Hippies

There is a broad parallel between environmentalism and
hippies –in the sense that they are broadly idealistic, seek to change
the world and the attitudes of people in it. This is in some ways
similar to the early Romantics. In both cases I also think they are
definite ‘reactions’ to a rising dominant culture –Enlightenment then
or scientific materialism now –which the Romantics stoutly reject as
disturbing, unpleasant or inhumane. For example, Rousseau’s ambivalence
both towards science and organised religion is reflected today in many
environmentalists who want to keep the best of modern scientific
worldview and ‘progress’ (eg dishwashers, some bleaches and detergents,
living in houses rather than teepees), but who then want to reject its
nastier bits –like nuclear power, vivisection and intensive farming.
Hippies likewise.

Being at least suspicious of, if not opposed outright
to scientific materialism, environmentalists and hippies certainly seem
keen to retain some kind of spiritual (or holistic) paradigm within
their lives, but they appear to share a rejection of systems of rigid
dogma, which they might see as being ‘rammed down your throat’ or
‘applied as a straitjacket’ to your moral conduct. This could be the
chief source of their reaction against most forms of orthodox religion.
Their ruralism (pastoralism) and pantheism both evoke the ‘noble savage’
of Rousseau, as they espouse ‘back to nature’ and the superiority of
‘natural therapies’ and ‘natural lifestyles’. Along with various forms
of Orientalism (eg. Gandhi, Zen, Confucius, Taoism), this ‘naturalism’
has to be a thread common to both movements. And probably forms, for
example, the basis for their aversion to pesticides and chemical
pollution. The Hindu concept of Ahimsa ‘non-harming’ –much promoted by
Gandhi, has also been deeply influential in both movements. As has
Gandhi himself, of course, as a great exemplar or living archetype.

Hippies and eco-activists also espouse sharing things,
and benign and peaceful cooperation –both between individuals and with
nature itself. They are both broadly anti-competitive. This ‘pacifism’,
as we might choose to call it, is clearly an important characteristic
feature they both share. It is also found to some degree (perhaps in a
more embryonic form) amongst the early Romantics and, of course, found
best expression both in the French Revolution (slogan ‘Liberte, Egalite,
Fraternite’) and in the works of Tom Paine and the American Declaration
of Independence — though we would be hard-pushed to find evidence of it
in the behaviour of the Revolutionists themselves. Nevertheless, it was
an idea swimming around in that idealistic cocktail of ideas current at
that time. Many before us have also traced socialism and communism to
the profound idealism and egalitarianism of the 1790’s.

It also finds expression in the intense ruralism of
many of the painters and poets of the early Romantic period. Thus the
spirit of those times was also, arguably, centered about the idea of
human dignity, freedom and friendship to all people. Indeed, it is also
found as an integral part of the spirit of the founding fathers of the
USA. I would venture that all of that comes very close to the egalite
and ‘commune-ism’ of hippies and eco-activists. Though maybe for
different reasons.

It is well known that many of the first European
Romantics were anti-industrialists, who rebelled against machines and
the ugliest, dehumanizing excesses of industrialization. They were
predominantly artists, writers, poets and artisans, plus ‘intellectual
ruralists’ and ‘sentimental non- conformists’. They gave only a guarded
welcome and to only very few aspects of technology, rejecting most of it
out-of-hand –again, very much like modern-day hippies and eco-activists
— what we might term a ‘pick-and-choose eclecticism’, and as I said
before, reflecting a strong ambivalence towards science.

In the case of environmentalists, many express varying
degrees of ‘ideological discomfort’ in accepting such modern things as
clean food and water, sewage and refuse disposal, gas central heating,
domestic electricity supply, hot water on demand, motor vehicles, etc
–all of which are undeniable products of science-led industrialism and
which we all seem to take for granted as essential elements of a
civilised life. Instead, the more extremes (the ‘deep greens’) deny that
such items are even desirable let alone necessary for a civilised life.
This discomfort stems largely from their knowledge of the hidden
price-tag of many modern benefits –a price-tag of hidden energy costs,
pollution, animal abuse, health effects, landscape despoilation, etc.
That is the source of their ‘virtuous discomfort’. Hippies showed a
similar contempt for the trappings of modern industrial life and a
desire to ‘go and find their own Walden Pond’. We can easily demonstrate
that these are mainstream Romantic features. These points I would
maintain are fairly self-evident.

It is arguable that the early Romantics had ‘already
lost their religion’ and pretty soon became equally disenchanted with
materialist science and industry. Alternatively you might say they
disliked industry and then lost their religion –it amounts to the same
result. Thus they came to occupy a rather uncomfortable position in
relation to both. We might term the philosophy they ultimately
formulated as a form of ‘sentimental humanism and the arts’. They seemed
to believe in the dignity and sacred nature of human life, but not in
formal religion. Science cut across one viewpoint and religion across
the other. While this became their personal refuge and saviour,
ideologically it ‘fell between both stools’ of science and religion.

The Romantic viewpoint therefore appears to stem from
a ‘cultural vacuum’; deriving from a disenchantment with and rejection
of both ideologies on offer at the time. Or at least an ambivalent
non-commitment towards both.

Yet it is also true –taking a different tack –that
not all romantics were romantic, just as not all hippies were hippies or
all peace-activists are that peaceful! Just as not all hippies live in
teepees (or even wish to!), so not all eco-activists wreck factory farms
or break into vivisection laboratories –so there are distinct shades of
belief within each movement, and one presumes that these reflect
different shades of commitment to a central pillar of ideas. In all
these movements there exists a high degree of tolerance towards an outer
fringe of ‘casual takers’ and ‘intellectual migrants’ (ideological
browsers?) who come along to sit and dabble in a ‘pool of ideas’ for a
time and then move on.

To establish more concrete links between
eco-activists/hippies and Romance, we would need to trace the more
distant origins both of Romanticism and of what I would term, the
‘romantic impulse’.

