u/Aggressive_Tax_4695 — 7 days ago
r/ActualHippies
u/CartographerRare4123 — 8 days ago
Lythrum Salicaria Flowers, watercolor, acrylic, texture paste, size 51 x 39 x 1 inches (130 x 100 x 3 cm)
u/Tanbelia — 10 days ago
Wavy Gravy, most famous counterculture icon alive in Berkeley, turns 90
berkeleyside.orgu/eatmyentropy — 2 days ago
u/Buffyferry — 8 days ago
▲ 11 r/ActualHippies
There's a lot of "Am I a hippie" posts, and I think the confusion stems from the belief that there is a checklist out there. I've posted this before, but I think there were a ton of 1960s hippies who actually had very little in common with one another, and perhaps some major areas of disagreement.
No single person embodied everything in hippie culture. it was an array of things, with built-in contradictions and diversity. I started putting together a list of all things that I could think of that would make someone a hippie and fed it into AI to refine and organize. Here it is...
Core Mindset & Values
• Peace & love
• Anti-establishment / questioning “the Man”
• Radical autonomy & personal freedom
• Nonviolence & pacifism
• Rejection of materialism / anti-consumerism
• Authenticity over social performance
• Sexual liberation (“free love”)
• Anti-Vietnam War / anti-draft
• Back-to-nature & ecological awareness
Lifestyle & Practices
• Dropping out / quitting the rat race
• Communal living & intentional communities
• Hitchhiking, van life & nomadic travel
• Music festivals
• Be-Ins
• Organic, vegetarian & macrobiotic diets
• Holistic medicine, herbalism & DIY culture (weaving, repair, etc.)
• Free stores & mutual aid (Diggers)
• Urban crash pads vs. rural homesteading
• Small head shops or artisan businesses
Fashion & Appearance
• Long hair & natural textures
• Beards & natural grooming
• Bell-bottoms, denim & military surplus (worn ironically)
• Tie-dye, vibrant psychedelic patterns
• Peasant blouses, dashikis, kaftans
• Beads, headbands, bells & flowers
• Thrifted, patched or handmade
• Unisex clothing & blurring gender lines
Consciousness & Spirituality
• Psychedelics (LSD, mushrooms, peyote)
• Cannabis
• Eastern philosophy (Zen, Hinduism, etc.) & yoga
• Jesus People / Street Christians
• Astrology, tarot & mysticism
• Human Potential movement & “vibes”
Political & Activist Variations
• Peace marches, draft card burning
• Civil rights solidarity
• Guerrilla theater & satire (Yippies)
• Anarchist, socialist or libertarian leans
• Underground press & environmentalism
Subgroups & Diversity
• Trust-fund hippies (middle-class with safety net)
• Street freaks (impoverished urban nomads)
• Weekend warriors (part-time)
• Back-to-the-landers (serious farmers)
• Visionaries / Beat leftovers
• Tech-heads / tool-builders (niche)
• Plastic hippies (mostly fashion)
Takeaway: One person could be a straight-edge political activist with long hair; another a nomadic mystic who avoided politics entirely. Both were “hippies.” The movement thrived on that variation.
u/BumblingBarefoot — 13 days ago
▲ 19 r/ActualHippies
Went on my first all naked hike & it was awesome!
I wonder, did you already have been hiking all naked?
Here in Germany there are a few spots you are allowed to.
I definitely will check out some other beautiful spots too!
First I was a bit unsure cause.. Germans can be rude, haha. And the hiking spot is a bit overgrown, but we met so many kind people just hiking naked like us and the few people with clothes were really chill with it.
It felt so natural and free after the first few minutes :D
Everyone should do it once in life I think, haha. 🤭
u/Mossysiren — 12 days ago
▲ 20 r/ActualHippies
Raised around a hippie grandfather (60s/70s hippie)
Hi! I was raised in the same household as my hippie grandfather. He was born in the 60s, and became a hippie as a child. His mother was a prostitute, and his biological father did not know about his existence.
He was relatively poor, which led him into hippie culture.
He always would dance around everywhere. Whether at a store, or even at a roller rink. He sort of just had that spirit.
He constantly had long hair, and would wear tassels, albeit he did add the cowboy look into it because he thought it looked cool!
He was very big on rock n roll, feeling the 'groove', and sort of being free. He hated to be confined in a house, particularly when he lost his factory job. He could not travel and see the world after that, and then he got hit with dementia!
As a child, I grew up with some of the children's hippie culture although I never identified as one. I wore rainbows, listened to rock n roll + country (My grandma loved country music), stayed barefoot for the majority of my life.
Typically, I could run on sharp rocks, climb trees, amd sort of just live life free of those shoes. I hated shoes than, and I hate them now. Although, I do wear them a lot now!
As for my bedroom, it was covered in rainbows. My cousins side of the room was similar. She had tripped rainbow art, whilst mine was normal rainbows everywhere.
(Very different from modern hippie culture haha)
My grandpa taught me to skate, and sort of encouraged dance skating.
