WHY I am a hippie

Hello I answered a question on my space to what I meant by being a rainbow hippie and the following was my answer I thought it was wort posting on hip forums.





I understand that hippie has a lot of connotations and some we like others we like less. So I will try to narrow down my meaning of hippie and why I am one..

To me hippie was the key word that started being used in the 60ties for the cultural and societal

movement that has made such a mark in the imagination of our generation and many who have followed. I will say this it has something to do with what you said (a sense of responsibility toward the environment and a creative lifestyle not based on material gain. ) but with these parameters:

Anti conformism and free spirit. Existentialistic and individualistic at the same time outspoken about many things and open to the many aspects including spiritual and philosophical approaches to the world.

Let us not forget the most important. Peace and love ya that good old cliché but it still works for me. Something about the whole and the pieces the idea that the world is a whole. That you can not separate things. Like Krishna Murti said see the flowers without noticing the roots and the spoil in which it grows. Something about how everything is important to heal the wound but also challenge the reasons for the illness. In the early 70ties hippies started polarizing around things like the rainbow family the farm in Tennessee the new age and with this evolution came the wholism and the seeking of other ways such as wholistic medicine and so I would say that the hippies are like the left hemisphere of the brain of the peace movement. The analog side.

Political and historical times have changed quickly and agendas like the community aspect of the hippies (remember the communes) had to readjust and find it s rules of engagement. I don t think this has been done well. The idea part of the hippie became less prominent.

When I was a kid intellectuals and creative minds almost always were hippies. The Internet itself was built by them. When I was a kid we called ourselves the new left now the marginals the freaks the heads and more everybody added their own little cliché their own little beauty and their own little scandal to the pie. In Québec in the late 70ties the French cool cats started saying le beau monde! The beautiful people! And it was so. Generosity and caring populated the morals of the hippies and the hippie vibe went down through the general population along with it s humor and its originality. Freedom and life and all the concepts and aspects of hippie all have 2 sides.

Freedom nurtures creativity and instability. The gypsies lifestyle also opens the door to bad apples. I use to travel with a milk truck converted to a little workshop home on wheels and after a school bus in which I lived for 17 years. At the biggining my door was wide open to offer tea coffee conversation rides and vibe to every one. Smiles populated my face when people asked me what I was about. Hippies were always welcome and I had many people live and travel with me and my partner and kid. Now I always take at least a good second look and there are many memories of not such good things that litter the scene.

Worst the hippies are having less and less impact on the world. The rainbow family one of the biggest examples of hippie dom has evolved into more of a religious ultra clique then the movement it was when it started and was throughout its close to 40 years of existence. The American rainbow family is still at the permit issue and since it is an non organization of non members and no one can speak in the name of the rainbow family and say this is what it means to be a rainbow hippie I can only say that for me rainbow family was a good effort at putting on the biggest show of resistance to a world that too often is a world of injustice power and ego.

Having impact on the world like the concepts of wholism and with that recycling healthy living happiness harmony and all the high stuff that comes with what hippies have to offer the world are still needed. Humanity has many challenges to move beyond. Apathy and the sense that we make no difference because either the work of Karma or universal perfection in the spiritual sense are the only players here. Or the thought that the world has gone beyond saving that we are run by a secret government that is so powerful so terrible and unchangeable that the best thing to do is to try to have a good time and achieve personal liberation through whatever means money drugs name it.

I am part of those hippies who were activists. That faced armies of club swinging cops in demonstrations and that were not afraid to take risks with burning our draft cards and dropping out. I don t have to listen to Naomi Chomsky to know that those who write the laws and enforce the laws have dark greedy agendas and that to find out what these big time manipulators are doing. But see things multifaceted and never black and white. Oops what is happening with this font...and so my point is that in my history as an activist from anti-nuclear demonstrations against nuclear tests and early civil rights issues in the US which had a vigil in front of the US consulate I was 15 when I was first arrested for being part of a sit in there. My mom when the cops brought me home told her the naughty things I had been doing and instead of siding with them in guilt when the policeman asked her if I was a good kid she said that I was. That although she did not approve me playing hookies from school she thought the reasons were noble enough and that I might be learning something more important than what I was missing in school those days. I remember the look on that cops face as she told him that.

