. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 23:42, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Consensus does not override policy, and the "wording" has nothing to do with it. You may make an argument that this information should be added to the etymology article, but unless you can show that a secondary source refers to this usage as pertaining to the hippie subculture, then it is your interpretation of a primary source. We don't do that. —Viriditas | Talk 23:43, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't see anyone but you insisting on such a ridiculous interpretation of OR, so I am going to seek a 3rd opinion per WP:3O and see what they say. I don't think you are the sole interpreter of policy, and get to singlehandedly be judge, jury, and executioner of referenced material just because it proves your source is sloppy and incorrect. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 23:47, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Please provide a reliable, secondary source that shows that the occurrence of this word was used to refer to the hippie subculture. We cannot interpret primary sources. As the Hippie (etymology) article makes clear, the word was used in many ways. It is not appropriate to interpret primary sources and add your interpretation to this article. I have challenged the inclusion of this material and request reliable secondary sources supporting its inclusion. —Viriditas | Talk 23:50, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I cited the Andrew Lloyd Oldham liner notes to the Rolling Stones album as an earlier contemporary usage of the word "hippie." Somebody (Viriditas) cited a reference that the September 1965 usage of "hippie" by Fallon was the first contemporary usage of the term, then Til cites an earlier reference from a 1964 Time magazine, and I cited the Feb. 1965 "Rolling Stones Now!" album liner notes as a reference. Then Viriditas deletes both of the those references, and claims that his reference is correct because it's a secondary source, while Til's and mine are primary. He says Wikipedia can't cite primary sources. This is absurd. The secondary source is wrong, and should not be used because the two primary sources that Til and I cited prove that Viriditas secondary source is wrong! The editor of an encyclopedia doesn't just blindly cite sources, he has to find out if the sources are valid and reliable. Just because something is in print doesn't mean it's usable, as it might be wrong. The Fallon reference clearly is. Our sources, whether primary or not, prove that it is, but each time we delete or change the Fallon ref, he immediately puts it back. Then you (Veritas) come on here telling me I can be blocked for edit wars? How absurd. Viriditas is the one who is warring. This whole talk page is nothing but a battleground between Viriditas and everybody else he's been at war with. Why don't you block him for reverting my and Til's correct citations? Also, the citation claims that Fallon "came up with" the term hippie, and in the same sentence it says there were earlier usages of the term. ABSURD!! You can't "come up with" a term that is already being used! And then he says there are many different meanings of the term hippie, and Fallon gives the first valid use of the contemporary usage. This is laughable! Everybody knows what a hippie is, except Viriditas, the guy who basically wrote the whole article. As I said before, the hippie article is an atrocity. It's really bad, and it's all because of Viriditas. Really. Morgan Wright (talk) 00:27, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

You cited your interpretation of the liner notes. Now, all you have to do is find a good secondary source showing the use of the word in relation to the subculture and we're good to go. Interpretating primary source materials is an ongoing problem which is why we rely on secondary sources. Til's reference to a 1964 Time magazine article is again, a primary source for his claim. We don't use sources in that way. The word "hippie" was used to refer to different things as the etymology article makes clear. Based on the historical evidence, it is reasonable to conclude that the beat movement moved from the East to the West Coast, and Doyle makes reference to John Gruen's 1964 article for the New York Herald Tribune titled "The New Bohemia" as one possible antecedent for the nascent hippie movement. See? No interpretation required. We have sources, but the trick is figuring out what Doyle is saying. Now, we can at this moment add that to the history subarticle, but what we are talking about here is etymology. So we have sources to go on. Find Gruen's original article (not the book published years later). We already have a secondary source referring to it. —Viriditas | Talk 00:43, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Veritas is correct. The Feb 1965 use of the word hippie to describe the Rolling Stones (who are universally regarded to be contemporary hippies) prior to the September 1965 use by Fallon, invalidates that as a source. It's simply wrong. The Fallon citation is wrong and should be deleted. I don't care how many secondary sources back it up, they are all wrong. I'm sure I can find 100 sources saying the earth is flat. All it takes is one source to prove 100 other sources to be wrong, if they are wrong. Morgan Wright (talk) 13:55, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, Viriditas needs to get off his San Francisco kick. If you start with a premise, that SF was the birthplace, and allow all evidence that backs up this premise, and dispute any reference to hippies outside SF as not being real hippies, then everything is based on the premise, and you are striving to prove your own premise. This is called a straw man argument. In this case, the premise is wrong, so the rest of it will be wrong. If you define hippies as a culture that started in SF, and then you say the Rolling Stones were not hippies because their manager was from London, and even though he used the term before there were references to hippies in SF, he must be talking about some other form of hippie because we already defined that as a culture from San Francisco. Do you see how wrong this argument is? Its circular logic.Morgan Wright (talk) 14:04, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