Their anti-intellectualism might be seen as another
aspect of their subjectivism. Their ecopolitical leanings I will touch
on below. As for research methodology, we need to explore their language
and communitities and ask a range of questions about them. But most of
it it is already available to us. The literature, the songs and many of
the individuals who went through that era and picked up its essential
features. We can gain direct access to many of the figures of that era
and compile an oral history, just as we can from any person who lived
through it and shared aspects of its ideology. It is not therefore ‘an
impossible conversation’. We can make a start at it. In such a situation
we are perfectly entitled to act as pioneers and develop our own methods
and evaluations of this topic. If the pioneers of social science had
paid such deference to ‘theory’ would, one wonders, anything have been
discovered of lasting value?
Many people seem to believe that Hippies displayed an aspect of 60’s
culture which was very anti-establishment and rebellious. Whatever their
historical origins in the emergent post-war pop-culture (which probably
requires an essay in its own right), we might decide that Hippies were
keen to reject most of the cosy and accepted middle-class norms of
modern (ie post-war) life. In that sense they seem to bear little
resemblance to a superficial view of the Romantics of the 19th century.
In fact the 19th century Romantics were probably far more rebellious
than we think.

Beats and Hippies certainly seemed to want to turn
life upside-down and reject everything. I think this is a mistaken view
in some respects. We should perhaps distinguish more clearly between
60’s culture as political activism, in its wider sense of being very
clearly anti-authority and rebellious –which is one distinct thread,
perfectly valid in its own right. But then there are also the peaceful,
romantic, pastoral, (drug-crazed?) and mystical hippies. I think they
might for convenience be viewed separately from the highly politicized
rebellious sub-group (=’marxists’).

Of course, it is chiefly the peace-loving Hippies I
have been writing about, rather than the ‘Marxists’, and this
distinguishes between ‘hippies’ per se and ‘general 60’s culture’, I
therefore believe that there were at least 2 distinct variants –one
highly politicized and protesting, anti-establishment, and the other
romantic, dreamy, artistic, pacifist and mystical. Both were rebellious
in various ways, but the Hippies less so politically than the Marxists.
Hippies more socially and ideologically rebellious maybe?

However, instead of Goethe I would more likely choose
Blake as an archetypal ‘Romantic’ par excellence. Visionary, mystic,
Swedenborgian, painter, poet, romantic dreamer, venerator of landscape
and innocence, etc. He is a far better example of Romance. He was
ever-changing, radical, anti-industrial, dabbled in philosophy and
mysticism and sects and was always searching for a satisfactory
spiritual paradigm. John Clare, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats,
Constable, Coleridge, Friedrich, Turner, Robert Owen, John Ruskin and
William Morris are also profoundly typical of Romance.

Getting back to the 60’s…there were certainly
internal conflicts between the two sub-groups within what can be viewed
as a polarized movement. They each manifested pretty incompatible urges,
but maintained a degree of apathy or tolerance towards each other,
depending on your point of view. They certainly generated a tension
within the movement which was very creative, though some might say there
were two quite distinct though similarly active movements sharing the
same time- frame, but few central dogmas. In brief we can say Hippies
rejected violent protest as a waste of time and productive of only
illusory social reforms. External changes in the structures of society
do not always change the contents — the minds and attitudes of the
people. Thus Hippies viewed politics as rather futile tinkering with
symptoms rather than dealing with deeper causes of society’s woes. They
thus rather sceptically regarded changes in structures as always being
subordinate and inferior to changing people. The ‘politicos’ seemed to
reject Hippies as too naive, laid-back, mystical and out of touch with
political and social realities. I would maintain there is considerable
mileage in both those arguments.

Revolution

Consideration of that 60’s buzz-word ‘revolution’
clearly reveals the differences between the Marxist and Hippy wings of
the movement. Any revolution for the Hippies was meant to be only a
revolution in the head, a revolution of attitude, which would then
naturally translate into improved social conduct, peaceful tolerance and
friendship to all. But the revolution the Marxists had in mind was full-
blooded, political and meant just what it implied: take the means of
production out of the hands of rich capitalists and place it into the
hands of the workers. In >this< sense there certainly were two
separate, though parallel movements with entirely different aims and
agendas. And entirely different heroes. ‘Hate the rich and kill the rich
— even, eat the rich’ could easily have been a slogan of the Marxists,
but never of the Hippies.

We might very profitably analyse the language used in
the movement. And this leads us into some very interesting territory.
Words like ‘protest’, ‘rebellion,’ ‘liberation’, ‘natural’,
‘revolution’, ‘underground’, ‘alternative’ and ‘freedom’ emerge as being
very typical of 60’s culture generally and probably equally so amongst
eco-activists and Hippies.

In the case of the word ‘natural’, the underlying idea
is that it clearly means fresh and pure; it means unadulterated,
untainted, unblemished, pristine, organic and undamaged. It means
unrefined and unchemicalized too. It thus means safe, harmless, good for
you and holistic. The opposite, therefore, unnatural, is equated with
the opposites of the above: refined, impure, false, chemicalized,
corrupted, tainted, synthetic, adulterated and thus bad, harmful and
damaging. Thus when we see this word natural in use in 60’s talk it
means organic and wholesome, good for you. That is its meaning when used
in ‘natural foods’, ‘natural living’, natural community’, ‘natural
energy’ and ‘natural therapies’. By implication it means harmless,
benign and in harmony with nature and living things. That is its
ecological credential card.

In the case of the word ‘free’ we find the following
synonyms and contexts: natural, pure, good, flowing, creative, loose,
safe, open, therapeutic, liberation, liberated, wild, energetic, good
for you, let it out, let it come out, let it all hang out, catharsis,
express yourself, free expression, free association, free thinker, free
living, etc. Thus what is not free is the opposite and is therefore bad
because it is –illiberal, unliberated, tight, uptight, suppressed,
oppressed, repressed, held in, unhealthy, bad, hidden, closed, wound up,
etc.

