Hippie

HIPPIE
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s, swiftly spreading to other countries around the world. The Hippie culture remains evident in 2011. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into New York City's Greenwich Village, San Francisco's Haight-Ashburydistrict, and similar urban areas. Both the words "hip" and "hep" came from Black culture and denote awareness. To say "I'm hip to the situation" means "I am aware of the situation." Thus the word "hippie" (almost never used by the people the press called "hippies" themselves) means "one who is aware," and expanded awareness was a goal of the movement. The early hippie ideology included thecountercultural values of the Beat Generation. Some created their own social groups and communities, listened to psychedelic rock, opposed the Vietnam War, embraced the sexual revolution, and used drugs such as marijuana, LSD and magic mushrooms to explore alternative states of consciousness.
In January 1967, the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco popularized hippie culture, leading to thelegendary Summer of Love on the West Coast of the United States, and the 1969 Woodstock Festival on the East Coast. Hippies in Mexico, known as jipitecas, formed La Onda Chicana and gathered at Avándaro, while in New Zealand, nomadic housetruckers practiced alternative lifestyles and promoted sustainable energy at Nambassa. In the United Kingdom, mobile "peace convoys" of New age travellers madesummer pilgrimages to free music festivals at Stonehenge. In Australia hippies gathered at Nimbin for the 1973 Aquarius Festival and the annual Cannabis Law Reform Rally or MardiGrass. "Piedra Roja Festival", a major hippie event in Chile, was held in 1970.
Hippie fashions and values had a major effect on culture, influencing popular music, television, film, literature, and the arts. Since thewidespread movement in the 1960s, many aspects of hippie culture have been assimilated by mainstream society. The religious and cultural diversity espoused by the hippies has gained widespread acceptance, and Eastern philosophy and spiritual concepts have reached a wide audience. The hippie legacy can be observed in contemporary culture in myriad forms — from health food, to music festivals, tocontemporary sexual mores, and even to the cyberspace revolution
Hippie (etymology)
Lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, the principal American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, argues that the terms hipster and hippie derive from the word hip, whose origins are unknown.[2] The term hipster was coined by Harry Gibson in 1940.[3]
Although the word hippie made isolated appearances during the early1960s, the first clearly contemporary use of the term appeared in print on September 5, 1965, in the article, "A New Haven for Beatniks", by San Francisco journalist Michael Fallon. In that article, Fallon wrote about the Blue Unicorn coffeehouse, using the term hippie to refer to the new generation of beatniks who had moved from North Beach into the Haight-Ashbury district. New York Times editorand usage writer Theodore M. Bernstein said the paper changed the spelling from hippy to hippie to avoid the ambiguous description of clothing as hippy fashions.
Origins
The foundation of the hippie movement finds historical precedent as far back as the counterculture of the Ancient Greeks, espoused by philosophers like Diogenes of Sinope and the Cynics also as early forms of hippie culture.[4]Hippie philosophy also credits the religious and spiritual teachings of Gandhi, Hillel the Elder, Buddha, Mazdak, St. Francis of Assisi, Henry David Thoreau, and Jesus Christ.[4]
The first signs of what we would call modern "proto-hippies" emerged in fin de siècle Europe. Between 1896 and 1908, a German youth movement arose as a countercultural reaction to the organized social and cultural clubs...