This was discussed on your talk page, but not liking the answer you moved it here. Please do not misrepresent Veritas or myself. Veritas is remaining neutral and is not taking a position. The word "hippie" was in use before it referred to the hippie subculture. Read Hippie (etymology). Unless you can find a secondary source showing that the Rolling Stones were using it to refer to the subculture, then you don't have a dispute. We don't do original research. The Fallon citation isn't sourced to Fallon: it's found in multiple sources that make that claim. Take a look at the citation in the Hippie article: Perry 2005, p. 19; Sinclair, Mick. (2004) San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History. Signal Books. p. 205. ISBN 1902669649; Singleton, Carl. Wildin, Rowena. (1999). The Sixties in America. Salem Press. p. 334. ISBN 0893569828; Stevens 1998, pp. 299-300; Tompkins 2001, vol. 7: 1960-1969. Now, all you have to do is find one that refers to the Rolling Stones. The addition of McCleary's "numerous theories abound as to the origin of this word" is a great start in the right direction. The next step is to find sources for additional theories. I recommend using the library. Good luck. —Viriditas | Talk 20:59, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Third Opinions needed:

This is the paragraph that is being called original research. Given the date of the quote, as the word was already in fact being used "in print" in Malcolm X' autobiography before then, the contect is provided and is self evident.

The more contemporary sense of the word "hippie" first appeared in US print on November 27, 1964 in a TIME Magazine article about a 20-year old's drug use scandalizing the town of Darien, Connecticut: "The trouble is that in a school of 1,018 pupils so near New York there is bound to be a fast set of hard-shell hippies like Alpert [the 20 year old] who seem utterly glamorous to more sheltered types.""Darien's Dolce Vita", TIME, November 27, 1964

Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 23:53, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

That's not correct. The Malcolm X reference is supported by a reliable secondary source that places the usage in the context of the hippie subculture and cannabis use. The TIME Magazine usage that you have added is based on your personal perusal of the TIME archives (as you explain above) and your interpretation of the word in the context of the hippie subculture, rather than the Hippie (etymology) article itself. Unless you can show how your original research is supported by a secondary source in the context of the hippie subculture, then it doesn't belong in this article. You state that, "The more contemporary sense of the word "hippie" first appeared in US print on November 27, 1964 in a TIME Magazine article", but that is solely your interpretation and opinion. —Viriditas | Talk 00:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Viriditas maintains that this is Original research because we cannot mention a 1964 use of "Hippie" in Time magazine in the article; because we need a secondary source to tell us what the primary source says. I say this is a nonsensical interpretation of the rules being used to have an article that presents unfactual and sloppy information as a result, which is already our reputation as an encyclopedia.

Now we need some third opinions!Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 00:03, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Where can I find a reliable secondary source that states that "The more contemporary sense of the word "hippie" first appeared in US print on November 27, 1964". We cannot cite you as the source. As the hippie etymology article makes clear, the word was used in many ways. There is no indication it was used to refer to the hippie subculture in TIME, and in order to use it in this article, you would have to find a secondary source that says it is. That's how every source in the article is used. If you can find one that isn't, then it should be removed. The fact is, before you began inserting OR, the section originally read: "The more contemporary sense of the word "hippie" first appeared in print on September 5, 1965, in the article, "A New Haven for Beatniks", by San Francisco journalist Michael Fallon. In that article, Fallon wrote about the Blue Unicorn coffeehouse, using the term "hippie" to refer to the new generation of beatniks who had moved from North Beach into the Haight-Ashbury district. Fallon reportedly came up with the name by transforming Norman Mailer's use of the word "hipster" into "hippie".[23] Use of the term "hippie" did not catch on in the mass media until early 1967, after San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen began referring to "hippies" in his daily columns".[24][25] All fully sourced and supported by multiple secondary sources. You altered the material to insert original research that is not supported. I appreciate that you may have uncovered additional etymology, but unless you can add a reliable, hippie-related source that supports your research, we can't use it in this article. —Viriditas | Talk 00:15, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi, the problem with this edit is that it replaced a reliable source which stated the date of the first occurrence in print referring to "hippie", with a source using the word "hippie" that a Wikipedia editor believes predates the debut date given by the existing secondary source. Til may or may not be factually correct (we don't actually know the complete context of the usage of "hippie"), but it is indeed original research for an editor to replace what a secondary source states with a personal observation. Still, the Time article is an interesting find, there are other ways to perhaps approach this. It could somehow still be mentioned, minus the editor-declaration that it is the first occurrence of contemporary usage in print (unless a secondary source can be found that states such). Meanwhile, we shouldn't remove the existing sourced statement giving the September 1965 article as the first usage in print, even if it appears to conflict with an editor's personal observation. --MPerel 01:53, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I've made this change to try to incorporate Til's find without removing existing sourced information. Let me know what you all think. --MPerel 02:09, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, let's look at the sources in favor and against:

