The significance of the Vietnam War in bringing about the confluence of the hippy counterculture can not be overstated. For the duration of that war, one's political and spiritual identity were defined by one's position on the conflict in Indochina. Several other urgent issues were on the table during those decades: civil rights, environmental disasters, labor struggles, and political corruption, to name a few. But it was the war that split Americans into two camps, separating the hawks from the doves.
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| Draft notice |
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And because compulsory conscription of young men to fight this war was in effect, the Vietnam War had an intensely personal impact on college aged youth. Those who questioned the justification for this war began to meet and talk and think on campuses and cafes everywhere. This counterculture of peace activists was actually born several years before men started growing their hair long, and before the word "hippy" was applied to peace protestors. And the peace movement has continued to carry on long after the hairstyle and the word have gone out of fashion.
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| North and South Vietnam |
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The history of the Vietnam War is complex and messy. Battlefield conditions were terrifying. The tactics were frustrating. The moral quandaries for soldiers were agonizing. Back in America, the gory details were televised on the nightly news. Families bickered or glowered across the dinner table, divided by the war. So it was a war fought on many fronts, and I will be writing more about all of them in upcoming articles.
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| Vietnam service ribbon |
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When they returned home, veterans of the Vietnam War were not greeted by cheering crowds, as the veterans of most other wars have been. Many felt shunned by society, and were passed over for work and housing opportunities. This despite the fact that so many of them had no choice when they were drafted. And this was also despite the fact that so many of them were opposed to the war which they had been forced to fight. Some had even decorated their helmets with peace signs and such. But strangest of all, this neglect occurred despite the fact that it was compassion for these self-same inductees that had inspired draft resistance and anti-war protest in the first place. When it was finally over, America just wanted to forget. And regrettably, pacifists were only too happy to go along with that. However, veterans rights groups eventually prevailed upon the public conscience, and most liberals these days do advocate decent education, employment and health care for vets, who all deserve dignity and respect for their sacrifices and service.
Before the days of Kindle, every self-respecting hippy owned a modest library of books. And hopefully many still do, because I like books. Part of the hippy ritual for making new friends was to browse through their music collections and their books, where you were certain to find some favorites in common.
Hippies who went to college tend to hold on to the so-called great works of literature and philosophy from their course work. Shakespeare and Plato at the very least. With maybe some Confucius and Pushkin thrown in for a more global balance. But there was always more room on the bookshelf for the less academic subjects. And hippies of all educational backgrounds love to collect reference books, how-to books, cookbooks, and children's books; science fiction, science fact, folklore from around the world, and mystic wisdom of every stripe.
To fully understand the hippy counterculture, it is necessary to peruse the books that were most commonly to be found on a typical hippy's bookshelf. And indeed, certain titles were so ubiquitous that it's embarrassing. But now, many of these favorite books are out of print. The list is long, so I will mention just a few at a time. I will begin with some historical precursors to the movement.
Book List #1 - Initial Influences
These are some of the books that set the stage for the hippy countercultural movement.
Baby and Child Care
by Dr. Benjamin Spock
1946
World War II was over. The greatest generation came home and got down to business doing more important things, like making babies. Many new parents were rethinking the psychology of evil which had fueled WWII, and wanted their children to grow up with a strong and independent sense of morality, free from dictators, and able to see through propaganda. Benjamin Spock MD wrote the manual they wanted, and it became the #2 best-selling book of the 20th century, second only to the Bible. And thus the entire baby boom generation was molded and shaped, by the precepts outlined in this book. Having said that, however, it's important to note that Dr. Spock advocated as little molding and shaping as possible. He advised parents to trust their own parenting instincts, and he advocated a hands-off approach to allowing children to discover their own individuality.
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Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing
by A. S. Neill
1960
In the 1920s, an experimental boarding school for children was established in Suffolk County, England called Summerhill. The guiding principle was that all children are inherently good and capable of self-regulation. The kids who went to Summerhill voted on their own curriculum and code of conduct. When the founder, A. S. Neill, published this account of his school and its philosophy in 1960, feathers were ruffled in the education establishment. But it resonated with baby boomers raised on Benjamin Spock's notions of childhood freedom and individuality, which in turn influenced their own parenting decisions, and spawned a number of innovative schooling options in the years to come.
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Catcher in the Rye
by J. D. Salinger
1951
This novel of teenage ennui - like its predecessor, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) - inspired a generation of copycat mopers. Everyone wanted to be the book's protagonist, Holden Caulfield, whose very existence was a scathing indictment of society, as he went about pointing out the phonies in our midst. Catcher in the Rye enjoys the distinction of being both one of the most banned books in history, as well as one of the books most taught in classrooms. It had a tremendous impact on the malcontent youngsters who were soon to evolve into hippies.
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Howl and Other Poems
by Allen Ginsberg
1956
A jazz incantation of experiential fervor, and a beatnik litany of lost friends in a broken America, Howl is a gemstone from the Beat Generation which soon became one of the crown jewels in the hippy literary treasury.
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On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
1957
This semi-autobiographical account of Kerouac's travels across America with his friends from the Beat movement blew the lid off of complacent propriety, with its honest look at good clean fun with jazz, poetry, sex, intoxication and a desperate search for meaning in life. The road and all its hardships beckoned readers to escape their boring lives and do something fun and meaningful. The younger generation which answered that call became the hippies.
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Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson
1962
If all the birds were to die, our springtimes would indeed be silent. But chemicals harmful to birds and other living things were being pushed on farmers, and pumped onto their crops. Rachel Carson sounded the alarm in 1962 with this scientific study which warned of the dangers of widespread use of pesticides, herbicides, and other toxic chemicals in agriculture and industry. This was one of the first books to bring ecology to public attention, and its disturbing conclusions galvanized the counterculture to include environmental concerns in its agenda. By 1972, pressure from environmentalists brought about legislation in the USA, banning the pesticide DDT - one of the worst chemical culprits mentioned in Silent Spring. Other poisons persist, and the struggle continues to this day to get them outlawed. Meanwhile, an alternate method of farming and gardening has burgeoned worldwide without the use of putrid petrochemicals, and we can now purchase organically grown produce almost anywhere these days, thanks to Rachel Carson.
