LIFE AS A HUMAN

Hippie Lessons #1

By Christopher Holt | Sunday, June 20, 2010 at 1:31 am | 2 Comments

So I grew up in the 60s and 70s. My parents were pretty much hippies, flower power, tie-dyed, peace loving boaters. We lived mostly on a series of boats in the heart of Vancouver in Coal Harbour, nestled into a corner of Stanley Park. As I look back, it seems my childhood was always summer. Guess that’s a variation on rose tinted glasses.

As this post is adding to the Father’s Day theme for Life Asa Human, I thought I’d present the first of the Hippie Lessons I learned growing up surrounded by beads, long hair, beards and laughter.

Throughout my childhood my parent’s generation was striking out into new territories of social exploration. The music, drugs, parties, protests, women’s movement and alternative lifestyles were all challenging the status quo powers who were caught up in the Vietnam war and the drive of conservatives to lock everything down tightly and control the populace through Judea-Christian morality.

The hippies weren’t interested in what the “man” was preaching; they wanted to search out new dimension of living where they could live free and peacefully and explore what it means to be human.

As a kid I didn’t know any different life, except when I visited my conservative grandparents on the farm. They would grouse about my dad’s long hair and gossip that he’d never amount to anything.

So this is Father’s Day and the following is one of the strongest ethics my father passed on to me:

Hippie Lesson #1: “You can do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else.”

That was a guiding philosophy he preached as a principle for his decisions. It’s a very laissez-faire philosophy — easy to say and believe, and easy to practice … most of the time. It’s one of those overriding ideas that have stuck with me and I value that he lived by that principle as much as he could.

I too share that principle, and in a time where we are embroiled in religious wars, deep political turmoil and a world is sliding deeper into chaos, it’s a good thing to remember. If all the zealots trying to convert the masses to their way of thinking would instead relax and let people be, methinks there would be less violence and more peaceful times ahead.

Here’s a quote that just nails it, man, by Skip Stone, author of Hippies from A to Z. He’s a dude who has been writing about hippie culture and also runs a website called HippyLand.

“My view is that being a hippie is a matter of accepting a universal belief system that transcends the social, political, and moral norms of any established structure, be it a class, church, or government. Each of these powerful institutions has its own agenda for controlling, even enslaving people. Each has to defend itself when threatened by real or imagined enemies. So we see though history a parade of endless conflicts with country vs. country, religion vs. religion, class vs. class. After millennia of war and strife, in which uncounted millions have suffered, we have yet to rise above our petty differences.

“The way of the hippie is antithetical to all repressive hierarchical power structures since these are adverse to the hippie goals of peace, love and freedom. This is why the “Establishment” feared and suppressed the hippie movement of the ’60s, as it was a revolution against the established order. It is also the reason why the hippies were unable to unite and overthrow the system since they refused to build their own power base. Hippies don’t impose their beliefs on others. Instead, hippies seek to change the world through reason and by living what they believe.”

So thinking back to my life on docks, living on boats, in a time when it always seemed like summer, I also think of my father. If there’s an image I remember that sums him up best, it’s this:

I remember the hugs he dispensed like falling leaves to all who were near.

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