Contemporary use of hippie

Sources supporting Fallon (1965 origin) "That obscure neighborhood known as the Haight-Ashbury got some unaccustomed press attention in September. On the sixth the San Francisco Examiner ran a story titled 'A New Haven for Beatniks.' (In the text, however, the locals were referred to as hippies.)" Perry, Charles. (2005). The Haight-Ashbury: A History. Wenner Books. p. 19. ISBN 193295855X "Writing in September 1965 in the San Francisco Examiner under a heading "A New Haven for Beatniks", Michael Fallon used for the first time the word "hippie" (derived from Norman Mailer's term "hipsters" in reference to the Beats) to describe the scene growing around a Haight-Ashbury coffee house, the Blue Unicorn on 1927 Hayes Street." Sinclair, Mick. (2004) San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History. Signal Books. p. 205. ISBN 1902669649. "The hippies did not pick that name for themselves: it was given to them by Michael Fallon, a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, in a 1965 story about the new bohemian lifestyle that was developing in the city's Haight-Ashbury district (named for two streets that converge there—also called the Haight). Fallon got the name by shortening Norman Mailer's term hipster, and he applied it to the second generation of beatniks who had moved into the Haight from nearby North Beach." Tompkins, Vincent, ed. (2001), "Hippies", American Decades, vol. 7: 1960-1969, Detroit: Thomson Gale. Singleton, Carl. Wildin, Rowena. (1999). The Sixties in America. Salem Press. p. 334. ISBN 0893569828 "...by the time the Examiner tumbled to what was happening [The Haight] supported a thriving bohemian community, of which the Unicorn was the heart and soul. This, then, was the gist of what journalist Michael Fallon had to report to his readers...Fallon's first instinct was to give it a name, which he did by borrowing Norman Mailer's hipster and contracting it into hippie...at the time of Fallon's article, there were probably only a dozen houses scarttered throughout the Haight that could have been characterized as hippie." Stevens, Jay (1998), Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream, Grove Press, ISBN 0802135870. pp. 299-300. "The term "hippie," which seems to have been coined in late 1965, was quite obscure even into 1967; it does not appear in such pioneering books on the new dissident culture as J. L. Simmons and Barry Winograd's It's Happening and John Gruen's The New Bohemia (both published in 1966). By mid-1967, however, everyone knew who hippies were. The 1966-67 Reader's Guide has no entry for "hippie"; the 1967-68 volume has over a column of them. In sum, it would seem fair to conclude that the cultural phenomenon of the hippies began to take on clear, distinguishing characteristics about 1966 and was widely familiar to the general public by the following year." Miller, Timothy. "Roots of Communal Revival 1962-1966". Farm History. The Farm Historical Society. Summertown, Tennessee. 1995.

Sources supporting TIME Magazine (1964 origin) See "support for other sources" in the next section below for Doyle's reference to a 1964 article by John Gruen in the New York Herald Tribune. This doesn't support TIME but instead offers a contemporaneous event cited by a tertiary source. It is unclear if Gruen actually used the word "hippie" - Timothy Miller says he doesn't, so there is some confusion here. Howard Brick, in Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s, acknowledges Gruen, observing that the beats had become the "new bohemians" by 1964, but like Peter Tamony, Brick doesn't fully acknowledge the hippies (or ignores them) until 1966. Tamony sees the Trips Festival event (Jan. 21-23, 1966) as the catalyst for solidifying the word hippie, a "term with multiple connotations into the national vocabularly." Interestngly, Tamony mentions that he first heard the word trip in 1964, which dovetails with Leary and Alpert's experiments at Millbrook that same year (noted by Doyle and Brick).

Support for other sources

• Michael Doyle [12] posits the evolution and emergence of proto-hippies ("new bohemians") on the East Coast as early as 1963, which then spreads to the West Coast by 1965. Doyle claims that John Gruen used the word "hippie" in an article for the New York Herald Tribune titled "The New Bohemia" (later turned into a 1966 book), but it is unclear if Doyle is speaking literally or figuratively. Verification is needed. In Farber, David R. Bailey, Beth L. (2001). The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s. Columbia University. ISBN 0231113722. See also: Gruen, John. (Nov. 29, 1964) "The New Bohemia", New York Herald Tribune.
• Various sources claim Herb Caen invented the term.

—Viriditas | Talk 14:32, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I gave up on editing the Hippie article long ago when it became clear that the article was a solo project by Viriditas, and anything added to it by other editors would be promptly deleted by him. How amazing that almost a year later, I come back and find more of the same. Viriditas is painting the picture that hippies first existed in San Francisco, and any reference to them outside SF must be removed. This is the problem with the etymology dispute, as the Fallon reference is the earliest reference to San Francisco hippies, and the earlier citations involve London, England and a small town in Connecticut. Obviously those can't be "comtemporary" usages of the modern hippie, since they do not refer to genuine San Francisco hippies. Earth to Veriditas, the hippie movement DID NOT START in San Francisco, and these earlier usages of the term outside SF are valid. I am the one who first added the 1965 Rolling Stones Now! reference, in the liner notes to the album, which is a more valid reference because the Stones sold a million copies of the album. By comparison, virtually NOBODY has ever heard of this Fallon character. You know what I think? I think all those San Francisco hippies in 1965 got the term from the Stones album! It came out in February, 1965, before the Fallon reference, and all those SF hippies listened to the Stones. The Stones album is probably a more valid source of the term, and quite obviously, it is a "contemporary usage" of the term, since the Stones themselves were hippies, so maybe the term was being used in London before it was being used in San Francisco.Morgan Wright (talk) 22:52, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Bingo, and we don't edit Wikipedia based on what you think or dispute. If you would like to demonstrate a dispute, then find sources that show one. —Viriditas | Talk 23:02, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow, only 8 minutes from my post before you replied. Do you live here? Why don't you let other people edit this article? This article is by far the worst article I've ever read on hippies, almost every point is wrong. It's just horrible, really horrible. You have a photo taken a couple years ago of a Russian guy in costume? Can you pleeease take that off and put a real hippie there? This isn't a costume party.Morgan Wright (talk) 23:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Can you scan in your authentic hippie-era photos and license them for Wikipedia to use? —Viriditas | Talk 23:26, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Come on Morgan,"by far the worst article I've ever read on hippies"? You would be more credible if you avoided such gross exaggerations. Apostle12 (talk) 03:44, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

