I'm older than the hippies. I was already a young adult with a world view before they arrived in the mid to late 1960's. Hippiedom was much more than style and music. It was a fundamental change in world view philosophy. Since then the hippies have grown up and become our educators, politicians, business people, and mass media moguls. They have largely replaced the previous world view with theirs and done this so completely that their perceptions seem to be reality. But, they were too late to change my world view. I remember quite clearly what it was like before they came.
Before the advent of American Hippiedom, the prevailing world view of American society was a judeo-christian view. The standards and the principles found in the Bible were the accepted standards by which society operated. To be certain, there were many exceptions because society had many facets. There were always a few and sometimes notable scoffers like the athiest Mark Twain. There were always those who chose to ignore the standards for their own benefit, like greedy businessmen and corrupt politicians or power hungry bureaucrats. However, society generally saw these as rebels against the established standards.
The judeo-christian standards of the Ten Commandments, of love thy neighbor, of compassion for the needy were easily found in the court system, in the public schools, in the marriage vows. That is not to say that these standards were kept with consistant integrity. As a matter of fact, the scoffers grew in number in our colleges, in our legal system, in our mass media to challenge the standards because they were not consistently met.
In the 1950's there came a number of people known as "Beatniks". They had an agnostic philosophy contrary to the judeo-christian view that was not simply a negative scoffing but had something of an integrity to it that performed as an alternative way of thinking. These general ideas were picked up and added to existentialist philosophy in which the person becomes the center of reality rather than God being the center of reality.
This philosophy was incorporated into the general thinking of the young generation during the 1960's. This was done through literature, music, and theater. This way of emphasizing the individual's rights to be free from interference went beyond the previously accepted limits of judeo-christian principles. Now, people were to be free to do harm to themselves in use of drugs, pre-marital sex, etc. because the impacts of these were perceived to be primarily on the individual and not upon others.
While the use of drugs is now seen to have definite impact upon others, so that drug use is not necessarily accepted, neither is it socially reprehensible. That is because drug use is not seen as a moral failure but rather as an "illness". This individual issue is a symptom of a much larger change in how our society views right and wrong.
The change of view from drug use from being a moral imperative to being a health issue indicates a change that reduces guilt while retaining a reason to deal with the problem. This is one bit of evidence that Hippiedom became shaped into a new world view.
This new world view attempts to maintain self-esteem above all else while trying to be socially viable. That is to say, the cultural leaders in the universities, in the media, in politics who were of the Hippie culture, came to the conclusion that they needed institutions guided by the alternative to judeo-christian principles. This was needed in their view because they no longer wished to be accountable to an almighty Creator God. They wished to be tbe captian of their own soul, the master of their own fate. The judeo-christian standards had denied them the right to be such. Now, they were in positions of authority where they could institute changes in culture. Now they could establish their own standards, their own "values."
So, to have a society without guilt, they made the subjective feelings of the individual the center of the philosophy but rationalized how the individual could be responsible to oneself first and then to others. They erased all obvious evidence of the judeo-christian culture from public schools, from the courts, from marriage vows, etc. They promoted the view that judeo-christian "values" were obsolete, uneducated, and perhaps quaint.
The agnostic philosophy has largely been successfully institutionalized by the old hippies. But, they do have a few problems. These are the youth that are connecting with the genuine power of God found in the Scriptures. These young faithfuls are connecting with old faithfuls like myself. They are finding that the Holy Spirit is ageless and not subject to distruction by people or ideas.
So, you see, the Hippies were too late to influence us old faithfuls away from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we have every intention of passing the presence of the Holy Spirit to the young faithfuls.
