Where Did the Hippies Come From, Daddy

If you guessed Haight-Ashbury then you're fired as the actual answer is Deutschland more than a hundred years ago.  (Anne Hill Fernie:  The Origin of Hippie in Europe 1880 to 1940)

If people stop to think about 1960s counter-culture, ‘hippies,’ etc, they might cite early 1960s USA as a source or maybe the ‘Beats’ and European counterparts in 1950s Beatnik culture.  Very few would think to root it in 1860s England (Arts & Crafts Movement & the 1890s ‘Back to the Land’ initiatives) or the 1880s German ‘Life Reform’ movement.  (WIKI:  Lebensreform)

- Fernie

There's no particular need to flog it regarding precedents to the hippies since it didn't become the movement we know until the acid and the music made it that way.  Stir in yet another ill-advised war and that mix is guaranteed to motivate people.  We became the trippy hippies but the Lebensreform seems actually to have been the source of the philosophy.  All we needed after that was the acid and a few electric guitars.

The thing we like about this is the continuity.  There's no reason to believe 'hippie thinking' should be an isolated thing which happened once in San Franciso then went away and it's satisfying to read of the continuum because it leaves the thinking humans are better than we seem.  It's not just some random chance that we think hippie things sometimes but rather it doesn't change.

Prior to the Lebensreform in Deutschland, likely there was some other precedent which led to that thinking and the hippie evolution has continued.  It's looking kind of weak just now but only due to the appalling cacophony from the mainstream but look back and that's all the mainstream ever gave us.  Hippies survived it then, plus whacked their horrible war, and we survive it now.  Hopefully we will yet whack another horrible war but it hasn't happened yet.

(Ed:  are you heading toward reviewing why Millennials didn't stop this horrible war?)

Nope.  If I get any more tired of hearing Millennials talking about themselves, I may start barking Christmas songs and I know you don't want to hear that.