No, Apostle, I mean what I say. The article is utter balderdash and complete rubbish. The hippie movement became mainstream in San Francisco only because so many hippies went there in the summer of 1967. But they were already hippies when they got there. It takes time to grow your hair! And they didn't become hippies in the summer of 67, they were hippies in the spring, fall and winter, where they came from. Duh? This article is really, really stupid. It is what you would expect from Wikipedia. Morgan Wright (talk) 04:08, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I can't understand what you are trying to say. Could you rephrase? —Viriditas | Talk 11:15, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Quoting TIME Magazine as a reference.

First of all, the article already uses TIME magazine as a primary source reference, because TIME did several in depth studies on the contemporary phenomenon of hippies during the 1960s. November 1964 was only the first of many such references.

When the article states "Use of the term "hippie" did not catch on in the mass media until early 1967, after San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen began referring to "hippies" in his daily columns" this is just plain disinformation. Like I say, TIME began using it regularly in 1964.

• "William Goodhart converts a Greenwich Village loft into a sparring ground for the Establishment and the hippie, the parent and the child." - "Time Listings" Nov. 12, 1965 TIME

• "The joint will feature an art gallery, a color-TV lounge, a little boutique selling hippies' clothes from London's Carnaby Street and three loud, plangent go-go bands." - "People" section of Apr. 1, 1966 TIME

• "You got that feel, learning good, You're ready now, girl, You're ready now. Or so lots of the teen-age hippies swinging to Franky Valley's rock-'n'-roll hit think." - "Teen-Age Marriage" Apr. 29, 1966 TIME

• "BEEN DOWN SO LONG IT LOOKS LIKE UP TO ME, by Richard Fariña (Random House; 329 pages; $5.95), is a pot-and-peyote boiler about a supercooled campus hippie named Gnossos Pappadopoulis... Gnossos turns on four times a day, calls girls "man," says "dig" a great deal, makes like the Green Hornet with cringing officials at Mentor University, rucksacks triumphantly to Mexico, Las Vegas and Cuba, knows how to hot-wire a car, plays Corelli on his phonograph, and even wins acceptance as an equal by Negro bartenders." - "Nosepicking Contests" May. 6, 1966 TIME

• "Died. Richard Farina, 29, folk singer who, with Wife Mimi (sister of Folk Heroine Joan Baez), cut two well-received albums before writing a just-published novel on the hippies (Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me)" - "Milestones" May. 13, 1966 TIME

• "Detroit's The Fifth Estate, an eight-page paper, has been publishing twice monthly since last November for a circulation of 1,000. Its editor is Harvey Ovshinsky, 18, who put in a brief stint at the Los Angeles Free Press after graduating from high school, came back to Detroit to set up his own paper because "the liberals, the hippies and the anarchists have no organ. We print the other side."" - "Underground Alliance" Jul. 29, 1966 TIME

• "In Kiev, 10,000 youngsters had packed the Sports Palace, and Hines stirred up a swirling, rhythmic turbulence that had the Russians snapping their fingers like Hollywood hippies." - "Fatha Knows Best" Aug. 5, 1966 TIME

• "The miniskirt in London had already risen as high on the thigh as Tarzan's loincloth when Designer Mary Quant, 32, grandam of Chelsea's fashion hippies, decided to hike the hems still higher." - "People" Nov. 18, 1966 TIME

• "Sir: I appreciated your story on Berkeley's problems [Dec. 9]. After a week of pushing through militant picket lines to get to class, fending off soggy leaflets, standing in the rain for hours at mass rallies to find out what was going on, straining to hear professors over the noise of the amplified strike pleas echoing through the campus, and being called obscene names by hippies when I tried to buy a sandwich at the cafeteria, I decided that this would be a nicer place to get an education if Mario Savio would stop bugging us. Has anybody thought of drafting him? JUSTINE TRUBEY Graduate Student University of California Berkeley" - "Letters" Dec. 23, 1966 TIME

