hippie values are popular values

HIPPIE VALUES

There was no Hippie Manifesto.

The Hippies weren't a movement so much as one aspect of an organic eruption of non-conformity in general and anti-militarism in particular all over western "civilization." (Scare quotes because solving problems by dropping bombs on people is not actually very civilized.)

It is possible, though, to identify core hippie values: Peace, Love, and Ecology.

Pretty good values!

And though the Hippies can be poked fun at, most people now agree with them: Most people would rather we weren't fighting wars. Most people are tolerant of people not exactly like themselves. Most people recycle.

(Especially the youngs! Which is why we need you to vote. There aren't enough of us old Hippies to vote out the lead-addled dinosaurs. But together we can do it! The Hippies were right about almost everything, but they were wrong about not voting.)

It's worth noting here that most people who were called Hippies didn't think of themselves as Hippies. Most people believed the bad stuff they were told about Hippies-- free love, no jobs, unhygenic-- and so though they were for Peace, Love and Ecology, they weren't Hippies in their own minds. Alas, "Hippie" got downward defined as non-serious stoner culture.

But the Hippies started the conceptual work that the rest of the culture is catching up to. They theorized about how humans could live in harmony with each other and Mother Nature. Concepts like "appropriate technology", "organic farming", and "human-scale development" that were pioneered back then are what we all should have embraced back then and we'd be in a lot less trouble now.