When I was in my early 20ties I was the main organizer of the Nuguen van troy committee .

The purpose's was to collect money to build a children s hospital in South Viet Nam. Not in the Saigon but in territories that were in the hands of the non puppet government put there by the French and the US. We did it not only here in Montreal but through out the world. I wrote a communique that I sent to all the singers and popular artists at the time and spoke on the phone with people like Gilles Vigneault Pauline Julien Claude Dubois and got a very powerful list of sponsors for this we put on a huge benefit concert collected more than 100,000 $ here in Québec and I am still personally proud of that effort. Less than a year alter the war ended. The fake regime totally collapsed as the US army was evacuating. Viet Nam is at peace and rebuilding. It successfully outed one of the most monstrous regimes ever the Khmer Rouge. A by product of failed US policy gone wild like Irak is starting to look like.

Those of us who stayed with that pride by being part of the demonstrations and taking solidarity and conviction to the public front know what we have as power. We know that we can make a change.

But in the Rainbow family I know many people friends and just people I know. Some think the US is doing the right thing in Irak Some think the space ships will land and give us the magic wands so that we can visualize another reality where every one uses the right soap and eats the right food. I know people who have told me that Ronald Reagen was really smart when he came up with the star war concept. That by building a bomb that would destroy every single thing on earth was the best way to guarantee peace. That the USA was some kind of of basic good thing that just needed to understand its sacred constitution put there by enlightened beings plugged into the sacred truth but there were bad people in charge.

I also know some people not that many that go to the rainbow gathering hoping to get laid. Some to steal things or bing on alcohol or drugs. We have an a-camp. Some good folks there too but some serious problem people in the mix. People who should not necessarily be trusted. And then an very high percentage of just good people looking for some grace. People who are deeply into things like animal rights the environment pollution and health. So a wild world it is.

Would I recommend these things to my daughter or my friends definitely yes but with a good rap 107. Watch out for yourself kiddo learn to screen and take your time.

So I could go on about our shortcomings about our world ,my world in fact. But my interest is in building not destroying. I get hurt a lot but I enjoy life fully. Some one told me something profound in Montreal about the way he perceived me and my interest in not such fun things like wars and Irak and the Tsunami last year in the middle of a really hot discussion where my other friend was bombarding me with his way of seeing things. That in fact all these things are the future that in 2012 our world will collapse that most will perish that some will survive but only those who will have understood! That the tsunami was mother nature telling us that we are just fuck ups and that it is putting us in our place. Me when I think of that same event an earth quake that happened in the middle of the ocean something that has happened through out all of earths long and short history and at a time when humanity is plunged in the horror of war and violence that the humanitarians effort mobilized to help this horrific experience to humanity was able to muster in all of its history. Humanity is capable of the most beautiful and horrific things at once.

Those who support this or that train of thought do for many weird different reasons. And so back to that heated discussion the other guy tells me that with the way I see the world will make me un happy all my life!

So when I see the way I am in front of my need to be in touch with the world as I shuffle through news and mobilize at every noble cause that speaks to my heart and mind and that moves me to the point of tears like when I watch a moving movie and tears roll down my face and I consider that maybe I am un happy, attached, and I should just let go. I think of this.

I have lived a life full of adventure bought and traveled with 3 horses in Mexico raised kids on a hippie school bus but more importantly I have thrown my self literally knee deep in marshes to clean up the garbage left by others polluting precious land. And I have fought and still fight for what I believe in and I sense that I am part of the solution in an ocean of of good well minded creatures called humans with belly buttons. In no way perfect and with some real losers and egotistical little brats and my god the flank is steep but I am still walking singing thinking and trucking. And I feel happy not perfect.