Further note: In July 1967 when TIME finally put "the hippies" on the front cover, it noted that the movement first came to public attention 18 months earlier, ie January 1966. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 00:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Please show where the article uses primary sources as a reference to make interpretive claims. You have not addressed my previous point in any way, and you have repeatedly ignored requests for secondary sources that substantiate this change. Please do not avoid the question. If you feel that something is disinformation, then you need to find supporting secondary sources. We do not edit Wikipedia based on our personal beliefs or personal research. You say that "TIME began using it regularly in 1964". That should be very easy to source if it is true. Please do so. There are many sources claiming that Fallon was the first to use it in its contemporary sense. Some of them have been provided in the article, others can be brought to the table. Please add one reliable secondary source that shows that TIME used it in the context of the hippie subculture before Fallon. —Viriditas | Talk 00:33, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Above you claim: "the article already uses TIME magazine as a primary source reference, because TIME did several in depth studies on the contemporary phenomenon of hippies during the 1960s. November 1964 was only the first of many such references." There is no evidence that is true. The 1964 article you have added is not an in depth study of the hippie movement, nor does it have anything to do with it. As Hippie (etymology) makes clear in the second section, the word was already in use, and referred to non-hippies, primarily beatniks. Fallon is widely acknowledged as the first writer to apply it to the hippie subculture. Jay Stevens has written extensively about this, as have many writers. —Viriditas | Talk 06:11, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Possible resolution of the conflict re: use of the term "hippie"

I've made a few changes; please see what you think of them.

The essence of the conflict, it seems to me, has to do with early appearances of the term "hippie" versus the first use of the term in the context of a developing subculture that had gained a certain momentum by late 1965.

I see no problem mentioning early appearances of the term, before "hippie" developed its contemporary meaning as it relates to a distinct subculture. The interpretive literature seems to favor Fallon as being the first to use "hippie" in this sense.

While "Time" may have used the term "hippie" early on in an isolated article, that does not mean the term had "(caught) on in the mass media." Various sources credit Herb Caen for getting that going, since he had the opportunity to do so on a daily basis--hippies were, after all, interesting subjects for his daily columns. I have substituted "did not become widespread in the mass media" for "did not catch on in the mass media" in hopes of making more clear the progression from obscure usage to common usage.

Hope this resolves things somewhat.Apostle12 (talk) 22:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your time, but it doesn't resolve anything, and I'm removing the challenged, disputed material to talk. If you want to address the questions I've raised above, starting with providing secondary sources, I would be happy to discuss it. If you are going to mention, trivial early appearances of the term, then you need to be prepared to source them in the etymology article. We don't do trivia on Wikipedia, but important trivia should be easy to source. We also don't do original research, such as digging around magazine archives and album covers to try and promote an idea without secondary sources for that interpretation. As it stands, the mention of TIME and the Rolling Stones is unsourced trivia. I have challenged the relevance of the material (since the etymology article makes it clear that the term was already in use prior to it being used to apply to the subculture) and I expect to see reliable sources offered for its inclusion. I have a list of academic articles that I'm in the process of adding to the etymology article, and I plan on using these sources to best represent the etymological history. —Viriditas | Talk 22:39, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Removed, challenged material lacking secondary sources follows:

A very early appearance of the term "hippy" was on November 27, 1964 in a TIME Magazine article about a 20-year old's drug use scandalizing the town of Darien, Connecticut: "The trouble is that in a school of 1,018 pupils so near New York there is bound to be a fast set of hard-shell hippies like Alpert [the 20 year old] who seem utterly glamorous to more sheltered types." Another early appearance was in the liner notes to the Rolling Stones 1965 album, The Rolling Stones, Now! written by the band's then-manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. One sentence of the notes reads, "Their music is Berry-chuck and all the Chicago hippies..." and another sentence from the same source reads, "Well, my groobies, what about Richmond, with its grass green and hippy scene from which the Stones untaned."

Although the word "hippie" made isolated appearances during the early 1960's

Good edit. That's supported by Doyle above, but I've had trouble verifying his claims, particularly in regards to Gruen's alleged use of the term in 1964. If someone wants to e-mail him, that could help resolve the situation. —Viriditas | Talk 22:52, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

External links removed

• [www.lulu.com/content/158236 'Love'] - popular novel by Andrew Sanger capturing the atmosphere of the hippy era in Berkeley, London and India.

If a source can be shown explaining the importance of this link, then add it to further reading, otherwise we don't need it. —Viriditas | Talk 01:27, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

• CBS News' 1967 story on the Summer of Love, by Harry Reasoner (7 min.) - also features early Grateful Dead interview and performance

404 as of 01:31, 22 January 2008 (UTC). Please replace with new link or add to further reading as a formatted citation. —Viriditas | Talk 01:31, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:Woodstock redmond cocker.JPG

Please consider replacing this image with something better. Thanks. —Viriditas | Talk 11:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you kidding? That Woodstock pic of Joe Cocker is one of the only good illustrative things still left in the whole article!