In the 2020s, my cousin proudly labeled herself as a hippie, and honestly she didnt look very different from me! At the time, younger teens started dressing in similar rainbow gear and more.
In my teen years, I had visited a commune for halloween, and it just smelled like home! Full of weed 😭 (It is legal in my state anyway.)
He did drugs in another state we lived in, where weed is illegal, so trust me, he certainly enjoyed his drugs.
As for my grandpa, he still identifies as a hippie, acts like one, keeps his long hair, and does shrooms and weed. He is quite secretive about his other drugs though!
While I am not a hippie today, I am a conditional pacifist, pretty much against war, and of course against drugs and alcohol.
(I saw what it did to my grandpa and I have too much anxiety and CPTSD to do that to myself, because i'd try drowning my sorrows.)
Sometimes I do miss the life of no shoes, and rainbows!
But I am sure modern hippie culture has moved past florals, rainbows, and tassels! My current style is modern, jeans with hearts or flowers on them, knitted floral shirts, and regular florals!
My grandfather also adapted to the modern world whilst maintaining his identity. So I never grew up away from tech like most 2nd-3rd gens.
I also never labled any of it because it WAS my normal. Although, on the dress up days where the kids dressed as a hippie, I never had to try. They just said I was already dressed as one. So then my downfall began and I joined modernism. I never even participated in trends prior to that lol
u/ForsakenSecretary255 — 10 days ago
▲ 11 r/ActualHippies
The Whole Earth Catalog - The Hippie Internet, in giant book form. Mine was from 1971.
This book brought us ideas from Hippies all over the world (mostly the U.S.). Philosophy, clothes, low tech, environmentalism, equality, peace, system sciences, nomadic, living off the land, off the grid, and Hippie Fiction. The Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools.
As a child, I studied this like a bible. Want to know your roots? They are right here.
u/OsakaWilson — 13 days ago
▲ 47 r/ActualHippies
I crafted this choker using clear quartz and brass.
u/Efficient_Goat_5410 — 6 days ago
▲ 2 r/ActualHippies
What's a hippie funeral?
My family member is going to pass, but I didn't get the chance to ask how he would like to his bodied to be handled. Not looking for answers just maybe some thoughts or opinions or ideas. He's a spiritual hippie that's born in the 60s.
Wondering if anyone has some references or maybe some collective thoughts. He's a very easy going simple kind man
u/SpotNo3699 — 5 days ago
▲ 26 r/ActualHippies
I made this pendant with smoky quartz. what do you think?
u/Ok-Perspective-5202 — 11 days ago
▲ 9 r/ActualHippies
Light pollution
I hate light pollution. I hate it so much. I hate the way that 150 years ago people could look up and see the Milky Way. I hate the way I have no control over it and although I’m only sixteen I’ll probably never get to see the proper night sky and it angers me soo much how has society taken away our literal view of space. And it’s due to only get worse with more satellites and light pollution and over population. I want to find a way to make a difference a big difference somehow I want to change the world or at least a bit of it so I can see the night sky and its beauty I want to protest and change but at the same time why should I ? Why should I have to fight to see the literal space that surrounds us and even if I did make a difference it wouldn’t be a big enough scale to stop this problem and it wouldn’t take years and I’m tired of this world. I hate how humans have destroyed everything .
u/One_Carry7509 — 9 days ago
▲ 10 r/ActualHippies
Where can I meet hippies in the Netherlands?
I’m new in the Netherlands and I’m excited to meet hippies. Any one can help me where to find events or places where they gather? I appreciate the help.
Thank you☀️🌸
u/Educational_Race5810 — 9 days ago
▲ 14 r/ActualHippies
Does hating materialism and keeping up with the joneses mean you're a hippie?
I realize I'm tired of trying to keep up or having to look a certain way to feel like I belong to a certain social group. I truly don't feel much fulfillment or satisfaction either from expensive stuff. I feel as long as I'm getting my basic needs met I don't really need much. I'm not living authentic or being myself by having to keep up and being conscious of every brand I wear. I don't know if this would make me a hippie but I know I materialism is making me unhappy.
u/youlikemywonton — 4 days ago
We Must Not Become the Evil We Condemn
There is a moment when a country has to stop pretending the numbers are just numbers. Twenty nine billion dollars is not an abstraction. It is not just a line in a defense budget. It is not some faraway accounting trick handled by men in suits while the rest of us try to survive the week. That money came from somewhere. It came from labor. It came from paychecks. It came from parents working doubles, teachers buying supplies with their own money, nurses running on fumes, families choosing between rent and groceries, kids sitting in classrooms where nobody has enough help, and whole communities being told there is never enough money for care. Then suddenly, when war calls, the money appears. It always appears. (Reuters)
That is the part people need to sit with. We are constantly told America cannot afford to feed everyone, cannot afford universal health care, cannot afford to pay teachers what they are worth, cannot afford therapy for people breaking under the weight of this world, cannot afford child care, cannot afford housing, cannot afford dignity. But we can afford war. We can afford missiles. We can afford contractors. We can afford repair and replacement of destroyed equipment. We can afford the machinery of death faster than we can afford the machinery of life. That should disturb every decent person, no matter what party they belong to.