We could repeat this type of analysis for other words
like ‘rebellion’ and ‘protest’ and I think we would come to similar
conclusions. These words seem to lay bare the ‘mental processes’ of the
movement and form a mirror for the culture of the time. Such terms and
recurring themes can be found in almost every aspect of 60’s culture and
the Hippy movement. They crop up in and thoroughly permeate such
subjects as food, health, landscape, lifestyle, poetry, pop music,
painting, politics, travel, education, writing and psychology –to name
a few. They can, of course, all be found embedded in great abundance in
the song-lyrics of the whole period 1955- 75.

Rebellion

Much has been made of the rebelliousness of the
period. Many things can be said about it. It might be seen as merely a
device, a means of achieving liberation from those who would oppress,
suppress and repress –usually parents, teachers, college, employers.
Leary’s famous injunction to ‘turn on, tune in and drop out’ was thus a
motto for becoming liberated FROM all that and ‘loosening up’ to such a
degree –with the aid of dope, acid, etc –as to reach a better
lifestyle, gain deeper spiritual insights (?), greater self-esteem and
happiness, ‘do your own thing’ and generally ‘hang out’ with others of
your own kind.

This type of thinking also permeated the
anti-schooling and deschooling writings of Goodman and Illich. It was
proposed as a means of liberation from the oppressive ideals and
lifestyles forced upon youth by parents, teachers, employers, etc. The
deschooling concept also elevated the status of youth from one of
immature naivety to innate wisdom –another favourite theme of the
Hippies and more distantly reminiscent of Rousseau’s noble savage. The
rebellion ‘in the school’ thus comprised an escape from
teacher-oppression and the creation of an alternative (youth-centred)
culture. And it is when we come to mention this word ‘alternative’ that
we touch a major ganglion of 60’s culture. That was the word on
everybody’s lips from the great ‘icons’ of the movement like Leary and
Ginsberg all the way down to the lowliest dopehead.

The rebelliousness also manifested as
anti-intellectualism, precisely because intellectuals –eg teachers and
professionals –could be construed as yet another potent group of
oppressors trying to ram their culture down your throat and tell you
what to think and say and feel, and that whatever viewpoint you had
arrived at about the world, through your own thinking, was somehow
unimportant, trivial, inferior and secondary in comparison to theirs.
The dialogue in books and films of that period clearly reveals this
trend. The phraseology of parents and other adults at that time implies
that ‘kids’ have not experienced enough, know nothing, have heads filled
with crazy ideas, are thoroughly irresponsible, must be told and shown
what to do and are a danger to themselves and society at large without
this control and domination by adults. Adults were thus party to a
conspiracy against the ‘raw and natural’ viewpoint of the young.

In many respects, the whole 60’s phenomenon can be
viewed as a period of rebellion. The rebellion by youth against the
apparently oppressive domination from adults and the desire to gain a
‘cultural momentum’, derived from accumulating sufficient alternative
culture (songs, literature, drugs, lifestyle) and social confidence of
their own to be able to tell adults exactly where they can go and stuff
a ‘culture’ the ‘kids’ have decided to reject wholesale. Thus the
counterculture was saying a big NO to all that and a big YES to youth
and their own intuitive insights about the world we live in. To me there
is little doubt, that Leary, Ginsberg and Co were encouraging youth to
rebel against authority and to take greater confidence in their own
viewpoints and in developing their own alternative forms of culture. And
to continue gaining greater confidence in doing this. And to resist and
repel any criticism from adults.

Orientalism

The rebellion against intellectuals probably also
stems from a devotion to naturalism and the hatred of sophistry. Hippies
tended to strongly dislike cant, humbug and high-faluting gobbledegook,
preferring instead clear, down-to-earth, simple descriptions and natural
spontaneity. Afterall they were ‘flower people’! They emphasised the
primacy of direct simple experience. This is also reflected in their
love of Zen Buddhism, which is a deeply iconoclastic religious
tradition, that had cut the vast and complex structure of Indian
Buddhism down (first in China, then in Japan) to its barest meditative
essentials and also stressed simplicity and the central importance of
direct viewing, direct experience and a mocking contempt for philosophy,
complexity and intellectual scholasticism. The sheer hatred Zen
generated for the flowery excesses of Indian Buddhism is superbly
condensed in the iconoclastic book title: ‘If you meet the Buddha kill
him!’.

Hence the importance of Alan Watts and D T Suzuki, who
brought Zen into the Western mind. I believe this love of simplicity to
be an important if neglected aspect of the movement, which manifested
also in art, design, poetry, music and fashion; in recycling of clothes
and in the link with the ecopolitics in general. Simplicity is venerated
both as an end in itself and also out of practical usefulness. I am not
saying that everything the Hippies did was practical, down-to-earth and
useful, however! For example, the much-lampooned organic diets and
macrobiotic vegetarianism involved chewing a rather bland mixture of
brown rice, chick peas and undercooked pulses and vegetables, with the
total conviction that you were chewing your way towards perfect health
and some higher meditative state! And that doing this would change the
world!

Another example of this stark minimalism can be seen
in the fad for Haiku poetry, in minimalist music, sitar and koto music
and the adoration of frugality and recycling –typical of Hippies and
ecologists. Again, it strikes us as a form of anti- intellectual
simplicity and a love of clarity. It also links straight to pacifism and
non- harming, mentioned already, and to the ideas of a ‘no waste’
lifestyle that has minimal impact. It also mates up with the general
orientalism.

However, we should remember that both Zen and 60’s
culture were not just simplicity-loving, they were also strongly
‘plebeian’, in the sense that they both stressed direct access to the
‘inner teachings’ by any ordinary person and that no great in-depth
study or preparation was required for someone to become an expert. The
expert was another plague upon their freedom to just ‘be’.

