How to be a hippie in the woods?
This blog is to help illustrate the elusive paradigm of the woke-woodsy-hipster
WHAT IS HIP?
The term hippie was created back in the Beatnick generation as a derogatory name for a drug user. As the Beatnick’s experimented with hash and marijuana the square people used hippie as a joking reference to the opium dens of the East where people laid around on their hip smoking opium.
The name has come a long way, oscillating between good and bad connotations depending on the tone and who is saying it. As of late, it has become a washed-out name as big box stores offer tie-dyes as a cliche fashion. We call these posers glitter ponies or plastic hippies.
This is a plastic hippie. The indicators are the cliche headband and the round glasses. She is trying too hard to be a stereotype. But blowing on dandelions is cool and I like the dress. But the real indicator is that true hippies blow on only one dandelion at a time
Today it is just a name of a fashion, but the true people that it represents are still at large creating a thriving, complicated culture. It’s not hard to join but it’s hard to articulate. It is more than just putting on a tie-dye or colorful clothing. Matter of fact, it’s not even related to what you wear. It is not a fashion, although fashion is a result of the mindset. It is a release of confining belief systems and with that comes a surge of creativity. This blog tries to articulate the culture from the inside out. The following interviews are with the real hip. Like the Tower of Power song sings, “What is hip?”
THE WORK OF THE HIP
I dismantle war when I give compassion to the fighter within
I befriend my own oddities to make myself real to others
I unwind the clocks and crumble the self-image
I empty out in order to be vast
I let down my hair to be free
I put on color to inspire
I am an indigo child
I am hip
The Righteous-rigid-right has that nicely defined (although narrow-minded) paradigm that is so easy to slip into- go to church, white picket fence, dull job, make a living. It is a little more difficult to join the counter culture. It is not so simple as putting on the right clothes and smoking some pot. It is an intricate paradigm that is loosely defined because it has evolved out of an organic, culture-making process.
what do we call ourselves?
Hippie, woke, freak?
First, how do we identify for ourselves? Counter culture -tree hugging-leftist -earth mama -radical -salad eating -granolas-whole wheat -rainbow family -festie fairies -hipster -hippie -freak?
Maybe there is nothing that can hold us because the free human spirit is too elusive to be beholden to one name.
Baba Jamal
Story Teller and Educator
“We use the word counter culture to describe a movement, but it’s use means against, or to have an impact on our culture at large. This only gives it greater strength by continuing to call it what it is. So if we say counterculture, that is still the defining and demanding on it, the culture that already exist. Counter takes up a weaker position. So we have a weak position that is looking to the stronger position to change the stronger position. Can’t Happen. Can’t Happen.”
“If we say alternative culture, it’s still replacing this for that. If the culture is rotten, we don’t want to tag onto something that’s rotten because we can’t stop the rotten. You see what we are looking at is some other kind of name, free from reference. We must name the culture that we want. It’s going to be similar to what we have but there is a major difference and that major difference has to be named.”
Wisdom from our elders the Beatniks:
Freaks, those who protect or express the strange and odd in humanity
Profile: Micheal Fles; Musician of post ethnic music. Collector of instruments.
“First it was bohemian, then beatnik, then a hippie, now finally a freak. This is my thing. In the late 30’s there was a film called Freaks by Todd Browning. It was a circus film and they had the side show, you know, all the freaks. They had the 480 lb. man and the woman with flippers instead of arms and all of that stuff.”
“So, the circus was caught in a little town because of rain and a storm. A lot of the people in the town got freaked out because o these people. Ya know, they weren’t like them. They were getting ready to lynch them or something like that. “
“But there was this one lady. Her job in the circus was to take care of these (freak) people because they had various things they needed just to eat or something. The most famous scene was all of the people in this community didn’t want these folks there, ya know. And she just opened her coat up and she protected them like this. That’s the famous scene, like they may be a little strange, but these are human beings. That is why I like the name freaks. If anything, it appeals to my sense of humor.”
HEre are some qualities that every hippie must have:
You have to have a sense of humor and a love of color
Not just any hippy, this is hippies in the woods. Someone has to get back to nature. Granola goes great with grass. Whether in the country or in the city, it is important to question destructive life styles and then be creative to come up with a solution. We take simple steps to wholistic living with a zip of style, and a zap of wit. Hipness has grown, because we have great ideas, style, and it is an open invitation to be your funky self.
You have to be innovative and open minded. The hip look to the past as well as to the future.
We have got to keep it real. Learn a skill. Not just texting: a real hands on skill. Hippies don’t just sit around smoking pot, (well sometimes). We pioneer into the past to create a wholistic future. Can we remember how to weave a basket and also figure out how mushrooms can clean up toxic soil? We weave the past and future to make earthy-technological now. This way of being is called Techno-abo.
You have to not be afraid to speak up and be odd.
We have plenty to rebel against. But what are we for? What to create? Who do we want to be? A culture where the earth is part of the equation is the future. What makes a feel good culture? -Feeling like you belong no matter who you are. Cultures that exclude people are closed systems and unless they reproduce themselves they are limited, but cultures that include new people and ideas, grow.
HUMANS ARE VERY CAPABLE WHEN WE WORK TOGETHER. HIPPIES KNOW HOW TO DIVERSIFY BUT CAN WE UNIFY?