But I've already noticed that when it comes to aesthetic opinions around here, your opinion always seems to have 'super-veto power' over the opinions of five other editors like me, who don't count, because we aren't you. Say, do you know where I can apply to get this 'super-veto-power' status? It must be an amazingly cool thing to have! I want it too!x —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.152.54.105 (talk) 12:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Please take a deep breath and read Wikipedia:Images#Image_choice_and_placement: "Poor quality images (too dark, blurry etc.) or where the subject in the image is too small, hidden in clutter, ambiguous or otherwise not obvious, should not be used." This applies to just about every image guideline on Wikipedia, as well as Commons uploads. While I'm sure the image is acceptable for a page on Joe Cocker or Woodstock, it does not serve to illustrate this article in any way, unless the head taking up ten percent of the lower frame can be considered informative. While I would very much like to imagine that the blurry person in the distance is Joe Cocker singing With a Little Help from My Friends, it is difficult. There is always room to improve, and I'm sure someone can dig into their personal archives and help us out. —Viriditas | Talk 12:40, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The only possible justification for the image's inclusion is that it is the only free image available. It is not representative, or educational. It's even possible that it's replacement by a more suitable non-free image could be justified. Wwwhatsup (talk) 13:26, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

You are now officially "evil" for agreeing with me. Be careful, you are now part of the conspiracy. —Viriditas | Talk 23:03, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Caen

Use of the term "hippie" did not become widespread in the mass media until early 1967, after San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen began referring to "hippies" in his daily columns.[24][25]

I seem to recall seeing a secondary source for this, but we are going to need it as the sources cited do not represent that view. —Viriditas | Talk 11:07, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Hippie Dictionary

Til Eulenspiegel added the following material:

As lexicographer John McCleary writes in The Hippie Dictionary: A Cultural Encyclopedia of the 1960s and 1970s: "Actually, the counterculture seldom called itself hippies; it was the media and straight society who popularized the term. Most often, we called ourselves freaks or heads."

I think this should be in the article, and in the past I've added similar material only to have it removed by others, but I'm glad Til Eulenspiegel has returned to bring this to our attention yet again. First of all, nobody refers to McCleary as a lexicographer, nor does he seem to refer to himself as such; he has published previous books dealing with photography and local color, which is why Newsweek in a review of his book, calls him a "photojournalist".[13] So we need to just deal with the cited material. As someone who has owned the book, it's less of a dictionary and more of a running commentary on hippie words, values, and culture. It is interesting to note that McCleary subscribes to the Fallon origin theory, and quotes it in full without referring to Fallon's name. I suggest adding it back in with an emphasis on what McCleary actually wrote:

hippie a member of a counterculture that began to appear in the early 1960s and expressed a moral rejection of the established society. Derived from the word hip, meaning roughly "in the know," or "aware." The true hippie believes in and works for truth, generosity, peace, love, and tolerance. The messengers of sanity in a world filled with greed, intolerance, and war. Numerous theories abound as to the origin of this word. One of the most credible involves the beatniks, who abandoned North Beach, San Francisco, to flee commercialism in the early 1960s. many of them moved to the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, where they were idolized and emulated by the young university students who lived in the neighborhood. The beats (the hip people) started calling these students hippies, or younger versions of themselves. Actually, the counterculture seldom called itself hippies; it was the media and straight society who popularized the term. Move often, we called ourselves freaks or heads. Not until later did we begin calling ourselves hippies, and by then we were "aging hippies". An alternate spelling seldom used in the United States by people in the know was hippy, but was spelled that way in England.

—Viriditas | Talk 11:43, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Rewrote and expanded, added two additional sources, corrected job title, and expanded full, relevant quote pertaining to etymology. —Viriditas | Talk 12:33, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Drugs section

We've been tiptoeing around this topic for years. Drug use by hippies could develop into its own article, so I'm surprised this hasn't been expanded. In the past, I've added content about cannabis use, but it was removed by another editor. I would like to hear suggestions on where to go with this, and hope others can contribute. For example, I think this would be a good place to add information about the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic. —Viriditas | Talk 03:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, it would be a hard one to do, since so much of the information out there is simply derogatory yellow journalism filled with falsehoods. Not to say it's not worth the work to sort it out, but it would be quite a job. Important points might be the relationship between the psychedelic movement/experience and the hippie movement (and the whole idea of "raising consciousness"), the pervasiveness of cannabis use, the contrast between the "back to nature" current and the use of "artificial" chemicals, the attempts (with mixed results) of hippies to police themselves concerning what was then called "hard drugs" and abuse vs use (the rejection by the majority of hippies of heroin, cocaine, and "needle-drugs", the "speed kills" initiative, the acid hot-lines and care stations at rock concerts, the free clinic (and other) testing services for drug content and purity, etc), and issues like the advent of paraquat, drug cuts that were worse than the drug, and when the drug war was more harmful than drug use itself. In fact, it might be better to create a short article and expand it into the "War on Drugs" article or something. Rosencomet (talk) 19:26, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Three additional books we can use without much debate: Brotherhood of Eternal Love: From Flower Power to Hippie Mafia (2007; ISBN 1904879950), Acid Dreams (1985; ISBN 0802130623), and Storming Heaven (1998; ISBN 0802135870). Could we at least start by focusing on cannabis and LSD? —Viriditas | Talk 10:50, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

