I went to a panel discussion of ‘5 powerful women’ who shaped the hippie era.
It wasn’t true. The panel was put together by an academic who laid her Marxist nonsense on a great historical event. Only my co-author, Salli Rasberry who was one of the five, qualifies as a woman who was powerful and shaped the hippie era, on the panel. Rasberry was the mother of hippie. She is a force of nature.
The whole panel repeated what Rasberry said, so it was a good panel.
Two things came up for me. The hippie world began with smoking dope (pot). It was illegal, fun and not addicting. This truth created the world of pot smokers as a cohort of outlaws. Hippies became one coherent group of outlaws, with pot as the membership ritual and pot smoking the common symbol of camaraderie. My son calls this ‘ the hot tub people’.
Pot led to other drugs, psychedelics such as LSD and mushrooms.
Which is an important point. I took psychedelics so I know what happens when you take them.
You learn that the world we live in is a created world. We have an agreed upon consensus. This led to several outcomes for the hippie world.
One was the hippie sense that we can create a better world than the currently agreed upon consensus which the hippies set about creating. After about 15 years the hippie-created world merged into the previously created consensus world. Both worlds changed significantly.
A few people stayed in the hippie world. A few others tried to stay in the hippie world and fit into the agreed upon world. They smoke a lot of pot and hold down day-time jobs. Still others fully joined the agreed upon world and set out to make changes in it. That group includes me.
Those who joined the agreed upon world have never forgotten that this is a human constructed reality. Many of us recognize it as a cultural creation. This is also a perspective that one can get from meditation.
Just reminding my readers: There are many worlds. Ours is only one of many constructed worlds.
At the moment we have two different politically created worlds. Maybe someone will remind us of that.