I might as well be honest with you about who I am and where I'm coming from.
I've been a psychotherapist for over 20 years now, but I have hippie roots.
I recall sitting on a stoop on E. 10th Street in New York's East Village in 1969 with my hippie buddies (we called each other "freaks" then; an affectionate term we gave ourselves which stemmed from the derogatory way the straights referred to us). The big wave of hippiedom had come and gone from the city by then. Suddenly a freak comes by, takes one look at us, and opens up his leather satchel.
"Just scored some Panama Red! Can you use some?" Just as I was about to explain we were broke, he handed us each a handful, and walked off! And I - as you see, over 40 years later- never forgot it.
Hippiedom, no matter what you might have been told about it, or (if you were alive at the time) no matter what you might think of it now, was surely a radical idea. We could all argue about whether it was ultimately a good or bad thing, but one thing's for sure: It shook things up! And one reason was that at its essence was the ideal of what I call Radical Generosity.
Radical Generosity means giving beyond the norm of what is considered reasonable. Why Woodstock worked was because of this spirit. It wasn't just because there was good music and lots of weed and acid and people got laid. (Ok, I guess that's what did it for many who were there.) But if you think that was all it was about you miss the point.
What made this event was the rain, the togetherness, the spirit of giving - the management opening the gates and letting the concert become free; the staff throwing beers from the stage; the sense that you would share your food and your vibes and whatever else you had. The blurring of where "I" ended and "you" began. Giving it all away because, the feeling was, we don't got much anyway except for each other. Giving because there is no "them" at all, but only us here. My brothers helping me out because I'm one of them. My sisters loving me because we're of the same tribe. And me helping and loving them back in return.
Today, living for me over here, and you living for you over there, is a pain-inducing illusion. It's a lie that has become life-threatening and dangerous. It's the kind of illusion that posits that you can pollute your world way over there, or I can hate you over here, and we won't effect each other. But in the past month or so, we've learned - here where I live in New York City near Times Square; and down in the Gulf of Mexico where some British company decided to drill for oil - that there is no "there" there. It's all right here in our faces, in gasoline canisters left in cars; in miles of black water washing up on our beaches.
The idea that I'll be ok just so long as you pea over there in your end of the pool just doesn't work anymore.
Hippidom (at its best) was an alternative to this dillusional pathology of separation that has been forced upon us, and to re-imagine we're one people again like it was in the beginning. Because we are.
This isn't "radical generosity" so much as life as it's supposed to be lived. This is building heaven from the earth up.
And hippies - with all their faults - instinctively knew a few things about living together that might serve us now.