The more I think about this, the more I see how this is tied into not one, but two sections: Spirituality and religion, and Drug use. —Viriditas | Talk 01:57, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm game, though I won't have much time to think about it until after March 2nd. The key to the use of "consciousness-expanding" drugs among the hippies, IMO, is that though there is nothing new about a sub-culture exploring consciousness through drug-induced altered states of consciousness (or induced by any other means, for that matter), it had never been a massive youth movement throughout the known world before. Usually, such practices were limited to a fringe group of mystics, cultists, secret-society members, some sort of priesthood, an artistic community, or some other group divorced from the mainstream. Sometimes this was considered disreputable or even illegal (like opium dens and absinthe users), other times it was applauded and expected of those individuals (like medicine men, oracles and shamans). But never before was it seen as a potential wave of the future and part of a social revolution, the way psychedelia was seen by millions before illegalization, and depicted in major magazines, movies and other media. Rosencomet (talk) 19:33, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that helps. The economic aspects are important too. In a hippie community like the Haight, many sources describe cannabis dealing as a legitimate (or viable) profession. I'm sure this is true for other enclaves as well. I'm not as sure about LSD, but the Brotherhood's network probably provided jobs. So rather than seeing the stereotype of violent, greeedy, and corrupt drug dealers, there appears to have been a stable culture supporting this lifestyle. Some kind of change occurred in the late 1960s, with the prohibiton of LSD (many forget that it was once legal) and the introduction and availability of harder drugs and the crackdown on cannabis (you allude to it above). So for a time, it appears as if LSD and cannabis were stimulating the hippie economy and even sustained it. —Viriditas | Talk 23:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

True. This is not unusual in any subculture; a black market becomes an integral part of the socio-economic structure, and often the only source of revenue to a group that is excluded from operation and upward mobility in the "legitimate" economic world. Among hippies, this ranged from selling hash pipes and roach clips to clandestine private investigators specializing in finding runaways, doctors supplying medical deferments for draft dodgers, drug smugglers, free (and not so free) clinics, hostels, etc. There were way too many kids flooding the Haight to survive begging for spare change; just like Woodstock, the sheer unexpected numbers overwhelmed the original vision.Rosencomet (talk) 16:13, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Didn't the Leary dictum "Tune in, Turn on, Drop out" become a key theme of hippie philosophy? Wwwhatsup (talk) 05:16, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Sure. Though it was "Turn on, tune in and drop out." Sunray (talk) 05:55, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Possibly so. Involves drugs whichever way.. :) Wwwhatsup (talk) 06:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I recall Leary saying that "turning on" didn't necessarily have to involve drugs. —Viriditas | Talk 12:00, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely! This is something that is all to often brushed aside in the stereotyping process that was happening then (and still). Sunray (talk) 19:33, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Correct. From the beginning, Leary said that one could turn on through meditation, religion, philosophy, or any number of other means, and he believed this even more as he explored sensory isolation, mind-machines, and cyber-space.Rosencomet (talk) 16:13, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Any idea if it was John C. Lilly who turned Leary on to "sensory isolation"? As for mind-machines, I could use some help on Dreamachine if anyone wants to jump in: there seems to be a link to the beat generation in that case, and I'm wondering if there are instances of hippies using them. Regarding cyberspace, it's my understanding that the WELL was a natural outgrowth of the Hippie movement, but at the moment, I'm only going on Fred Turner. I'm wondering if someone can look through references to Hippies in Howard Rheingold, John Seabrook, Katie Hafner, and Roy Ascott and Carl Eugene Loeffler; these publications are listed on the WELL page. —Viriditas | Talk 21:07, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough but, while it may have not been Leary's intention - the reality was that the phrase became a rallying point for hedonistic drug consumption worldwide. That could be a good way of introducing the topic. BTW, it's a primary source I know, but there is Michael Hollingshead's book The Man Who Turned On The World, in which he describes how he introduced Leary to LSD.. Wwwhatsup (talk) 02:38, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