This is not about Republicans or Democrats. That is the trap. The system wants us divided into teams so we never look up and notice the machine itself. It wants us screaming at each other while the money drains out the back door. It wants us convinced that our neighbor is the enemy while our labor is converted into violence somewhere else. We work, we pay, we sacrifice, we raise children, we care for the sick, we hold together families and classrooms and neighborhoods, and then the wealth created by that living human effort is poured into war. The system bleeds money, but it is not really money being bled. It is time. It is sweat. It is love. It is human life converted into smoke.
The moral crisis is not only that war is expensive. The moral crisis is that war teaches a nation what it values. Every budget is a confession. Every appropriation is a prayer. Every dollar says what we believe deserves to continue. When we spend billions on destruction while children go hungry, we are not simply making a policy choice. We are revealing a spiritual sickness. We are saying that violence has a faster claim on our resources than mercy. We are saying that the machinery of empire deserves immediate funding while the broken child, the exhausted teacher, the sick mother, the traumatized veteran, and the hungry family must wait their turn.
And we have to be careful here, because anger can rot if we do not discipline it. We must not lend ourselves to the same evil we condemn. We cannot hate our way into a better world. We cannot dehumanize people while claiming to defend humanity. We cannot become addicted to rage and call it justice. The point is not to trade one cruelty for another. The point is to take our power back without surrendering our souls. The point is to name the machine clearly, resist it fiercely, and still remain human.
Because we can be different. That is the whole point. We are not powerless just because the system is massive. A system is made of choices repeated until they look inevitable. War looks inevitable because too many people have accepted it as normal. Poverty looks inevitable because too many people have been trained to see suffering as background noise. But none of this is natural law. It is design. And what has been designed can be challenged. What has been funded can be defunded. What has been normalized can be made shameful again.
Imagine if that same money had gone toward life. Feeding people. Paying teachers. Covering children’s medical care. Funding therapy. Making child care possible. Helping students go to college. Stabilizing families before they collapse. Feeding America says one dollar can help secure and distribute ten meals, which means twenty nine billion dollars points toward a number so large it almost stops sounding real: hundreds of billions of meals. The National Education Association lists the average public school teacher salary at about seventy four thousand dollars, which means that money could have paid hundreds of thousands of teachers for a year. KFF estimates Medicaid spending for child enrollees at a few thousand dollars per child, meaning millions of children could have received coverage for a year. These are not fantasies. These are choices.
This is why the comparison hurts. It is not just missiles instead of meals. It is war instead of care. It is trauma instead of therapy. It is propaganda instead of education. It is debt instead of dignity. It is a country telling its own people to be patient while it instantly mobilizes for destruction. And people feel that contradiction in their bodies. They feel it when their rent goes up. They feel it when their child’s school is understaffed. They feel it when the hospital bill arrives. They feel it when they are told to work harder while the wealth of their work is used for things they never consented to.
Taking the power back begins with refusing the spell. Refuse the idea that war is practical and care is naive. Refuse the idea that cruelty is strength. Refuse the idea that ordinary people asking for food, shelter, medicine, education, and peace are asking for too much. Refuse the lie that there is no money. There is money. There has always been money. The question is who gets protected by it, who gets sacrificed for it, and who gets told to shut up while it happens.
We do not have to become monsters to fight monsters. We do not have to become numb to survive a numb system. We can fight back by becoming harder to manipulate, harder to divide, harder to frighten, and harder to convince that death deserves more funding than life. We can demand that our labor serve the living. We can demand that budgets become moral documents again. We can demand a country where children are fed before bombs are built, where teachers are honored before contractors are enriched, where medicine is treated as a right before war is treated as destiny.
This is not about left versus right. This is about life versus the machine that keeps feeding on life. And if we are serious about being different, then we have to stop lending our hands, our silence, our attention, and our despair to the evil we say we oppose. We have to fight for life without becoming servants of death. We have to build a politics of care strong enough to stand against the machinery of war. We have to remember that the system only looks untouchable because so many people have forgotten that it runs on us.
And if it runs on us, then it can be stopped by us.
u/Unusual_Bet_2125 — 1 day ago
▲ 5 r/ActualHippies
Clothing options?
So I live in the UK, and I’m looking for different businesses I can buy clothing from, but I don’t want to support large ‘boutique’ businesses and I want to make sure who I’m buying from uses more natural materials that are better for the environment. I’m currently looking through charity shops which is obviously the best option as I’m buying clothes that are already made and I’m giving them second life, but the downside is that hippy clothing is rather ‘niche’ and hard to come by so charity shops re relatively unreliable. Does anyone know of any independent businesses that do hippy/bohemian clothing? Where do you normally buy your clothes from?
u/Super_Investment9003 — 4 days ago