The Hippies and Their Impact On Society Research Paper

The Hippies and Their Impact On Society - Research Paper Example Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, Aldous Huxley, and even J.R.R. Tolkien.2 The first signs of modern â€Å"proto-hippies† developed in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most notably in Germany with a countercultural youth movement called Der Wandervogel (â€Å"migratory bird†).3 Like Wandervogel, the hippie movement in the United States began as a youth movement, consisting of white teenagers and young adults between 15 and 25 years old. The word â€Å"hippie† probably derives from the word â€Å"hip.† The term â€Å"hipster† was created by jazz musician Harry Gibson in 1940, in his stage name â€Å"Harry the Hipster.† During the 40s and 50s, â€Å"hipster† was used to describe jazz musicians; in 1945, Gibson was called a â€Å"hippie† during a radio show, but it was probably a derivation of Gibson’s stage name. The term was used by journalists in the mid-1960s to refer to a new group of beatniks in San Francisco . The New York Times, for example, changed the spelling from â€Å"hippy,† which described a kind of fashion, to â€Å"hippie.† Hippies also have roots in the beatniks, a group of post-WWII writers, including Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who inspired what came to be called the Beat Generation. Central to the beatniks was experimentation with drugs and alternative forms of sexuality, an interest in Eastern religion, a rejection of materialism, non-conformity, and spontaneous creativity. As the beatnik movement expanded, it moved from New York City to San Francisco, where it was incorporated into the hippie movement. Hippie culture spread throughout the world through rock music, folk, blues, and psychedelic rock, as well as through literature, drama, fashion, film, rock concert posters, and album covers. By 1968, hippies in the U.S. had become a significant minority, accounting for almost 0.2% of the population. The hippie movement, along with the New Left and Civil Rights, can best be understood as a dissenting group of the 1960s counterculture. Its members rejected established institutions, criticized middle class values, and opposed nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War. Hippies adopted some parts of Eastern philosophy, championed sexual freedom, used psychedelic drugs like LSD to expand their consciousness, were often vegetarians, embraced the beginnings of the environmental movement, and created communes. They expressed their culture through performance theater, a rt, folk music, and psychedelic rock. They supported an ideology that included peace, love, and personal freedom that was best expressed by the song â€Å"All You Need is Love† by The Beatles, whom many hippies embraced as spokesman of their ideals. Like the Beats, hippies rejected much of mainstream society, but unlike the Beat, they wanted to change society by expressing their ideology and through modeling different ways of behaving.4 The peak of the hippie movement occurred in 1967 in San Francisco. Young people converged to the city, first during the outdoor Human Be-in in January, when 20,000 hippies gathered in Golden Gate Park, to the Monterey Pop Festival in June, which marked the beginning of â€Å"the Summer of Love.† Young people from all over the world were inspired to come to San Francisco, especially the Haight-Asbury