hippy community

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Heh. Oregon - land of the eternal flower children. I love it.

I miss Oregon
Texas is a strange, backwards kind of place...

I'm kind of a punk but I LOVE the hippies. They are seekers who do not buy into the consensus reality. There are still a few intentional communities left here on Vancouver Island, I met some members at an art show last weekend on an island with a population of 250:

http://infinicrow.livejournal.com/2007/03/18/

I've been down the road of punk when it was actually punk and not post-punk. They were pretty uptight about everything, but your idiosynracies would have gone unnoticed and Autism Speaks would have been lampooned on a regular basis along with the queen and all societal nonsense. That might have been fun. It could even be fun to see Henry Rollins take on Autism Speaks right now. Could be entertaining.

Anyway, back to hippies. I was about ten years too young for that boat, but when I lived in Jacksonville, I did run into a group of professors who were old hippies and I hung out with them (as did my husband). Great bunch for me. All intellectuals who were anti-governmental big brother tactics and thought the whole ADD/ADHD epidemic was nonsense that could be cured by creative parents and teachers (and less government/administration). They didn't care about anyones quirks, tics, social misfit behavior or other strangeness, in fact they thought that's what made people interesting. If anything, they thought normal people were boring and didn't question things enough.

I typically hang around with the offbeat people - artists, writers, ex-hippies, old hippies, etc. They accept me more easily and they are more interesting to me as a person. We have more in common.

It's awesome here. I likes it.

I hate when people say that they hate hippies even when i was a so-called "goth" i didn't hate them. I have to say hippies never talked s**t about me behind my back or stole from me or tried to screw me over. They are not like everyone else i used to know.

Most of the "real life" friends who have accepted me, have been hippies, geeks, "emos", LGBT people, or other people who have a less mainstream view of what life should be. They don't have as much of a preconceived idea of how everyone "should" act, so when people deviate from the norm, it doesn't bother them. Many of these "fringe" people are actually more willing to associate with you if they think you are a bit weird, because they like to be exposed to different perspectives.

hmm, i am a bit ambigous on this one.

sure, in alternative cultures, no matter which one, you will most likely find people who are less concerned on you fitting a specific template.
yet, my father was quite enamored with this hippie stuff in his youth and carried over a lot of the thought, music, etcetera. so, at a certain age, i occupied myself a bit with those ideas, the music, what the lifestyle meant... and found some of the music to be great.
theoretically, the concept would be nice, too (although nothing for me), but what i encountered among the remnants of hippiedom here, was less than suboptimal. most of the people who kept clinging to hippiedom over here was a strange mixture of alternative flavours. most of it a few hippie traits and a lot of the 68 students revolution (hardcore leftists). this mixture was a bit too much "we are a COMMUNITY", "we are all one family" & "i see you have a problem here. you need to talk about it. in the group" for something i could bear. for the most part, id be sure that among such togetherness-fanatics, a pretty high percentage may be so hardcore in their ways as to consider the loner way of an autist something to be cured or "talked out of people".
i know this hasnt much in common with what hippie ideas actually are, but its all i encountered from the leftovers. given that i am not too happy with pure hippie ideals in theory to start with, these leftovers are nothing for me.

i do have a very handpicked small circle of friends who just take me the way i am. found that to be the only thing that worked.