THE HIPPIES WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG -- WE KNEW THAT

Go ahead, name your movement. Name something good and positive and
pro-environment and eco-friendly that's happening in the newly
"greening" of America and don't say more guns in Texas or fewer
reproductive choices for women because that would defeat the whole
point of this perky little column and destroy its naive tone of happy
rose-colored optimism. OK?

I'm talking about, say, energy-efficient lightbulbs. I'm looking at
organic foods going mainstream. I mean chemical-free cleaning products
widely available at Target and I'm talking saving the whales and
protecting the dolphins. I mean yoga studios flourishing in every
small town, giant boxes of organic cereal at Costco and the Toyota
Prius becoming the nation's oddest status symbol. You know, good things.

Look around: We have entire industries devoted to recycled paper, a
new generation of cheap solar-power technology and an Oscar for "An
Inconvenient Truth." Even the soulless corporate monsters over at
famously heartless joints like Wal-Mart are now claiming that they
really, really care about saving the environment because, well, "it's
the right thing to do" (read: "It's purely economic and all about
their bottom line").

There is but one conclusion you can draw from the astonishing
pro-environment sea change happening in the culture and (reluctantly,
nervously) in the halls of power in D.C., one thing we must all
acknowledge in our wary, jaded, globally warmed universe: The hippies
had it right all along.

All this hot enthusiasm for healing the planet and eating whole foods
and avoiding chemicals and working with nature and developing the
self? Came from the hippies. Alternative health? Hippies. Green
cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of
animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMA
seeds? It came from the granola types (who, of course, absorbed much
of it from ancient cultures), from the alternative worldviews, from
the underground and the sidelines and from far off the grid and it's
about time the media, the politicians, the culture as a whole sent out
a big, hemp-covered apology.

Here's a suggestion, from one of my more astute ex-hippie readers:
Instead of issuing carbon credits so industrial polluters can clear
their collective corporate conscience, maybe, to help offset all the
damage they've done to the soul of the planet all these years, these
commercial cretins should instead buy some karma credits from the
former hippies themselves. You know, from those who've been working
for the health of the planet, quite thanklessly, for 50 years and who
have, as a result, built up quite a storehouse of good karma. You think?

Of course, you can easily argue that much of the "authentic" hippie
ethos -- the anti-corporate ideology, the sexual liberation, the
anarchy, the push for civil rights, the experimentation -- has been
totally leached out of all these new movements, that corporations have
forcibly co-opted and diluted every single technology and humble
pro-environment idea and Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone and Odwalla
smoothie to make them both palatable and profitable. But does this
somehow make the organic oils in that body lotion any more harmful?
Verily, it does not.

You might also just as easily claim that much of the nation's
reluctant turn toward environmental health has little to do with the
hippies per se, that it's taking the threat of global meltdown
combined with the notion of really, really expensive ski tickets to
slap the nation's incredibly obese butt into gear and force consumers
to wake up to the gluttony and wastefulness of American culture as
everyone starts wondering, "Oh my God, what's going to happen to
swimming pools and NASCAR and free shipping from Amazon?" Of course,
without the '60s groundwork, without all the radical ideas and seeds
of change planted nearly five decades ago, what we'd be turning to in
our time of need would be a great deal more hopeless indeed.

But if you're really bitter and shortsighted, you could say the entire
hippie movement overall was just incredibly overrated, gets far too
much cultural credit for far too little actual impact, was pretty much
a giant excuse to slack off and enjoy dirty, lazy, responsibility-free
sex romps and do a ton of drugs and avoid Vietnam and not bathe for a
month and name your child Sunflower or Shiva Moon or Chakra Lennon
Sapphire Bumblebee. This is what's called the reactionary simpleton's
view. It blithely ignores history, perspective, the evolution of
culture as a whole. You know, just like America.

But, you know, whatever. The proof is easy enough to trace. The core
values and environmental groundwork laid by the '60s counterculture
are still so intact and potent that even the stiffest neocon
Republican has to acknowledge their extant power. It's all right
there: Treehugger.com is the new '60s underground hippie zine. Ecstasy
is the new LSD. Visible tattoos are the new longhairs. And bands as
diverse as Pearl Jam, Bright Eyes, NIN and the Dixie Chicks are
writing anti-Bush, anti-war songs for a new, ultra-jaded generation.

And, oh yes, speaking of good ol' MDMA (Ecstasy), even drug culture is
getting some new respect. Staid old Time mag just ran a rather snide
little story about the new studies being conducted by Harvard and the
National Institute of Mental Health into the astonishing
psycho-spiritual benefits of goodly entheogens such as LSD, psilocybin
and MDMA. Unfortunately, the piece basically backhands Timothy Leary
and the entire "excessive," "naive" drug culture of yore in favor of
much more "sane" and "careful" scientific analysis happening now, as
if the only valid methods for attaining knowledge and an understanding
of spirit were through control groups and clinical, mysticism-free
examination. Please.

Still, the fact that serious scientific research into entheogens is
being conducted even in the face of the most anti-science,
pro-pharmaceutical, ultraconservative presidential regime in recent
history is proof enough that all the hoary hippie mantras about
expanding the mind and touching God through drugs were onto something
after all (yes, duh). Tim Leary is probably smiling wildly right now
- -- though that might be because of all the mushrooms he's been sharing
with Kerouac and Einstein and Mary Magdalene. Mmm, heaven.

Of course, true hippie values mean you're not really supposed to care
about or attach to any of this, you don't give a damn for the hollow
ego stroke of being right all along, for slapping the culture upside
the head and saying, "See? Do you see? It was never about the long
hair and the folk music and Woodstock and taking so much acid you see
Jesus and Shiva and Buddha tongue kissing in a hammock on the Dog
Star, nimrods."

It was, always and forever, about connectedness. It was about how we
are all in this together. It was about resisting the status quo and
fighting tyrannical corporate/political power and it was about opening
your consciousness and seeing new possibilities of how we can all live
with something resembling actual respect for the planet, for
alternative cultures, for each other. You know, all that typical
hippie junk no one believes in anymore. Right?