Sharing My Story

The Vietnam War was not the only social
political upheaval happening during the 1960s.
One TV show I enjoyed in the early 1960s was
“The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.” This program
featured a young and very funny Bob Denver
(later to play the silly Gilligan) who became
a beatnik named Maynard G. Krebs. Maynard
was a broad stereotype of the bohemian life
style that became popular during the 1950s.
In some ways the Beatniks (or the Beats)
ultimately midwifed the Hippie movement.

Like so much in life I saw the Hippies with
mixed feelings. They seemed to be a rebellion
against the materialistic, comsumerist American
culture of the period. They realized that just
accumulating material things and climbing
the corporate ladder proved hollow as
essential life goals. Their solution as
advanced by Timothy Leary and others
was to “Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out.”
Leary was an early advocate of turning on
with “awareness expanding” drugs like LSD.
As Leary was gaining notoriety one of my
best friends seemed to be open to the idea
of drugs like LSD could be benefical and not just
a coop out. I was surprised! Also Leary himself
made an appearance on our local college
campus promoting drug usage.

The potentially good elements of the Hippie
philosophy-return to a more basic lifestyle,
natural foods, etc. made the subculture
attractive to idealistic young people who
was disillusioned with their routine and
dull suburban unbringing. However the
whole pervesive drug element (and the lie
of “free sex”) can’t be separated from the
Hippie phenomenon which finally
destroyed the movement in its hallucinogenic
excesses. The Hippies either assimilated back
into mainstream culture and became among
other careers left wing college professors or
were converted into early 1970s religious
revival known as the Jesus Movement.