Re: Politics and spirituality are inexorably intertwined

"First of all the so called hippies where just part of a huge population generation of baby boomers so your hippy demograpic is nothing but self importence and it was Christians who in fact repopularized alternative health and other alternative like homeschooling they where active participants ,not drop complete loser drop outs like most hippies out there.............."

My oh my - who's rewriting history now?  There are loads of hippy types still out there living organically and practicing alternative therapies.  I know several centers in my area and none of them are "Christian."

http://eco-chick.com/2007/05/14/the-hippies-did-have-it-right/

All this hot enthusiasm for healing the planet and eating whole foods and avoiding chemicals and working with nature and developing the self? Came from the hippies. Alternative health? Hippies. Green cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMA seeds? It came from the granola types (who, of course, absorbed much of it from ancient cultures), from the alternative worldviews, from the underground and the sidelines and from far off the goddamn grid and it’s about time the media, the politicians, the culture as a whole sent out a big, wet, hemp-covered apology.

…..without the ’60s groundwork, without all the radical ideas and seeds of change planted nearly five decades ago, what we’d be turning to in our time of need would be a great deal more hopeless indeed.

But if you’re really bitter and shortsighted, you could say the entire hippie movement overall was just incredibly overrated, gets far too much cultural credit for far too little actual impact, was pretty much a giant excuse to slack off and enjoy dirty lazy responsibility-free sex romps and do a ton of drugs and avoid Vietnam and not bathe for a month and name your child Sunflower or Shiva Moon or Chakra Lennon Sapphire Bumblebee. This is what’s called the reactionary simpleton’s view. It blithely ignores history, perspective, the evolution of culture as a whole. You know, just like America.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NAH/is_5_35/ai_n13659688

Feelin' groovy: the hippies had it right: go organic, stick to whole foods, and experiment with mind-expanding flavors. Here, our favorite flower-power fare gets a modern makeover

EVEN IF PATCHOULI, tie-dyed tees, and Volkswagen vans aren't bound for an imminent comeback, one slice of hippie history undoubtedly deserves to keep on keepin' on: Looking at nutrition through granny glasses meant choosing the most wholesome nourishment while borrowing taste-bud-rousing flavors from foreign lands. "The hippies were trying to restore quality to food," says Greg Hottinger, R.D., nutritionist at the Duke University Center for Integrative Medicine and author of The Best Natural Foods on the Market Today: A Yuppie's Guide to Hippie Food. "They introduced foods from other cultures--curries, tofu, miso, and tempeh--but they were also trying to bring our food back to the way it was before we began using pesticides in agriculture and treating animals with hormones and antibiotics."

They had a healthful disregard for processed foods, synthetic sweeteners, and artificial preservatives, too. "The hippies stood for avoiding food that has something added or something taken away," says Hottinger. "Whole foods have naturally occurring healing properties, and you can't improve on food's original design." So while granola and sprouts may forever seem the stuff of a peacenik picnic, Hottinger maintains that "hippie food is not radical. What's radical are the changes we made to the way our food was produced in the 20th century."