r/Hippiecommunity

1. They don't love you

2. They care about money

3. They're toxically positive

4. They're toxically "compassionate"

5. Hippy dudes too, just wanna shag all of u.

6. They go about manifestation the wrong way

7. Veganism is inherently hypocritical

8. Prayer will not save shit

9. Spiritual gurus & shamans are fake as fuxk

10. There are no gatekeepers to psychedelics & weed can make you lazy

I work at a dispensary where my coworkers will regularly put edibles, flower, etc in my locker unnamed. If I’m feeling really crazy sometimes I take the edible before I clock in, without knowing the dosage. It makes me feel like I’m really living in the moment. lol. Anyways. Today I clocked into work, and followed suit: there were three sour patch kids in my locker, wrapped neatly in a bag. I had a few minutes left before I was supposed to start working so I ate them and “prepared for the ride” of a 5 hour shift where I’m maybe a little bit high and awkward with some customers. To make a long fucking story short, those sour patch kids were actually 500ug of acid. By the grace of god and my lovely coworkers I made it home before an absolute earth shattering trip that came at both the worst and most perfect time. I’m coming down now, nearly 9 hours later, and while I’ve learned a very valuable lesson about being knowledgeable about what I’m putting into my body, I can’t help but feel the cid came for me and tossed me around when I needed it most. I never would have taken that much at once, or maybe I would’ve misused it. I may have even given them away. I feel lucky to be living in the moment that I’ve been given today

Maybe attempts to determine what it means to be a modern day hippie are challenging because society's image of a hippie will always be focused on the Woodstock stereotype. And maybe that's ok.

Perhaps what we need is an umbrella term to describe anyone who is part of the counter culture, with offshoots of that term for the various groups (van life people, vegans, nudists, environmentalists, burners, yoga practitioners, homesteaders etc). It seems like hippies have splintered off into so many cool and interesting groups, with each having some cross-over, but each also having its own defining characteristics.

I spend my weekends at a clothing optional campground. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how my naturist friends are modern day hippies. Yet maybe I'm thinking about it wrong. Instead of trying to shoehorn them under the hippie banner, I should simply honor them as naturists and view them as their own branch of the counter culture tree.

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
• And sometimes...no clothing

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
• 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.

I watched this documentary on Tubi yesterday. It was solid. It tells the story of two communes in New England that were founded by some activist journalists. It has a bit of everything you might expect from reading my intro. They escaped society but got pulled back in when a nuclear reactor was going to be built down the road. But before that, they were doing typical commune stuff (farming, cooking...and frolicking naked).

I like when documentaries give you the complete picture of commune life. For example, while many people idealize the "free love" stereotype of hippie life, they admit that it often resulted in jealousy and hurt feelings. The documentary showed how fractured a group can be, even when they formed with common ideological beliefs.

The concept of a commune is very appealing to me. But the more you dig into it, the more you realize how challenging it is to make one work long term.

I love Googling the people who are in these documentaries. Several are still doing cool things in the community.

I cant seem to find any other hippies near me to be friends with, partly because im younger. I know id find friends at psychedelic music festivals and the sort but they would live far away. So how do you find like-minded friends where you live?