1997 or so
I thought hippies are, well, cool.  Relaxed, not into jumping after 
the bones the culture throws to them.  

Hippies don't read Barron's, they have a dope garden in the closet 
and mushrooms on the kitchen counter, the guys know how to cook and
the women have deep voices, they play guitars and not violins, they
aren't purebred dog snobs or snobs of any sort except exotic
vegetable snobs and spiritual snobs.  

Hippies are not typically accountants but they might work in a
nursery.  Hippies care about the atmosphere around them and thus
leave Los Angeles and move to New Mexico.  Hippies have wonderful
dreams and good ideals for the world, except that they don't
care very much whether there is a lot of dog poo lying around
in it.  However, they are chronically short of the money to 
make these good ideals real.  Actually if a few billionaires were
converted to Hippiedom it would be very useful but money gives 
a better high than marijuana or even coke, so it's not likely.  

Most of the world would like to be a billionaire or at least a
little more of a billionaire than they are, so they slog along
in harness, getting a great feeling of worth and progress.  
Hippies take off the harness, say, "I may never own a Mercedes but
that's OK, I can walk", and they create their own world and 
paint a Mercedes or more likely comets & stars on the ceiling,
look at it, get stoned, get existential angst.  Then they 
forget about the angst or they get bored with it or they 
decide the real answer lies in eating a really good salad or
really good sex.  

Hippiedom has its superstars, but if the hippies go to see them
they end up talking more with whoever's next to them.  Hippies
aren't much into school except for a few super intellectual 
hippies, who are very bright and a little zoned out.

Hippies believe that like plants, their hair has feelings and
emits significant panicky electric fields when a scissors is 
near, so they talk with their hair and never cut it.  

Hippies aren't nervous because they've chosen innocence over 
participation in the chronic crimes the powerful commit 
against the powerless.  So they cheerfully eat their 
vegetables,

*you can't dislike vegetables and be a hippie*

and await nuclear annihilation without a megaton of anxiety, 
but enough fear to make songs about it, like Pink Floyd, to
admonish the powerful.

Hippies like the simple answers, the easy answers, and yes
maybe they're right.

Our ancestors, the australopithecines, were hippies.  
Unpleasant things happened to the human race along the way 
when they discovered that addictive drug, power, but there
has always been a counterforce too in humanity, those of
the lazy full belly lying in the sun.  

Children who aren't weaned too soon are liable to become 
hippies.  Crazy people who like being crazy become hippies
in a roundabout way:  they're creative first and then learn
to relax.  The other way to become a hippie is if you don't
like school, grades, tight clothing, and shirts with lots
of buttons that have to be dry-cleaned.  

Sexually, hippies are not fetishists, not into high-heeled
shoes or bondage.  They may be gay or straight, but it's
even cooler to be no particular sexual orientation at all,
so much into the Now that they happily paddle the boat of
whoever's traveling in the same direction on the rushing
mystic river of time.

That's hippies.  Now for accountants.  

Later --