If you have access to the book, and it discusses the topic of hippies (or a specific part of hippie-related counterculture), I would appreciate it if you could expand the drug section. We really want to stick to hippies, however, so make sure it is only in relation to that topic, here. —Viriditas | Talk 02:43, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok. Well, In a passage describing a 1965 visit to Berkeley with Leary Hollingshead observes that a strong element of hippie philosophy was a changing regard of Providence - as an internal rather external source of human development."Odd, really, how quickly the young respond to change. Whilst only seven or eight years ago the style was teeth-and-tweeds, button-down shirts and college ties, the mode of dress now veered on the far side of informality—jeans, denim shirts, cowboy boots and Afghan coats; and beards and long hair were everywhere prevalent. It was as if one psychic atmosphere had spread from California to Italy. Millions of similar people everywhere in the West. And their lifestyle was loose, unstructured; they seemed to roll on like the waves, whose movement is regulated by invisible forces emanating from the moon. They were beings who were in possession of a secret which provided the impetus to their lives; their aims were more inward; they had a feeling for values; they had achieved a certain level of consciousness. Were they not somehow more open than in any age previously, which gave them this new amplitude and a sense of purpose? And if you were to ask them, 'What for the future?' it is to themselves they would point. What folly to believe in a Providence which guides life from the outside! This is the change in itself. Where growth is guided by conscious volition, development of the personality takes place; everyone progresses, marches onward, further and further, and no end is in sight. Here was a new generation for whom time is real before eternity." Consciousness raising was thus paramount. A little below I do see him quoting Leary as saying "'The yoga of drugs is of course a key method." [14]. Wwwhatsup (talk) 03:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I've been responding to comments. Only now did I just actually read the Drugs section. It covers the above point pretty well. I've stuck in a fact tag on the Stonehenge 'heroin' thing. In that regard I saw Leary speak once in the early 90s and he divided drugs into political classes. Cannabis and LSD were 'democratic' drugs, while heroin and cocaine were 'republican'. I think the section reads well but could be expanded and a couple of other key influences included such as Aldous Huxley and even Lewis Carroll. The progress of emphasis from mind expansion to hedonism could be remarked. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation as to whether drugs led to hippies, or hippies turned to drugs. Myself I tend to go with the former - hence my intuitive reversal of Leary's dictum above. Wwwhatsup (talk) 16:45, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Good edits and nice comments. Someone snuck that OR in and you caught it; I would just go ahead and remove it, but I always find it helpful if the editor removing content (that isn't obvious vandalism) takes the time to place it on the talk page with a brief comment explaining the removal. Keep in mind, not all hippies were hedonists; some practiced renunciation in the Buddhist tradition, and I think the hippie flight out of the cities and back to the land was a form of urban asceticism. Living simply in small, isolated communities doesn't seem to be altogether focused on the pleasure and happiness of the individual, but rather that of the group. In fact, I would argue that communalism is quite difficult, as is finding your true self, getting in touch with your inner being, etc. Viewing hippies as hedonists seems a bit too superficial, but that's just my take on it. I'm sure you'll get a dozen different opinions. :) As for drugs leading to hippies, I think we are really talking about bohemianism at its core; since bohemians lived unconventionally, drugs were generally an accepted part of that culture, in some form or another. I think there is something to be said for the influence of cannabis (its use by the beat generation and their influence on the hippies) but very few (if any) authors have tackled this conundrum. There is something unique to cannabis that sets it apart from any other drug; it has the dual reputation (and some would say mythological stature) of helping artists to create and hashshashin to kill; perhaps this does come down to set and setting, and the drug only reflects the state of mind of the initiate. But a glance at the article shows the myths in full force: Dylan got The Beatles stoned, etc. Even Martin Booth in Cannabis: A History (2004) touches upon the Jazz musician myth: it is said that the best Jazz music was invented in between marathon cannabis sesshins. So I think we are dealing in the realm of mythmaking, because the mind seeks out explanations; one could argue that the Free Speech Movement was the center of the cyclone, and before it the Civil Rights Movement, and before it...ad infinitum. There is no one explanation, no way to point and say, "see, there it is", because we are not dealing with a physical thing, but rather memes. I always thought that Hunter S. Thompson's description of "the thing" as a "wave" was the closest anyone came to pointing in the right direction. —Viriditas | Talk 09:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I can't take responsibility for any edits. Someone else's work. I have an idea of how the section might flow. Hippies inherit druggie mind expansion from bohemians. Hedonistic cannabis & LSD use becomes widespread. While Aquarian types tend to move to increasingly ascetic rural communes, urban hipsters move onto speed and cocaine and dadaistic revolutionary politics. Don't ask me for references but surely Hoffman and Rubin say something. My own experience - I am British - was that a prime factor in the UK was the arrival of immigrants from Jamaica and Pakistan in the late 50's/early 60's bringing cannabis culture with them. In the 70s I attended a performance by an American eccentric called Nick Shoumatoff at the ICA in London. In it he told a story. He came to Oxford University in the late 50s, sharing lodgings with Jamaicans who introduced him to hashish. He made friends with Steve Abrams, a protegé of Jung who knew Huxley. Shoumatoff went to Morocco on summer break and returned with a sleeping bag full of kif. He and Abrams set about turning on their fellows. A band was formed called The Black Arabs and wild parties ensued. It was probably at one of these where the young Bill C. declined to inhale. Members of the coterie moved to London in the early 60s and began countercultural institutions such as Indica that spawned hippie culture in the UK, and particularly influenced the Beatles. All thoroughly anecdotal and unencyclopedic I know, but I think it illustrates my theme that drug taking by bohemian intellectuals begat the hippie 'wave'. I did start an article on Release. In July 1967 an Abrams-organized full page cannabis legalization ad in The Times was signed by The Beatles and financed by McCartney. That's pretty well documented. Wwwhatsup (talk) 10:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)