The Sixties, Hippies, Beatniks and Psychedelics
The big difference between the Beatniks of the Fifties and the Hippies of the Sixties was the drugs of choice.
The fifties Beat Poets used marijuana (tea) and alcohol (as well as some amphetamine and heroin). The sixties Hippies used marijuana and Hash (Pot, weed, bush, spliff) with psychedelics like LSD and Mescaline (there was also a lot of speed but junkies were generally looked down on). The prevailing attitude of the sixties was that these psychedelics and pot were harmless. Indeed there were many who saw them as brain vitamins and a necessary way to augment a musical event complete with lightshow, a film (like 2001 a Space Odyssey) or the creative process. Many bands were producing long drawn out improvisations geared to an audience on psychedelics.
The Hippies thought that pot and LSD were much safer than alcohol and nicotine, and that the older generation were being hypocritical. It is only later with the psychosis and depression created by the drugs that there is perspective. They are not as harmless as they seemed.
For the Beatniks satori was to be aspired to by meditation in the traditional Zen manner. It took years and had to be mastered.
For the Hippies it was as simple; you just dropped a tab of acid and an hour later you were there – instant nirvana.
But were they talking about the same thing?
For straight society it was all very worrying whichever way you looked at it. All this desire to attain a mystical union with the cosmos was disturbing. It was wacky, weird and most unwelcome.
The abiding question of the time was were you hip or were you square? Were you straight or were you cool? Did you opt in or did you drop out?
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