Yoga

Hippies enjoy doing yoga, which involves a series of stretches and physical poses that is supposed to be good for the mind and body…good for the body by exercising different muscles and muscle groups, and good for the mind by providing a calming and, supposedly, enlightening period in which one can venture into “inner space” and achieve spiritual healing and invigoration. Really, it’s just an excuse to wear leotards and roll around on the floor.

Religion and Nature

Hippies generally decry organized religion, believing instead that spirituality needs no structure or dogma to be relevant and helpful to those who practice it. They prefer to develop their own relationship with a higher power, which for hippies generally means nature, or Gaia, the mother of all things natural. Nature worship, for what it’s worth, doesn’t place any restrictions on humans insofar as morals go. The only precept in nature worship is to treat the earth and its inhabitants well, with respect and all that. Yet, as we have discussed on previous posts, hippies do all kinds of terrible things to nature, such as: freaking out animals with their dope smoking and their drum circles, pillaging the rainforest in search of patchouli, polluting the air with Subarus, utilizing roads cut through pristine forests, withholding vital nutrients from landfills, eating threatened or endangered species, allowing the slaughter of vast crops of plantlife in order to make fuel, allowing the senseless deaths of critters great and small through protection of dangerous carnivorous animals, chopping down perfectly good trees to make plush, three-ply toilet paper, and discharging dangerous chemicals through their urine that eventually cause genetic mutations in fish and other aquatic life. I don’t know what the nature worshiping version of hell is, but clearly hippies are going there, lickity split…

Finding Oneself

Hippies love “finding” themselves and tend to take a lot of time doing it. To regular folks, these efforts to “find” themselves look an awful lot like wasting time and avoiding responsibility with an ever-growing list of personal diversions. But to the hippies, it’s “exploration and evaluation of finding one’s place in the universe.” Such efforts typically involve traveling to developing nations and eking out an existence, often thanks to funding and other support from mom and dad. For example, moving to India to “study” another culture and religion, or working on a farm co-op in South America for a few months, in order to gain a greater understanding of the plight faced by the world’s poor, all the while getting a nice and tidy few hundred bucks deposited into their bank accounts each month from the ‘rents. Or simply bumming around with a backpack and a Lonely Planet travel guide to X region, thanks in large part to the around-the-world plane ticket bought for them by grandma. While these things may be fun, and possibly even exciting, they aren’t really ways of “finding” oneself because, after all is said and done, these same hippies tend to “find” themselves back in the Pacific Northwest, smoking someone else’s dope and eating their parents’ organic hummus, while they contemplate turning 30 and wonder where all the time went.

Dread Natty Dread

Hippies dig dreadlocks. It’s true. Dreadlocks – essentially, long sticky knots of hair that are so tangled up that even God couldn’t get them straight – are seen as the mark of true commitment to the hippie cause. After all, the longer the dreads, the longer the hippie has bucked authority and societal mores. The longer the hippie has been avoiding the materialistic drudgery of the modern world. The longer he or she has been Taking on The Man. Dreadlocks originated in Jamaica as part of the Rastafarian religion – really, just a sham of an excuse for smoking prodigious amounts of marijuana – but quickly became a part of the Northwest hippie culture, even though the Northwest hippie doesn’t really follow Rastafarian ways – except the weed-smoking. Nope, hippie dreadlocks in the Northwest are just another example of a wealthy culture co-opting – and bastardizing – the ways of a poorer culture. It happens all the time, and is often referred to as the “American-ization” of something. Like Mexican food in the Northwest…it resembles nothing like true Mexican food, it’s been modified to please our very non-Mexican palates. Ironically, hippies usually hate the American-ization of other cultures, preferring instead “authentic” cultural experiences. But in the case of dreadlocks, I guess they make an exception.

Woody Harrelson

Hippies love Woody Harrelson, presumably because he’s a pothead that hates on Christmas. You might remember, Woody made a comment many years ago on some late night TV show where he disparaged the idea of buying Christmas trees. Something like, “Why do we need to kill living things to celebrate the birth of Jesus?” Well, I’ll tell you why, Woody: Christ WANTS us to kill things. It’s in the Bible, look it up, man. Oh, and by the way, that doobie you’re smoking? It too was once a “living thing.” So the real question is, Woody, why do YOU have to kill living things just to relax and look at banana trees while listening to Native African bongos playing gently in the background? Huh???? Why!!!