They shared a contempt for experts and that formed a
further basis for their anti- intellectualism. In their language they
might say ‘You don’t need a PhD to become cool! The only ‘credentials’
you need, man, are some dope and a few tabs of acid!’ In that sense many
were inspired to leave university and ‘drop out’ of the mainstream. An
act which was loudly applauded by the leaders of the movement as a very
courageous step to take. We might say that this again reveals their
paranoia about control from others (eg parents and intellectuals) and
that their obsession with ‘throwing off the shackles’ was such a
dominant thread. To what extent their rebellion was more perceived than
real is hard to say. Another connection here comes again with
orientalism, the bland simplicity of which touched psychology in a big
way. The Zen injunction that just by sitting gazing at a wall will solve
all your hang-ups was taken seriously, and the big impact of orientalism
upon therapy and counselling since mid-60’s is well-documented: eg Laing
and Szasz as much-revered debunkers of psychiatry.

However, this debunking and anti-jargon strand is far
less true of the Marxist wing of the movement, members of which were
more than happy to discuss at length with you their abstruse and
tortuous interpretations of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and the doings and
writings of Che Guevara, Mao and Castro.

Though Rachel Carson’s epoch-making ‘Silent Spring’
was published in 1963, little tangible happened until the campaigning
skills of 60’s activists –post-student riots, post-civil rights,
post-drug campaigning –were brought to bear upon the subject and took
the environmental movement into the hearts and minds of the masses. That
did not start in 1963, but towards the end of the 60’s and even into the
early 70’s. It is therefore arguable that Carson’s work might well have
‘fallen on deaf ears’ completely were it not for the Hippies who chimed
with it, took it up, refashioned it, vocalized it, made a cause out of
it and carried it into a real movement in its own right. In this sense,
therefore, eco-activism comes after Hippies and is deeply indebted to
them. It is indelibly stamped with their vision of the world. It rode
piggy-back on their earlier, ground-breaking campaigning of the 60’s. It
shares their non-harming pacifism and love of organics.

Romantics

Having looked in this way at some of the main themes
of 60’s culture, we are now in a good position to do the same for the
19th century Romance movement and to bring out some of the incredible
parallels which I think reside just below the surface. In both, we find
the massive flowering of Romance, creativity, art, poetry and
literature. In both we find rebellion against the established order of
oppressors, pacifistic experiments in communal living, experiments in
socialist education, dabbling with recreational drugs, early forms of
environmentalism, sexual liberalism and an incipient undercurrent of
orientalism. Both are anti-science, anti-materialism,
anti-industrialism. They are broad-church and Bohemian, anti-expert,
deeply humanistic, exuberant and life-affirmative. Both stand against
the dead-end nihilism of a world dominated by science and devoid of any
form of spirituality. In both we find the critique and rejection of
mainstream culture and the setting up of a liberal, laissez-faire
alternative, ‘underground’ culture, run chiefly (as with Hippies) by
intellectual rebels who soon became the iconic ‘darlings’ of the
movement.

The underlying threads in each era are very similar,
but they reach the surface differently. For example, in the 19th century
the most important drug was opium, rather than hashish, the orientalism
was newly-discovered Hinduism, Buddhism and Theosophy, plus the
mysticism of the Near East, along with interest in magic, paganism,
phrenology, spiritualism, ancient Egyptian religion, etc. The socialism,
communal living and deschooling we find in Robert Owen, John Ruskin and
William Morris and their many associates. The art and literature are so
familiar as to need no mention. The environmentalism surfaced chiefly as
a reverence for the sanctity and purity of landscape and mountains,
collecting plants from around the world and building stunning gardens.
The social rebellions and political dissent were focused mainly against
those tangible evils of poverty, inequality, privilege, class struggles,
industrialism, worker’s rights, colonialism, slavery, suffrage and the
stifling oppression of social and religious conformity.

The ‘philosophers’ include Thoreau, Emerson and
Whitman in the US, Robert Owen, William Morris, Bergson, the Rossettis,
plus the impressive ‘authority’ of the grand corpus of all creative
works of the early Romantic poets and painters like Wordsworth, Keats,
Shelley, Coleridge, Byron, Turner, Constable, Blake, John Clare,
Friedrich and other intense pastoralists. There is also perchance a
parallel between the sexual liberty of the 60’s and the indulgence of
prostitution in 19th century Paris, London and Berlin. Both might be
seen as offshoots of the visual arts, and especially the liberality of
painters of the nude –which was compulsory training for the serious art
student in all European Art Schools. This liberality was chiefly found
in Paris, where toleration of transvestism, prostitution, fetishism and
homosexuality was also apparently ‘de rigeur’.

From this cursory glance, I think it is fairly clear
that the two periods manifest some very strong parallels, even though
the early Romantic period was quite long, lasting roughly from the
1730’s to 1900, while we might conveniently stretch the Beat &
Hippies era to a max of 20 years, lasting from c1955-75. This difference
in span is probably a reflection of differences of speed of life and the
communication systems available in each period. As I hope I have shown,
both periods seem to share an underlying fabric of common aims and
purposes and very similar themes, subjects and activities. Indeed, the
Beat and Hippy period is very like a miniature revisitation of the 19th
century artistic renaissance. Just as creative, just as challenging,
just as rebellious, just as mystical, just as liberal, though briefer
and thus glowing brighter and more intensely than its natural
‘grandparent’.

I would have little difficulty in supporting most of
the above ideas with some quotes from:

Kenneth Clark, Civilisation;
Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind;
Russell, History Of Western Philosophy;
Rogers, A Student’s History of Philosophy;
Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism;
plus the lyrics of many songs and poems of the era and quotes from the
speeches and writings of
Kerouac, Ginsberg, Leary, Rosazk, Illich, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, et
al. Another very good source of references is Ginsberg by Barry Miles.

More Distant Origins

To sort out the more distant origins of Romance we
might strive to show by stages how Martin Luther and King Henry VIII (of
England) can in many ways be regarded as the founders of the modern
worldview.

