Here and now
The most interesting thing about the hippies is not whether they are dead or alive — but, as always, the reaction they elicit (or provoke) from so-called established society. It may well be the twilight of this peculiar manifestation (one hesitates to call it a movement) of quiet outrage and noisy estrangement. But if it needed a raison d’être — and even its most articulate champions seem unable to give it a point — it has been provided, ironically, by its unbelievably foamy-mouthed critics. In the face of the hippies’ implied disdain, a truly well-established society would not have lost its poise, would not have blown its cool, would not have cried its outrage in such lamentable fashion.
It is quite true that society has inflated their importance grotesquely beyond their weight and numbers, and it would take a psychoanalyst to unravel the reasons (a lovehate syndrome, or just plain old-fashioned guilt?). Whoever wrote the “official” funeral notice for the Death of Hippie observance a few days ago knew what he was about when he described the deceased as “Hippie, devoted son of Mass Media,” for indeed the hippies used the media for all it is worth, and media seemed pathetically eager to be used.
All this razzle-dazzle aside, the hippies, even if they’re dying, have made a tremendous impact on this city — and, for that matter, the world. They constitute a frontal assault on everything that our frayed society holds dear, and, to make it more unnerving, they do it only by indirection. Writers who report, to this day, “the hippies sneer at the straights” are guilty of wishful thinking: a sneer can easily be canceled by a counter-sneer. The general hippie attitude is more one of pity (now that hurts). The more important facets of their criticism are merely implied: a guilty society makes the interpretations. The celebrated dirtiness of the hippies is one of the best examples. This is such an outrage in our world of “What, you left your family defenseless? Get off my sand dune!” that even reasonably intelligent people have been reduced to saying, in frustration, “Don’t they know that cleanliness is next to godliness?” (Who wrote that, anyway — a soap salesman?).
By just standing there (or sitting, sleeping, turning on, shacking up), the hippie is an affront to all segments of The Establishment, even Joan Baez, who also seems to have a thing about soap. It’s not just the conservatives and reactionaries who feel threatened. Old Bohemians, once frowned on themselves, frown on them as “going too far”; the Old Bohemians know they themselves never went far enough. One self-styled “liberal” commentator in this city has gone absolutely crackers over what he calls the “creepies,” boiling them in the kind of invective once reserved for witches; if this were 1692, he would be setting torches to hippies — and so much for liberals. The Puritans among us are, of course, haunted as always by the dark suspicion that somewhere, somebody might be having a good time. And, as always, without them. As for those dear souls who hope to “understand” the hippies, they’re wasting their time. They’ll have to find their absolution elsewhere.
For all their dirt, disease, slovenliness, laziness; for all their hedonism, clannishness, and undoubted egomania; for all the possibility that they might be in their death throes, the hippies have a message, even if few can be bothered to articulate it. As a wise old doctor once observed rather sadly, “They are our consciences, walking around in bare feet.” It simply is not enough to flog them, as Establishment critics do, for dropping out, “for refusing to integrate themselves into a meaningful protest movement” (the old liberals heard from again), for using drugs, “for creating an unnecessary burden on the taxpayer” (there’s a hollow phrase for you), for leading “lewd and immoral” lives, for not flushing the john, or whatever they do that bugs the critics; anyway, most of the foregoing applies equally to Brooks Brothers types living at Good addresses.
No, what really bugs the critics is what the hippies are saying without saying a word: “What are YOU doing, brother, that’s so damn important?” And this is the question — with its ghostly overtones of Vietnam, taxes, bigotry, hypocrisy, corruption, cancer and all the other ills of established society — this is the question that has no answer except fury.
As Voltaire might have said, if the hippies hadn’t existed, it would have been necessary to invent them.