I think I would be bored in a perfect world where there is no fight. When I establish a camp

in the forest or on the beach. My girl friends will want to just lay in the sun for hours but I have to beach comb and set up work tables and cant stay put. I have managed to live most of my adult life without paying any rent yet I have taken part of many fire teams at rainbow gatherings and NM where I pretty much drove up on a fire threatening to move from tree high flames to this persons house who wasnt there and who was a perfect stranger to me. The friend who was driving with me and lived on a sort of metaphysical cabala center went and gave the alarm and when the first rangers got there I had already located the water hose hooked it up to the fossit had also had to find and was dowsing the flames that were starting to dissapear and thing were smoldering and so when the fire squad got there and all the introductions were made I felt pretty good you know. I also got to be a care taker for a very nice ranch and got to experience another wonderful and testy love episodes.

So my hair is down to my lower back it is still thick and I have some whitish streaks and some crazy fuzzy white hair over it all that just wont bend. I brush the mess every once in a while and I experience a few days of almost tidy hair followed by jams and music and whatever. I smashed myself in the face with my flashlight last year at the KFF on my security shift as a volunteer staff and it still has a dark hole but the root canal treatment on that tooth is giving me time to figure out how I can save it or probably lose it. I have great holes of missing teeth in the back of my mouth. Some things are not as important to people than others. LOL

So there you have it why I am a hippie and what that means.

Papillon

myspace


web site

 

I Looooooooove youuuuuuu!

 

ORIGINALLY "HIPPY" WAS CREATED BY THE MEDIA TO DESCRIBE THE UNDESCRIBABLE FOLKS THAT COMPOSED THE HUGE MOVEMENT OF THE 60'S AND WAS, (AND STILL IS BY MANY) CONSIDERED AN INSULT. IT IS A LABEL FOR THOSE WHO DEFY ALL LABELS.
BUT LIKE THE WORD "******" it is now used by the same people it originally insulted, as a badge of belonging to the culture that has been created to pigeonhole a group of people into being what their supposed to be.
ie. "real nigga" "real hippy"
i've seen lotsa good hearted kids misled by what they though a hippy was supposed to be, and i wish all of them shared your beliefs of the meaning of the word. unfortunately, many believe that a "hippy" has to get messed up on drugs at any opportunity, or believe a certain philosophy. or spare change from everyone he/she sees, never working etc, etc., keep educating people on the culture and true ideals of love and oneness.

lotsalove

Fuzz E logic

 

Excellent post! What a collection of thoughts.
ha- Québec! C'est vraiment la belle provence.

Paix et amour!

 

Thank you for sharing your thoughts... Personaly I never thought of it in that way.. You ARE or you are NOT

 

Imagine

In the US there are renaissance faires that bring people in quest of magic and fantasy. Artisans jugglers and performers give them their moneys worth and these are highly successful things.

Some of these last 10 weeks. Example the Maryland renaissance faire.

There are many of these. I do one as an artisan.

Imagine instead of having as a fantasy the period of humanity that with a little study of history is far from being magical (the Renaissance) let us work to create festivals that are successful as these but their fantasy would be about a better future. With food booths selling good food rather than those damn turkey legs. ( I am a really good vegetarian cook) Though I am vegetarian I can cook a meal with tofu and potatoes that will convert or at least trigger the imagination and the plurality of any carnivore who may think vegetarian food is for people with boring tastes.

Imagine if all the coffee sold at these faires was fair trade coffee.

Imagine a faire where the craftspersons is not only a private entrepreneur interested in making beau coup $$$ but a creator of better dreams.

Imagine if the performers and actors sing and do political environmental or spiritual shows. Where the quality of the performance is so rich that people are left inspired and enriched deeply.

Let us talk about this and other concrete plans and let us pass to action as we keep developing the dream.

Stay with me on this.

Peace

Papillon MYSPACE