As the joint founders of the Reformation, they set
freethinking going by releasing societies in N Europe from the iron grip
of the Roman Church. This, combined with printing, not only set minds
buzzing with new ideas, but enabled folk to communicate their new ideas
to each other. This entirely new situation – the Reformation – continued
into the 1600’s and 1700’s a process which gave rise to two main
developments within protestant N Europe (chiefly England, Netherlands,
Germany):

a. the beginnings of science as a possible
worldview, ie. freethinking about the way the world is/might be – as
opposed to the received view of Christian dogma, and…

b. the active search by such freed minds for
alternative systems of philosophy –eg Descartes, Locke, Hume, which
could explain the workings of the world. They were essentially
materialistic philosophies (except that of Berkeley) –chiefly through
a distinct and entirely new ‘turning outwards’ away from religious
dogma and towards the outer physical world.

This new situation in turn gave rise to a new breed of
people *with a sceptical view of religion*, *with little or no religion
at all* and certainly with *very few deeply- held preconceptions about
the world around them*, but with the beginnings of a devotion to
scientific materialism as an upcoming ideology, which showed, to them,
great promise. Combine all this with further economic expansion,
scientific experimentation and the gradual winning of political freedoms
(especially in US, England, Holland and eventually France) it gave rise
to discoveries which would lead to industrialism. It also led directly
to the Enlightenment, centred chiefly in France –ironically in a
country still under the twin grip of the Church and the Sun King, Louis
XIV –the very archetype of the old-style European king.

It also gave rise to the ‘agricultural revolution’ in
the early 1700’s and then the ‘industrial revolution’ somewhat later. In
both, traditional and slow, people-based craft and ‘cottage industries’
(and ways of doing things) became first threatened and then eclipsed, by
faster methods using machines. First mechanical machines and then
steam-driven ones. The use of coal, iron, steam-power and railways led
straight into the often dehumanizing mass-production methods of the
‘machine age’ and factory. These are all fairly tangible and concrete
manifestations –as if we need reminding –of scientific materialism.
Yet while some continued (in studied ignorance?) to paint idyllic rural
scenes, signifying the sanctity of landscape (eg Gainsbrough, Constable,
Friedrich), many Romantics condemned the grim industrial scenes, yet
felt fascinated enough to paint some of them, (eg. Turner, Joseph
Wright, Loutherbourg, Blechen, Cotman). And even the arch-romantic
Constable’s superb ‘Brighton Beach with Colliers’ (1824) reveals what a
time of contrasts, change and ambivalence it really must have been.

After the Reformation, the non-Catholic Christian
religion quite literally splintered into a thousand fragments or sects.
They were all attempts – it is arguable – to become free from whatever
‘oppressor’ their perception inspired them to rebel against. They were
also experiments in liberty and freedom to choose. Celebrations in their
various ways of personal liberty as well as reaffirmation of distinctive
personal religious revelation. This is just as true of Swedenborg
(1688-1772), Luther (1483- 1546) and Wesley (1703-91) as it was about
Calvin (1509-64) and George Fox (1624-91).

It is rather sad that today we all carry with us at
least a rudimentary sketch in our heads about the development of science
– which seems grossly to dominate our every breath – while very few of
us have a similar sketch about Romance, or art or philosophy or history
of ideas. The balance that tipped towards domination by science and away
from the arts needs to move back.

Reformation

Getting back to Romance, the Protestant tradition
arose and mainly thrived in England, Holland and Germany, also
Scandinavia – the north of Europe in general rebelled against the
tyranny of the Pope and Catholic Church in the 1520’s and 1530’s. As a
result it shook itself free from those tight controls on printing,
beliefs and developed freedoms for people to say, do, write and think
what they liked. Knowing this link with Protestantism helps us to
understand the social progress of homeopathy.

‘The Church felt more or less clearly that the
growth of knowledge was a menace to its own position.’ [Rogers, p.206]

Printing is another key theme because…once printing
really got going (originally in the 1400’s) it was dynamite. The Church
had sat on huge heretical tracts for centuries and thus very much
controlled the beliefs of the people. Once printing liberated people’s
freedom of thought and belief there was no longer any constraint upon
open dialogue and free intercourse of ideas – political, philosophical,
religious, etc. To begin with of course, printing was not very
contentious because it was mainly liturgical and under the full control
of the Church. But that didn’t last long and people started printing
things that were more secular, and which might be banned as heretical,
eg Galileo (1564-1642) – his whole collision with the Church forms a
splendid example.

It is also an example of the way societies try and
deal with deviance. Turning to the modern era, it is very little
different from the way Science (nowadays in many ways the social
equivalent of the mediaeval Church) has treated people like Velikovsky,
Cold Fusion, Sheldrake, Uri Geller, Gauquelin and Benveniste…to name a
few. Heresy cannot be tolerated and must be invalidated, squashed and
intimidated: deviantised and demonised to the nth degree. How far have
we actually progressed at all, one wonders?! That follows essentially
the same pattern as their treatment of alternative medicine and
astrology

Thus the Protestant tradition can be viewed as a
tradition of reaction by individuals against the powerful forces of mass
control and autocratic social control – ie. the Mediaeval Church – and
pushing towards greater and greater reform and liberalisation. They were
also forces which controlled belief. Those forces were successfully
challenged and gradually broken down so that people could believe
whatever they wanted, say what they wanted and practice what they
wanted. They have obtained these freedoms – only painfully slowly and in
a piecemeal fashion. So throughout the 1600’s and 1700’s in the North
European countries these freedoms were first won and then indulged and
explored. In philosophy, in science, in the arts – all these made very
rapid progress, dogmas and superstitions being chucked overboard and new
ideas emerging to replace them.

Thus the Protestant countries became the centre of a
huge expansion of human knowledge. Science and philosophy (which at that
time were indistinguishable) was the first big expanding area of
knowledge and a natural result of people having the freedom to look at
the world and figure things out for themselves, instead of being TOLD
what to believe. This was the replacement of superstition and ‘received
dogma’ with natural inquisitiveness, direct insight and independent
thought (rationalism). It is no coincidence, geographically, that all
this mainly emerged in Germany, England, Holland and France, also
Scandinavia and Switzerland – not the mediterranean Catholic countries
(except Galileo et al). They were predominantly Protestant areas, in
which people had much greater freedom to say what they wanted with
impunity.

