And finally, of course, popularity did not mean people were ready to join the new way, only that they were really fascinated by the idea of being free, and even imagined it for a while.  

way too frontal, sometimes! a lot of counterforce would have been avoided with more strategy, and less histrionics.

nice comment gaianne...

feeling free was one thing, actually being so quite another... so much of the euphoria of the time was the huge power of numbers we enjoyed, and the relatively high level of postwar education making us more socially aware.

freedom in life is always relative, and hippies blazed some great trails, also uncovering some ancient ones that had become post-industrially obscured.

no other generation since has had the power of such numbers and the ensuing ability to ensure media attention. the collective high was unreal, helped by a startling array of excellent music, the like of which has too rarely been seen and heard since...

hippies moved towards the edge of corporate society, and even redefined it in some areas, but corporations were already too powerful to stop, outflanking the progressivism of the time by going global and co-opting the media with propaganda/glitz, which soon got the happy consumers' snouts back the troughs again, and the ensuing generations' efforts to displace the nightmare were swiftly commodified, turned into fodder for mammon.

i remember 'getting' it seeing prebleached, then torn jeans becoming a fashion item sold in the malls back in the reagan years, lol-

so much of the hippy movement was wonderful, so much was a waste...of youth and innocence.

it was a terrible, extraordinary time to be a teenager without a clue, however many of the seeds sown then have reaped tasty, nutritional fruit that keeps on growing.

i sure wish we could have had the internet back then, at the same time as what we did have...

that's why it's great to see so many moved to get involved by obama, over stateside, it does me old heart good to see it, i pray he doesn't let them down like T.B. did the brits...

(settles in rocking chair to listen to some serious reminiscin' music!)

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty