Hippies: The Rise and Fall of Our Cultural Ancestors

A great portion of the 1960’s hippies came from upper middle class backgrounds. The working class couldn’t really afford to live as a hippy, or even be authentic and be a free thinking

As someone living in Berlin this sublation process seems very clear in the current techno culture: everyone says it's about being yourself and expressing yourself freely, but it's becoming more and more stylized and commodified to the point that people even start gatekeeping techno - which is the exact opposite of accepting everyone as they are

I like the idea of hippies automatically becoming comformist the moment they defined their style as non-comformist. Reminds me a bit of Zizek's critique of ideology: the most ideological thing is to believe you can step out of ideology.

What this video really exposes about hippie-ism is the falseness of its revolutionary pretensions. Though there were definitely radical movements in many western countries at that time, on the main, hippies were not actually seeking a fundamental change in the social order, political economy, etc. whatever they may have said to the contrary. What they really sought was, in a postmodern sense, difference rather than contradiction. They were carving out their own niche in society rather than creating a new one. In our neoliberal era, products are marketed to such niches. If you define yourself as outside society you are merely trying to find a separate space for yourself in the current one, rather than trying to create a new one.
One thing that struck me, and that the epilogue highlights is the ultimate cynicism of the hippie movement, not only in the modern sense but in the original, ancient sense of cynicism, that of Diogenes. The hippies rejected social mores and artifice, lived outdoors, practiced free sexuality, and in all senses lived like dogs as Diogenes would have wanted. Later artistic and cultural movements like punk abandoned the unnecessary and contradictory emphasis on authenticity while retaining the nihilistic attitude toward society.

I’m reminded of The Simpsons, which became so popular as counter-cultural television that it became mainstream. Not because it confirmed to the culture, but because the culture conformed to it.

Hello! I am a 72 yo woman, retired and living in Jamaica. Born n lived in Germany 16years, influenced by UK (music n clothes etc); years before it came to the US where I lived the remaining of my working life.
I have to tell you how much I enjoy this video and your words. Thank you so much for bringing me back with such a pointed historical account of my past.

Please do more of these cultural genealogies Georg. So interesting.

I was young in 65-75 so it's interesting to hear your take. There was a richness and a diversity that is hard to communicate. It wasn't so much a particular group of people, but a gigantic wave that swept through society. It affected every aspect of society. Since I was a reporter, I saw it in journalism - the underground newspapers and new ways of writing. It changed politics, relationships, sex, music, food, technology, attituds towards work. Our modern computers came out of that era.

If someone wants to learn about that period, I'd encourage them to go beyond the stereotypes of Haight-Ashbury, rock music and drugs. Read autobiographies and biographies of some of the figures. Not the wildly famous ones, but the more normal people. It's good to read the documents of that time - the underground newspapers for example, like the San Francisco Good Times (aka Expres Times).

Your sentence "They are the ancestors we can’t get rid of." contains one truth - they are your ancestors, and one self-reveal - the ambivalence you feel. Even now, the 60s are threatening in their openness and courage. They are an irksome reminder that we can be more than the constained pesonalities we tend to be now.

IMO, there is something about that movement that feels extraordinarily interesting. Thanks for covering this. I'm writing this before watching, just to show appreciation.

Really interesting video. I really does seem like many social movements or subcultures suffer from the same contradictions. I have a close friend from high-school that was in the punk scene at the time and he got out of it for similar reasons that are laid out in this video. When the anti-conformist subculture starts to mandate conformity, somethings definitely gone wrong. The social obligation to perform "radical individuality" to be seen as a part of "counter culture" has got to be pretty stressful.

One of the major contributors to the hippy culture as a rebellion against the highly structured, conformist society of our parent's generation, was the psychedelic movement and the music that ensued. With the "doors of perception" (Huxley) sprung wide open, another deepening encounter with self took root known as modern spirituality. This movement, saw the bridge between Eastern and Western philosophies merge both traditional as well as novel ways. This period in time also saw the rise of holistic health and natural foods that continues as major enterprises to this day.

I liked how Herr Moeller's interventions were intended to look spontaneous while making a tour around reality through music movements.

Excellent analysis. The best I have seen/heard ever. I am now 66 and can remember the cultural shifts. The main problem of the hippie movement was the strong hedonism which represents a contradiction to several values of the movement. And being against something is not sufficient on the long run. Freedom from something is not not freedom for something. The counter-culture quickly won over the zeitgeist but imploded without a concept for what the cultural and personal freedom should get used beyond drowning in dopamine.

#Critique: Born in 58 I still remember my long journeys to other countries, especially staying alltogether one year in Nepal. Many of us lived with natives and tribes as our german ethnopharmacologist Dr. Christian Rätsch who died this year. He lived for 3 years with the Lakandon tribe where he did research. He gives a perspective about the hippie movement beeing the revival of the cyclic reemergence of dionysic cults. Personally I am a graduated biologist and professional gardener with some studies in cultural anthropology. This deep longing for tribal roots as a birth right is not understood in the video! Well, free will is a philosophical construct and I give a citation from neurophysiologist/biologist Professor Robert Sapolsky that 'free will is a myth'. People from the hard sciences are not always so happy with the superficial cognitive constructs made by philosophy.... Nowadays I see many young permaculturalists still living a branch of the hippie path with success (Example: 'Der Zirkeldreher' on YouTube).

Very nice organizing all I've heard throughout my life into something coherent. This also (kind of) confirmed my idea that with most grassroots youtu movements it's about when the person is able to say that they're part of it and then that defines the culture and not the other way around

I love how it ends with David Bowie singing "Heroes" in German. That was a pleasant surprise. I remember Bowie saying in an interview that his album Heroes and Iggy Pop's album Lust For Life were "purely German products" as they were both recorded in Germany in 1977.

My mother-in-law is a hippie in the purest, most stereotypical quintessential form. So watching this brought me so much understanding of who she is now, in her late 70s, and still clinging to the height of hippiedom in the late 1960s. My wife and her brothers were little naked hippie brats running around the music festivals. It is fascinating to see how each one rejected the culture they were brought up in and lived utterly contrary to their early upbringing.

prof. Moeller, although you didn't live through the hippie "age', you have captured the essence of the time [period] better than if you if you actually lived through that time . congart's to you!
very impressive!

The insistence on authenticity, non-conformity, individuality, and non-violence (where reasonably possible) goes back long before the hippies and it's silly to define them this way so as to imply that they invented this stuff. In every time in Western history, some amount of people were expressing views like this.

I wish I had something specific and intelligent to comment, but unfortunately my brain is fried from frenzied term paper-writing. So I'll just express my honest reaction: "Wow, that was fantastic!" I'd love to see more philosophical analyses of music culture in future videos if you are interested in making more.