Romance

The Romantics came next and were very largely reacting
against the lack of spirit and mystique in much of the mechanical and
materialistic notions being thrown up by ‘raw science’. Reactions
against materialism in its various guises. They wanted the freedom and
the liberty of thought and ideas that Protestantism and science had
brought, but they also wanted a little more romance and sentimentality
than they were getting. They rejected out of hand the idea that we are
just automatons as Hobbes (1588-1679) and Descartes (1596-1650), and
later Newton (1642-1727), had proposed. They wanted to live in a world
containing some bliss, optimism and love and not a dead-end, cold,
uncaring, nihilistic machine-type universe. They were also very
concerned about the way mechanisation seemed all too often to translate
into brutal economic exploitation of labour at a social level and the
way machines were destroying people’s traditional lifestyles and
occupations, crafts, etc. That was another more overtly politicised
strand.

Thus the romantics were passionate about nature, fresh
air, clean water, good sweet nature, food, sweet things in life and
beautiful pictures as well as wonderful music, etc. Mozart (1756-91),
Keats (1795- 1821), Shelley (1792-1822), Byron (1788-1824), Wordsworth
(1770-1850), Constable (1776-1837), Stubbs (1724-1806), Turner
(1775-1851), et al are all good examples of that strand. That tradition
is still active and spans right through to modern times. But it has
always tended to have a religious element because people do tend to want
to believe in something spiritual rather than nothing (nihilism) and
other than molecules and mechanical watches that run the universe.

So some religious belief – pantheism even – teams up
with Romanticism time and again. Indeed, the romantic movement itself
fed hungrily on a vast diet of alternative religions, the Greek myths,
the Roman and pagan religions, NeoPlatonism, ideas from the orient and
also from Druids and pagan European beliefs. Thus Romantic tradition
reached back to older European roots, predating Christianity and that
was not at all popular! This is very apparent in the visual arts and
theatre, but also in novels and poetry. The artists like Blake as I said
before, were drawing upon these unChristian and anti-Christian
traditions. That includes esoteric and secret traditions like
Paracelsus, magic, Kabbala, Swedenborg, occult, Knight’s Templars,
Rosicrucians, and all types of mythology, etc. Opium and Cannabis also
become important features – Wordsworth, Coleridge (1772-1834), De
Quincey (1785-1859), Southey (1774-1843) et al, and later Baudelaire
(1821-67) & Co.

It is arguable that the Romantics have had 4 major
phases of expansion and flowering. The first was coincident with the
Reformation and included the Italian artistic Renaissance – even though
that was still mainly working with religious forms. The second would be
the flowering we normally think of as the Romantic period in literature,
art and music, c1700-1890. The third would be the Cubist, Dadist and
Surrealism movement roughly 1900-1940, and the fourth has been the whole
Pop music phenomenon say 1956-present, and especially the psychedelic
era c1964-1978, which was a particularly fertile, prolific and
articulate period of artistic and political upheaval and expression.
These phases are also marked by intervening periods of relative
quiescence during which a degree of digestion and realignment occurs of
the manifestations of the preceeding epoch. The environmental thing is
also an expression of Romanticism. Homeopathy and all alternative
therapies also show clear links with the Romantic tradition.

Most typically homeopathy is essentially spiritual and
anti-science (anti mechanism). It is essentially vitalistic and rejects
the materialistic diktat that matter is the cause of everything or the
only reality. It re-affirms the spiritual nature of the human and animal
worlds. In the case of homeopathy, it arises as a queer mix of science
and romanticism. Religious belief seems to be confirmed by homeopathy
and that is perhaps one reason why it was very popular with clerics in
all countries and the preferred medical system amongst their kind. That
can and did go both ways – towards traditional Christianity and towards
pagan beliefs.

As for books, Bertrand Russell’s History of Western
Philosophy gives a brisk and uneven account – concentrating only on main
figures, while Arthur Kenyon Rogers’ A Student’s History of Philosophy
(Macmillan, 3rd Edition, 1935, US – quoted above) is nothing short of
brilliant, as it gives all the background history of ideas that Russell
misses out. It still lacks detail though. Schenk’s The Mind of the
European Romantics (Constable, 1966, London) is also an excellent source
of ideas and details. Tarnas is also excellent and also Berlin’s many
essays in this field.

I therefore trace the roots of Romance both as a
*reaction against* the Enlightenment (and thus against science) to
*protests against* the ugliest excesses of early industrialization in N
Europe and also to the weakening grip of organised religious dogma on
the hearts and minds of the people. Romance therefore comprises a
*reaction against* scientific materialism and the ugliness of
industrialism as ‘outrages visited upon the human spirit’. It is equally
a *reaction against* the loss of faith in organised religion and the
grim spiritual nihilism which that seemed to invoke in the minds of
many. A view of the universe as a mechanical machine, and humans running
around like automatons with no minds, is a fairly justified
interpretation to make of the same clockwork vision conjured up by folks
like Hobbes, Descartes and Newton, whether it was intended by them in
that way or not.

Thus, from 1700’s on through to 1900’s we find folks
searching for spiritual meaning and reassurance in a darkening world. It
is my contention that that search still continues now and occasionally
erupts into new movements such as Hippies and eco-activism. It is a
process which is still active and which may never die out completely. As
I am sure many hippies and eco-activists would say: meaning might prove
ultimately to be a far more precious commodity to us than the myriad,
tangible, material comforts which science and technology have bestowed
upon us –as also implied in the end of the film ‘Silent Running’. Or as
also seen in the more recent events at Waco and the San Diego Hale-Bopp
mass suicide. These might be seen as genuine searches for meaning in an
apparently uncaring and mechanistic universe.

In the above senses, therefore, I find it fairly
transparent that Hippies and Eco- activists appear before us as slighty
‘different fruits’ on the same ‘tree’ as their forebears, the Romantics.
And thus from this thesis, we might decide that Romance, even in our
modern, science-dominated world, could be perceived as a genuinely
perennial philosophy, with strong roots seeming to plunge down deep into
our collective psyche. And which seem periodically to throw up vibrant
new shoots of renewed activity –and even vigorous growth –no matter
how efficiently or frequently its gnarled old branches get hacked down
by what we might term the ‘chain-saw of scientific progress’. In this
sense therefore, I am tempted to disagree with the notion that Romance
is ending –transforming itself again, maybe, yes, but surely never
truly ending.