CIRCLES VS SQUARES
The great divide- round-wholistic-butter-side-down people vs. square-dogmatic-butter-side-up people. There is no convincing anyone to be other than what they are so where do we go from here? What does Dr. Seuss say? Well, he says just accept that everyone is different. This would be a great solution if dire issues like global warming, overpopulation and extinction was not putting pressure on us to agree.
There are progressives that want to deal with the issues and then there are regressives that want to go back to 1950, deny that there are problems and ignore all these complicated issues, understandably. It will take a huge reeducation effort to get them to even look at the issues, but will they ever be round – that is a tall order.
We can only hope that as young people circulate through the cities and hopefully travel around, they realize the world is not all Christian suburbia.
But as hippies in the woods, we like the rural life too. Our neighbors are usually those red-neck right-wing people with cows and stuff. How do we get along? Actually, pretty well. We all love the land and the rural ways even if we don’t live the same way. (Hippy-bus-cob-house vs. ranch house.) And there is even some morphing of ideals like hippies that ride horses and cowboys that grow pot. We call them hip-necks. (See vocab words)
But there are so few people that really live in nature, most live in Martha Stuart nature – like some trees and manicured lawns maybe a few flowers and usually some square bushes. This mind-numbing suburbia is pleasant but breeds an out-of-touch-myopic-self-serving mentality because there is no real feedback. Just like on Facebook you can live in your own private Idaho.
(If you have ever traveled through Idaho you can see where this song lyric comes from – imagine a dessert and then right in the middle of the dessert there is a square fenced green lawn and a Mc-mansion plopped right in the middle of no-where. Idaho -where the republican senators go to retire.)
Suburbia- we thought it would be the answer to all our troubles and pains but what it has created is a monstrous mass of ignorance. And that is the political divide.
Marx said that capitalism would lead to the rich having all the money and power and everyone else being left with not much so the educated would lead a revolt of the uneducated masses to take the money and power from the few and redistribute it more evenly hence, communism. But what he didn’t factor in was fox news or that the powerful few understood the issue and have spread mass propaganda that the ignorant, isolated, suburban masses would take in like water. That humans are hard-wired to want to be in groups of like-minded people and have ideas that they can follow and agree upon, even if it leads to the destruction of life.
Diversity, inclusion, and environmentalism are harder concepts. They take more effort to do. So, Marx also did not factor in the comfortable suburban consciousness of humanity.
Nor did Marx factor in the real genius of the capitalist; to do things like control the media, control the justice system, entwine the disgruntled religious people who wanted more religion in schools and public areas into believing that Christ and capitalism and America are all the same thing, or how the capitalist move from being a CEO of a shyster company to the professor of a prestigious university to then being in politics creating a web of influence. These people can be very conniving.
So, what is a hippy to do? I guess just keep on being a hippie. It certainly is more fun and beautiful a lifestyle. We will keep on loving this Earth until it collapses and then, if anyone is still around, we will start to pick up the pieces. It will take generations to redesign a better, kinder, more in-touch world and hopefully we will abandon the dangerous ideas of capitalism, one religion, social striation by color of skin, progress, and suburbia.
Living in Peace
What’s it going to take
For people to awake
And realize we’re off course
And it’s a big mistake
When will we be true
To things we need to do
And not sell our self short
The change begins with you
I’m living in a world that cannot imagine...
...All of the people,
...Living in Peace
All of the people, Living in Peace
All of the people, Living in Peace
… Imagine
-Attilla the Poet
How hippies live differently in the woods
When people move into the woods they either bulldoze it and pour concrete all over it to conquer the divine feminine, or they just load lots and lots of garbage everywhere reflecting the similar state of mind, or they tip toe around it, not wanting any real contact. Nature is good enough to look at out the window at or get a nice stock image and post it on a pretty blog.
All miss out on the glorious mud, and the dirt, and the water, and the sky, and the rotting leaves! Those who do not know the pleasure, miss out on a very deep part of humanity. It goes along with missing out on music, sitting with a friend or talking quietly by candle light. These are simple but profound delights. They are relaxing, grounding, and richly deep.
Get your souls back by doing something simple like getting dirty, laying in the grass, or putting your feet in the water. No grandeur, but more satisfying than grandeur.
The Natural Human
It is your sole purpose to find your way home.
The Gateway:
The mind has taken over the body.
The body becomes a slave to the mental drive.
We live in a fragmented world
and never realize that one part of us
has enslaved the other.
So we become both victim and persecutor.
Analyzing ourselves and our world
into destruction.
Striping the forest, polluting earth’s blood
and gobbling up our body’s soul
all for the wealth of the mental.
Every distraction will entice you
As a test of your intention.
Only the true force of earth devotion
will get you through
the initiation of entertainment.
How can we return the soul to
the land and ourselves?
We have yet to breathe in the mountain,
To drink the forces of the sea,
It is in the call to the spirit of the ancestors,
with our cell phones and solar panels
and sheer will to resist comfort and ease,
using our bodies to clean up this mess of generations.
This is where human destiny lies.
In this race of time,
all hope is within the individual
and their personal connection with others.
All else follows.
Break free, break free of your own strangling grip!
Don’t be afraid of those dark and wild places.
It is your destiny to be
The Natural Human Being.
The water is you,
the mountain is you,
the sky is you,
the animals are you,
the roots entwine you
pull you into the earth
and the separation is over.
You are the Earth.
And they will call you a dirt-worshiping tree hugger.