The Hippies and American Values (2024)

FAQs

What are the values of hippies? ›

Hippies advocated for nonviolence, love, and they promoted openness and tolerance as alternatives for the restrictions traditional middle-class America imposed on them. They also promoted drugs and music.

The hippies preached free love, promoted flower power, and cautioned against trusting anyone over thirty. Eschewing money, materialism, and politics, they repudiated the mainstream values of the times. Along the way, these counterculturists created a lasting legacy and inspired long-lasting social changes.

Dedicated to such tenets as the primacy of love, trust in intuition and direct experience, the rejection of meaningless work, and a disdain for money and materialism, the hippies advocated dropping out of the dominant culture, and proposed new and more permissive ethics in several areas.

Hippies developed communes with shared roles. This was a rejection of traditional family structures and gender roles as well as traditional employment. The dress and appearance of hippies also went against mainstream culture.

Nonetheless, hippies continued to have an influence on the wider culture, seen, for example, in more relaxed attitudes toward sex, in the new concern for the environment, and in a widespread lessening of formality.

Nowadays, they are called bohemians or naturalists. You can read more about living a bohemian lifestyle or what it means to be a modern day hippie in these articles. Learn more about the movement in the trends and lifestyle sections here.

Hippies rejected established institutions, criticized middle class values, opposed nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War, embraced aspects of Eastern philosophy, championed sexual liberation, were often vegetarian and eco-friendly, promoted the use of psychedelic drugs which they believed expanded one's consciousness, ...

Final answer: The hippie look, which emerged during the counterculture movement of the 1960s, revealed the counterculture's commitment to social change, personal freedom, and a rejection of mainstream societal norms. It symbolized a desire for peace, love, equality, communal living, environmentalism, and non-violence.

With this increased attention, hippies found support for their ideals of love and peace but were also criticized for their anti-work, pro-drug, and permissive ethos. Misgivings about the hippie culture, particularly with regard to drug abuse and lenient morality, fueled the moral panics of the late 1960s.

This group of young bohemians, most famously including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, made a name for themselves in the 1940s and '50s with their rejection of prevailing social norms, including capitalism, consumerism and materialism.

What did hippies disagree with most? ›

The counterculture movement, from the early 1960s through the 1970s, categorized a group of people known as "hippies" who opposed the war in Vietnam, commercialism and overall establishment of societal norms.

Peace, love, and happiness are still alive and well in modern society, thanks to the existence of modern-day hippies. These counterculture enthusiasts can be found just about anywhere – from music festivals to organic farmers markets, to eco-communities and beyond.

However, the movement also had some negative consequences. Many Hippies turned to drug use as a way to explore consciousness, which had harmful effects on individuals and society. Additionally, the movement's emphasis on free love and communal living led to a breakdown of traditional family structures.

W.R.: Although hippies often disagreed about beliefs and practices, they shared a desire to be authentic. Members of the counterculture condemned mainstream society for being conformist, rule-driven and uptight.

“Hippies” rejected the conventions of traditional society. Men sported beards and grew their hair long; both men and women wore clothing from non-Western cultures, defied their parents, rejected social etiquettes and manners, and turned to music as an expression of their sense of self.

From around 1967, its fundamental ethos — including harmony with nature, communal living, artistic experimentation particularly in music, sexual experimentation, and the widespread use of recreational drugs — spread around the world during the counterculture of the 1960s, which has become closely associated with the ...

: a usually young person who rejects the mores of established society (as by dressing unconventionally or favoring communal living) and advocates a nonviolent ethic. broadly : a long-haired unconventionally dressed young person. hippiedom. ˈhi-pē-dəm. noun.

Different factions within the hippie movement emphasized different interests, including drug taking, support for the Civil Rights Movement, resistance to the Vietnam War, and non-conformity. Although the hippie subculture dissipated somewhat during the 1970s, it is still an important aspect of American culture today.