Finally, I am tempted to conclude that the ‘romantic
impulse’ has always existed and is an integral part of our
consciousness. Periodically, it gets abused, chopped down, and buried,
but then it reappears, strangely new, shining, Phoenix-like,
hydra-headed, gussied up in new clothes, as new ideologies, which seem
radically different, but which, upon closer inspection share an
underlying golden thread which runs through them all – they are branches
from the same tree. And that tradition we can surely trace back even
further, before the Enlightenment and beyond the Renaissance into
Neoplatonism –Plotinus, Eriugena, and then back to Plato and the
Greats. And also through the secret traditions back to Ancient Egypt,
Pythagoras and the like.

Decline of hippies

We now come to another problem of why they declined
and faded from view. Well they faded very slowly and were still around
up to 1980 or so in considerable numbers. They seemed to diminish very
fast in the early 80’s and were gone completely by 1986. Perhaps many of
their ideals had been realised in a discreet and subtle way. People did
become more loosened up and liberated and aware of sexism, ecology and
mind expansion, but it did not change the world. The longed-for
revolution did not come and ‘Jerusalem was not builded here’. In that
sense disappointment set in and it gradually faded. The movement had
failed to change those large and immovable structures of all societies.
Dope and acid were not legalised and they probably never were the
panacea for all society’s ills as extolled by Leary and Ginsberg. Thus
the dream turned sour and faded, persisting only here and there in a
dwindling pockets of followers.

Further RamblingsWe have so far been stressing that
60’s contained at least two subcultural strands –pacifistic hippies and
Marxists. We can probably go further and call it a ‘multithreaded’
culture or period and that enables us to identify several strands within
it. For example, there were straight dopefiends, there were vegetarian
and wholistic health organics and environmental types; there were pure
politicos such as the Marxists, Maoists, anarchists etc; there were also
pure pop music and rock music freaks who did not go for the other stuff
entirely but were just eclectic according to their own tastes; finally
there were the Leary and Ginsberg free-wheeling, change-the-world
through dope and free love types. You could go on identifying more and
more fine splits within the movement and between the different factions,
but if we just choose to say there were many different subtypes within a
two-way split culture I think that will suffice.

Two questions therefore arise: first –why were they
sharing ONE culture if they were so different? And second, what features
actually united them into one culture? These are opposite sides of the
same coin. Were they one culture and agreeing on everything? I don’t
think so –we both have shown various ways in which they were quite
distinct from one another. Therefore we need to identify those common
underlying ideas which they did share and which broadly identify them as
‘sixties’ persons.

I would provisionally suggest that all the sub-groups
basically shared (at least) the following features in common:

• youth
• the new – neophiliacs
• music
• freedom of expression
• liberality eg. dope and sex
• artistic expression in its very broadest and most
  generous sense (including even the crassest stuff!)
• idealism
• change the world – that change is possible
• revolution
• change the person in their head and you change the
  world
• change the world and society and structure and you
  can change people in their heads
• change just for change sake
• tolerance of all viewpoints and ideas
• demonstrate and protest against what you dislike
  and for what you do want or just
• drop-out and set up your own alternative culture
• do your own thing – have confidence in doing what
  is right for you

Once we identify these common strands which underpin
the whole era we can then see that the differences between the various
subgroups were more apparent than real and that they all ‘swam in the
same river’ to such a huge degree that these differences did not really
matter very much. Nor did they add up in any big-deal way to make a huge
difference most of the time. Any so-called friction between the
different subgroups was minimal because there was a vast terrain of
commonality, of basic flow-of-events which everyone approved of and
agreed about. They approved of most things that happened because most
things that happened were in accord with the above list and therefore
obtained the approval of all. That was true for a remarkably long period
of time: from late the 50’s right through to mid-70’s — generally
speaking.

Then it began to break up, became stale, people split
off into much more distinct groups and, most important of all, the
underpinning framework of commonality began to fragment and break up.
The attraction for freedom of expression and the new and youth and art
began to fade and people began to become obsessed with other things like
jobs, money, partners and children, buying a house, etc and the whole
dream faded from view and moved from centre-stage into a blurred
background. Reasons? Shifts of viewpoint? tired of doing the same old
thing? new perspectives? new attractions? boredom?

Anyhow, the frictions that were previously happily
tolerated as minor and insignificant now became amplified and massively
important and that may be why in retrospective analyses everyone sees
the decade in radically different ways. And that is why its
interpretation in the media, and its digestion in the public mind, has
been so problematic and why so many diverse ideas have sprung up about
what the decade meant and what its underlying vices and virtues actually
were.

The end of the Hippy period is difficult to pinpoint,
in many ways it just faded slowly through the mid-70’s. Its essence was
certainly still around strongly in 1976. But my guess is that the rise
of violent anti-past-glory Punk in 1976-80, the election of right-wing
dictatorial figures like Thatcher (May 1979) and Reagan (1980), and the
shooting of Lennon in Dec 1980 certainly seemed to contribute to its
‘rapid terminal illness’ and probably drove the final nails into its
coffin. Punk is an essay in its own right, of course! And it is very
much an anti-authority thing again, but ugly, repulsive, violent
excesses and most definitely anti-hippy and anti-laid-back man and let
it all hang out!

This reminds me of The Who. I don’t think they were
quite that antipolitical. They were apolitical, perhaps, but most
definitely anti-authority, anti-old people, anti-establishment,
anti-Tory, anti-stuffy old fusspots who ran the place, etc etc. They had
very violent stage-shows and a violent, manic drummer.

Some Song Lyrics

It is useful to compare Lennon’s ‘Revolution’ with
Harrison’s ‘Within you Without you’ because it illustrates what I have
said before and above. It might actually be bettter to compare some
Dylan stuff as well, or to bring in Donovan, the Who, String Band or
Pete Seeger et al to illustrate other important viewpoints.

