Do You Remember the Hippies?

Do You Remember the Hippies?

You don't hear much about the hippies anymore, but they were something big in the 1960s. I bet some of you, the old timers, remember the hippie movement. And if you're not an old timer, you might have heard a teacher tell you about the hippies in a history class or a sociology class in college.  

I wasn't a complete hippie back in the old days, but I was pretty close. I wore bellbottom blue jeans and had long hair and a beard, and I loved to protest the Vietnam War and attend the love-ins in Grant Park. I don't think often anymore about being a hippie, but something happened yesterday that got me remembering those hippie days.

I was going through a box of old letters I've received from friends over the years, and I came across one that got me remembering a science-fiction novel I read as a 20-year-old hippie back in the late 1960s.  

The book was titled Walden Two . It was written by BF Skinner, one of the great psychologists of the 20th century. It was a utopian novel set in 1948. That's right 1948, just after World War II.  Walden Two focuses on an experimental community of about 1,000 people in rural America that is set up to explore a different, better way of living. The community eliminates traditional forms of punishment and guilt; children are raised by the community rather than by their parents; and people only have to work about 4 hours a day so they can spend the rest of their time on art, science, literature, and self-improvement. The leaders of the community are psychologists and scientists working to make individuals happier, smarter, healthier, and freer.

The novel was a perfect fit for a hippie like me. Obsessed with the commune movement of the late 1960s, I was like a lot of high-school and college students across America who looked at Walden Two as a manual for dropping out of the “rat race” of the traditional society around me and creating an alternative lifestyle. The book, in fact, was one of the most popular novels of the period, selling about 250,000 copies a year.  

So now, let me tell you about the day when I read the book and what I learned about life from the book.

I read Walden Two on some sunny summer day 56 years ago. I was stoned on the drug LSD, often called acid back then, while walking along Chicago's beaches with my pal Bill Anderson who was also stoned. We spent the day reading the book outloud and drifting over and over through the sand on Fullerton Beach, North Avenue Beach, and Oak Street Beach.  

And what do I recall of Walden Two now? Not much. All I really remember is one quote, and maybe I'm misremembering it. I can't tell. Acid does that. It makes pink blue, love crummy, and Frank Sinatra into Jerry Lewis. You know what I mean.

Anyway, here's what I remember about the quote. I was reading the book as I walked on the beach, and I read a passage in the book where someone says something like “a lot of stuff about the way we live is nuts.”

That line stopped me. I thought it was the smartest and funniest thing I had ever read about life. I remember dropping my ass onto the sand on North Avenue Beach and laughing and laughing. I was laughing so hard that my pal Bill shook my head and said, “Shake it off, man, shake it.”

But I couldn't, and laughing I ran over to the lake and threw the book as far as I could into the waves, and then I started running down the beach with my arms waving above my head and my laughs trailing behind me like a veil of yellow chrysanthemums.

That was probably the hippiest moment of my hippie life.

So, let me ask you now, is the world truly nuts like Walden Two told me?

Yeah, it is, but you don't need me or any book to tell you that.

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