The Hippies and American Values

Rating:
Summary: A Suprising Legacy
Review: Although it has become fashionable to denigrate the whole hippie era as ineffective and counterproductive, Timothy Miller does much in this book to set the record straight about the considerable legacy of the Counter Culture -- for better or for worse.

From the ethics of sex, dope and rock and roll, to the questioning of property rights and greater latitude in daily speech, from New Age spirituality to more ethical investments in the market place - to the very food we eat - hippie culture has had a tremendous and continuing impact on American society.

*The Hippies and American Values* appears to pick up where Theodore Roszak's book, *The Making of a Counter Culture* left off. More than 20 years ago, Roszak showed how an alienated generation undermined the foundations of the prevailing technocracy. Miller acknowledges this but goes on to point out how the Counter Culture gave free press and credence to right-brain values that they saw as much neglected -- this before "right-brain, left-brain" became buzz words.

"Peace, love and flower power are no longer standard argot," observes Miller, "...Hip culture has bloomed and died like a centuryplant..." But the "new ethics" of the hippies are here to stay nevertheless. They are a potpourri of traditional values, untried social experiments, and a few truly original ideas for an American setting. Hippies attacked new icons such as technocracy while honoring agrarian values coupled with a new hip Eco-consciousness. The Counter Culture dropped out, disaffiliated from the prevailing society and changed themselves in order to change the world.

What I like most about this book is that it is a resource. It belongs right up there on my bookshelf with Roszak's classic study and with *Sleeping Where I Fall* by Peter Coyote, for starters. It's no dry old bone, however. There are marvelous pictures of Be-Ins and Drop City, and rock groups and posters. There is a bibliography of both well-known and obscure underground newspapers (from which the author quotes extensively). Where and when was the first Earth Day, the first Human Be-In, that Death-of-Hip coffin? They're all here. And more. Miller points us to where and how the legacy continues even to this day. If you never read another book about hippies, read this one. [e-mail]