‘Within you Without you’ contains the following lines:

‘ people – who hide themselves behind a wall of
illusion
never glimpse the truth
then its far too late
when they pass away…
‘with our love we could save the world…
‘try to realise its all within yourself
no-one else can make you change…
‘…and the people
who gain the world and lose their soul
they don’t know –they can’t see –are you one of them?’

The above is very similar to ‘all you need is love’
and carries a message that only love can really change the world because
only it changes people in their hearts and also that cash and wealth and
power and status are NOT the answer and do not lead to happiness, peace
of mind, etc in the way people think. They just add to your problems
rather than solve them. So there was a definite friction between what
the ‘peace and love’ hippies were saying and what the Marxists were
saying. It is clear and undeniable. That is what I meant by two
polarised sub-groups or movements coexisting within one broader
movement. Also in this song is the idea that only internal change within
YOU can change you or your own world, NOT external changes, and, more
importantly, not externally imposed changes in the structure of society
as recommended by Marxists. That at least is one interpretation. It is
certainly the interpretation I placed on it throughout the period we
have been discussing.

‘Revolution’:

you say you want a revolution
well you know
we all want to change the world
you tell me that its evolution
well you know
we all want to change the world
but when talk about destruction
don’t you know that you can count me out….
you say you got a real solution
well you know
we’d love to see the plan
you ask me for a contribution
well you know
we’re doing what we can
but when you want money for people with minds that hate
all I can tell you is brother you have to wait…
you say you’ll change the constitution
well you know
we all want to change your head
you tell me it’s the institution
well you know
you better free your mind instead
but if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow…’

This poem is clearly a tirade against a certain type
of revolution which involves ‘hate the rich, kill the rich’ as I
previously said. And Lennon wants no part of that. BUT he does want a
revolution of free minds and free heads which is peaceful and a la
Ginsberg and Leary –perhaps a slightly diluted version of what they
were offering maybe. Lennon had obviously thought about both types of
revolution on offer at the time and decided he wanted a soft blend of
both rather than the raw extremes which were available. ‘Shout: The True
Story of the Beatles’, by Philip Norman, on pages 294-5 is a brilliant
condensed outline of the hippy phenomenon.

The structures of society are not changed through
sitting and smoking dope –getting high. BUT nor are people *changed
within* by changing the structures of society. So both are right in
their critique of each other. AND the hippies seem more ‘right’ than the
Marxists in the last analysis, because it does not matter *what* you
change in society, if people are fundamentally unhappy in their hearts
then no real change has been effected. And material gain is not
happiness.’ That is the hippy view and it is still mostly my own view. I
think it is a sensible view. While hippies were dreamers and naive, so
were Marxists — but while the latter dreamed that their *actions* would
change the world, the hippies dreamed their *inaction* could change the
world. Maybe both were right and wrong in different ways, but to me the
Marxists were more profoundly wrong and they would cause pain and
suffering as well — which the hippies did not cause.

The term hippy is just a convenient phrase –it has a
blurred meaning perhaps. But I still think it has a quite distinct
meaning compared with Marxist and I do believe both groups existed,
dominated the movement, were not very compatible and DID generate a
tension within the movement and even within individuals.

I do not accept Koestler’s theme of ‘yogi and
commissar’ which seems trite and simplistic — a borrowed argument that
rings hollow. In my view state and big business are/were antithetical as
business was to make *certain people* rich period. State was at least
aiming to benefit all, not just an elite. Business was never condoned by
hippies. It was tolerated.

The ‘sense of unity’ theme dominating those times, or
‘commonality’ was a form of ‘brotherhood/sisterhood’ rather than unity.
It was as if everyone sailed like ‘boats in the same river’ for a time
and there was a unifying sense of experience and togetherness.
Togetherness — now there’s a 60’s buzz-word par excellence!

The nature of art also became a very important theme
in the 60’s. I think one of the main ‘purposes’ of all art is to portray
and enter into that search for reintegration of self and world and to
achieve a renewed balance. For many it is surely the sole purpose of
their life. Art is thus v often both a portrayal of the search and the
product of it, both at once.

I do not agree that it is impossible to regain entry
into that ‘Eden-world’ of childhood. I think many in fact do achieve
that in a sense and it is arguable that the Romantic poets did achieve
that fairly successfully. I do not accept that children *only* dwell in
the NOW. They also occasioanlly drift into reverie of past and future,
but you are right that they are more centred in the now than anywhere
else. Also, it is not entirely true that we adults cannot view directly
or see the world as children do. I think again it is far more complex
and some of the time we do see things directly. The distinction between
childhood and adulthood is perhaps false. Maybe there are cultural
filters on our perception through growing up which act against the
direct view you mention. These are Wordsworth’s conventions maybe.

The refined state of the poet is also in many ways
akin to the rarified states of consciousness described by mystics and
meditators of all types and in all cultures and epochs. There is a
parallel I suppose in wanting to be in that pure state whether in
nature, away from others and also in the ‘child’s state’ of innocence
and direct viewing. I think these are most certainly centrally important
features of idealist and romantic thought. They also crop up in the
recreational use of drugs as they were attempts, arguably, to reach back
into that primordial state of ‘pre-adultness’ and direct viewing by
using mind-altering substances. Drug use was mainly Opium in the last
century, but as we know in the ‘romantic hippy sixties’ epoch it was
chiefly marijuhana and LSD. I think there is a parallel again because
hippies were like Wordsworth wishing to separate themselves off from a
corrupted (as they saw it) world and to enter into a pure childlike
state. I think the hippy parallels with Blake and Wordsworth are
striking.

The 60’s also dwelled upon such things as incense,
(joss-sticks) Dali, Escher, Tarot, I Ching, astrology, Herman Hesse,
meditation, Ouija boards, Brautigan, Mervyn Peake novels, political
demonstrations and Sartre, to name a few more.