On Naked and Hippie in the 60's

[jbeegoode]

I wrote this thing about nude attitude during the turbulent 1960's, formative years for for a generation and the new world, attitude and effects today. (Written in a forgotten tongue)

I call it, "Heralding the Old Freaks."

https://thefreerangenaturist.org/2022/02/22/heralding-the-old-freaks/

Jbee

[Greenbare Woods]

“Life is a process of unlearning.”

Yes. It took me quite a few years to unlearn fear of being seen naked.  In the late 50s and early 60s I went out naked only late at night, fearful that some horrible fate would happen to me if anyone saw my body.   It took me a long time to learn that being seen is enjoyable for me and for the observers. 

I never was a hippie.  I was a couple of years too old.   Or, maybe it was the drug thing I didn't get.   I still don't even though pot is legal again. 

[jbeegoode]

There is a social pattern where a more avant-garde, or innovative group will get attention. Their truth resonates and interacts with the general population. Like a wave that dies slowly, this influence on people has a lesser and lesser effect on the spectrum, as it hits those more adjusted to the older ways. The "Hippie' thing was a great example of that.

For example, brighter colors and wilder pattern on men and women, evolved culturally from the psychedelic newer wave. Longer and much wilder hair eventually diluted into no buzz cuts and longer sideburns. There were political changes and then there is the backlash.  Similarly, some people were experimenting, breaking down the established norms, questioning everything and so questioning and refection went on in the wider population as a trend, and also there was a backlash. There was change from one direction of the spectrum out into the rest of society and backlash.

That has most often been the way things go, from flappers, to the beatniks, who coined the word "hip."

The sexual revolution from social movements and the advent of the pill and contraceptives moved the world's old norms. Fashions saw more skin and liberated the body in increments at a quicker and quicker pace. Media had its part. Things like Woodstock hip young people skinnydipping in "Life" magazine, helped liberate the body, make people think, question and some took to it more readily than others. The momentum met with established resistance, law and established inhibition at the other end of the spectrum and it was also serialized in context.

So, would a more radical, "Body Liberation Front" create a wave of change in this day and age, like sexual revolution and hippies did back in the day? IS there a change oriented avant-garde today to attach body liberation to? Could a similar strategy work today?

I meet young people who, get naked, play musical instruments under trees in nature, dance with abandon, are peaceable, smoke weed and experiment with psychedelics, long or weird hairstyles, and they don't know what a Rainbow gathering is, don't understand the word "hippie" and have different recorded music tastes, some don't know who Bob Dylan is, or was. I understood "hippie" as an insult thrust upon me by the backlash against my individuality. These laterday freak style people just gravitate toward a group that hasn't been discovered by mass media interest.

IS there a new path to social change taking place, as pop culture? Is cool is being found in smaller more grassroots units on the internet, instead of being dictated by a corporate media?

Anyway, I'm in one of the more radical pockets of body liberation. We are a group of a fully diverse people from all positions of the political and socio-cultural spectrum, I think a unique situation. How do I attache body liberation to an up and coming brand, create social change, get mass media attention to the facts, or make nudity a new wave? How can we get the world of inhibition off of our backs? Get the better part of the world to not react negative to where  naked body is not a really big deal? Or is the majority already here and the few establishment folks are creating an illusion?

Can that group of illusion grow and act against body liberation in the coming trend of corporate fascism. or like weed, allow people an outlet to feel that they are in control and make the coming corporate take over more profit?

I went gung ho into the drugs, back then coming of age, spent years at it, and then moved on. I might drink a coca cola a couple of times a month for the caffeine, the last few decades. The picture of the two people in my article just happens to have the psychedelic mescaline cactus San Pedro in it inadvertently, I noticed after the publication. I like the flowers the size of my head, but have to place it so it doesn't get stolen, or hacked by people seeking a trip.

Hippie! It's jus' a label, man....
Jbee

[nuduke]

I once commented on TSNS I seem to recall that the hippie culture, art and social movements of the 1960s began a truly fundamental shift in society.  Not only hair and clothes changed but the whole attitude of huge swathes of the west - towards toleration, open mindedness, mutual respect and the environment.  The hippie's rather potty and unconditional love for their fellow man brought, in a totally humanist way, some of the best values that Christian society purported to promulgate but had run out of steam.  The counter culture, so called, of 60s western USA in California and echoed in the UK in the psychedelic and swinging London movements taught us as young teenagers a whole new place in society and a whole new and better attitude which we have carried forward and seeded into the wider world and subsequent generations. 
More open minded, more free to express ourselves, more sexually permissive, less materialistic, more concerned about our effect on the environment and with a whole raft of new musical and artistic styles to go with it.  I think the hippies did the human race a lot of good and contributed majorly to a change in attidudes in the west and later, through the Vietnam protests of the 60's to 70's, a whole new attitude to international relations that, along with the opposite force of mutually assured destruction nuclear armaments keeping the peace too, made the world see clearly how wrong internecine conflict is.  They didn't really have any effect on stopping subsequent wars, genocides and man's general inhumanity to man but they did enable us to see more clearly how wrong it was and therefore perhaps lessen what might have been.  There was also a lot wrong with the new cultures of the 60's and 70's but I think what was right has stayed with us in the Western psyche at least and made us better people and better nations.
This is but a theory of mine own and a small thing to boot.  Perhaps I should research it more thoroughly and see if I'm right.  It's a bit of a rose tinted view and does not include all the bad stuff that continues through the ages but I do feel they shone a bit of a light for the improvement of humanity which we would have been poorer for had we not had it and had the knotted up, stitched up, CO2 belching, materialist 1950's simply continued as it was.
John

[jbeegoode]

Yes. I might add that even though many perceive the culture as quaint, flower patterns, tie die, mini skirts and a set of music influenced by the era, there is for them the unknown change that it gave us and influences their lives to this day. Something that was spit upon violently in the polarized conditions back then and now seen as cute and quaint, safe. Most people tend to trust those older folks that dress as old hippies, when they didn't, even hated the youthful versions, back in the day.

You may have rose coloring in those glasses, but the effects were and are obviously dramatic and often lasting. The effect on the world  was dramatic, but not in similar degrees for everybody.

Many of those back in those days, didn't fall into the freak, the peace. They continued the old values, the corporate grappling, the massing of wealth and power, belief in empire, etc., were successful at it and still bring on the destruction. An example, the neocons that believed that people in Iraq would cheer our troop's arrival. They didn't learn from the 60's. The polluters, didn't learn, these people continue, too. Too bad those missed it all.
Jbee

[jbeegoode]

Back to nudity, I think that the sexual revolution, was both a hindrance to societal nudity and a help. It only allowed a stepping off point, or social nudity in a context, not a non/less-sexual orientation.

The ideas of peace and freedom were liberating the body from naughty naked ideas. There was also the humanist psychology wave of influence, letting us be less constrained, or "uptight," to be honest. Nude encounter groups, etc., along with the discovery of our very real nature while simply experimenting with being naked.

We rejected the norms and allowed ourselves to try new things. There was a lot of questioning going on. Some of the drugs were fun and safer than the lie told us. Many, faced with going to a war, gave conscription some serious thought. So, a culture of questioning authority and experimenting became wide spread. That is always a very good thing and it was so when it came to trying out getting naked.
Jbee

[Safebare]

I've been letting my freak flag fly, as long as David has been singing the song.
~Safebare