what's up with the hippie-hate?

['pataphysicien]

Making fun of the hippies is much more common than simply HATING them. I think hippie movement/philosophy has suffered the same fate as communism.

that's the feeling I have as well. it's more like a placeholder for an object of ridicule. there is an unhealthy ignorance in generalising though, funny as it may be sometimes. that goes for dismissing socialist thought with the flaws of 'communist' regimes and dismissing hippies with 'junkies' and 'imagine'. also the ways people use the term hippie in different countries can be strikingly different. in Norway for example it still is a category pinned on young people, and many may self-describe as 'hippie' too. same in sweden as far as I know. totally different in Germany or the US, where the emphasis is on the historical movement (still clicheed as elsewhere though). you have to really insist on it to get the 'hippie' badge in those countries. the weird thing for me is, I'm German, live in Norway. I am of the more liberal sort and I am a metalhead. now I've had the 'hippie' thing pinned on me in this country, although I hate being lumped in that category. then again I only dislike it because the category is used as such a simplifying way to ridicule some overstylized version of what the hippie movement was about.

We can now see it's flaws and it has failed in the eyes of majority (in western world) so it's an easy target for ridiculing.

to put it this way, if people would care to not stop at the easy points of ridicule, but engage with some baser tenets of the historical movement, I think it there would be little to make fun of. of course there were and are silly offshoots to any movement. but our nice and comfy liberal western scoieties would not been as nice and comfy had it not been for the moral revolutions of those few years. and if we look at where the intellectual climate of the 80s and 90s steered us.. maybe we could use a more sincere appreciation of some core 'hippie' values.

[Piotr Sargnagel]

agreed. An if you're talking from a purely musical point of view, listen to the early works of Syd Barret and Hendrix (who Lemmy roadied for and Lemmy took shitloads of acid - I can't think of someone who is more unlike a hippy but yet has some of the hippy core values - just read his biography), whose music would have sounded vastly different if it wasn't for connections with hippy ways of life. Also the Rolling Stones (connections with Kenneth Anger, Hell's Angels), The Beach Boys (connected with Charles Manson). I think it is as wrong to generalize about hippies as it is wrong to generalize about metalheads. "All hippies take acid and love *Imagine*". "All metalheads do is drink beer and listen to Metallica." NO! A lot of hippies and a lot of metalheads act like this but that is not where it ends and this forum is proof of that. The core values are good, same as the core values of Communism are good, it just takes a few to give a movement a bad name. (And are we not now watching the breakdown of international capitalism? It certainly seems like that from where I'm sitting.)

Also, in the 60s, a London hippy would have been a lot different to a hippy from San Francisco. Anyway, I racked my brain for more connections between Metal and hippy rock and I remembered that In The Woods did a cover of a Jefferson Airplane song some years ago.

[GJ]

Anyway, I racked my brain for more connections between Metal and hippy rock and I remembered that In The Woods did a cover of a Jefferson Airplane song some years ago.

Lizzy Borden and Sanctuary too!

[Witchkiller]

I never really understood the "metalheads against hippies" kinda vibe .Seems to me that at a point metalheads just have to hate anything non -metal or non - metal related .

Don't know .I mean there's nothing wrong with the hippie vibe (excluding the "let's get high part") .Not hating and believing in global peace is fine by me .Actually it's more than fine .The "hippie music thing" is far from what i call "great music" that's why i dig the blues related "hippie" bands of the sixties (Savoy Brown ,Ten Years After ).

Needless to say that a lot of metal or proto metal bands where influenced or liked some of the music of that era (Pentagram ,Cirith Ungol ,Sanctuary ,Lizzy Borden ,Black Sabbath ,Scorpions are the ones that come to mind right now) .

If we are to speak about class matters ,well i just don't know if the hippies were midle class or more in general .Metalheads ,most of them ,were working class heroes ,that's for sure .If using drugs makes a hippie rich then bear in mind that in the sixties one could come across drugs more easy than comin across a grocery store................

[Helm]

to put it this way, if people would care to not stop at the easy points of ridicule, but engage with some baser tenets of the historical movement, I think it there would be little to make fun of.

If one does this, there's really little to make fun of generally. Humor is on some fundamental level a bit misanthropic and it doesn't always rest on a nuanced image of a specific person but more usually a gross cliche simplification. This is why for certain types of psychomentalities I think humor is a trojan horse for a lot of really ugly stuff.

[Piotr Sargnagel]

@Helm: are you a philosophy student or just a natural philosopher? That comment about humour being a trojan horse for some really ugly thoughts and opinions in certain people is very accurate.

[Helm]

No I am not a formal student of philosophy or anything else. I decided when I was about 18 that I do not desire anyone else to grade me and judge me from a position of authority anymore. My personal studies and similar stuff are not related to the notion of academic success in any way.

re: humor and ugliness, I am sometimes accused that I am no fun exactly because I try not to indulge myself in that sort of humor, which is apparently the bread and butter of the internet. Here is a very relevant to our love of HM blog that is exactly what I am describing. Humor as a cover for self-loathing and pretension -- and I mean this word exactly, not how it's usually used on the internet to mean 'you're too full of yourself' but rather 'someone is pretending to be one thing and yet is completely another. Posers and liars.

[Piotr Sargnagel]

well my hat off to you sir for your thought-provoking posts. I'll read the blog now.

[Vinny Black]

I have also heard that categorization of human behaviour can be used as an...

[Piotr Sargnagel]

your Schoenberg quote is good!

@ Helm - I understand what you mean but to be honest that blog is for the most part just boring, I can see attempts at humour but most of it is just cheap shots at the expense of others. I don't know if the posters are liars or posers - they just have too much time and might some day work in the gutter press they obviously seem to admire.

[Helm]

It seems fascinatingly facetious to claim at one hand you love some HM and then so obviously feel such self-loathing for doing that that you have to 'dig dirt' (that most strange dirt of all, actually, that which says 'these artists are also humans like me, they have day jobs, they are not satan LIKE THE LEAD ME TO BELIEVE WHEN I WAS 12 ) on your bygone heroes. It's even more fascinating just how many people in the comments applaud them for it. It seems 'anything for a laugh' is the motto.

Metal Inquisition is sometimes very funny. That isn't the question. The question for me is what one is willing to sacrifice psychologically just to get those jokes from passing strangers.

Then again, I'm not American and it really seems Americans will do anything for that momentary numbness of irreverent humor. It's a good outlet and a dangerously good diffuse of worries and thoughts that could perhaps have been vented towards something proactive. Just laugh it all away instead...

[Avenger]

Here

I don't really see anything wrong with that guys sense of humour, but more rather the shit that he listens to...

I don't know, maybe I just have a thick skin? The people I work with on a daily basis are about as superficial as they come and you have to take it at face value a lot of times.

[Keir]

@ Helm - I understand what you mean but to be honest that blog is for the most part just boring, I can see attempts at humour but most of it is just cheap shots at the expense of others.

I used to enjoy MI, but that is basically what it has become. The feeling I get from reading it has gone from having a good chuckle with friends over the flaws in things that we openly love, to listening to “outsiders” point them out and laugh.

It seems fascinatingly facetious to claim at one hand you love some HM and then so obviously feel such self-loathing for doing that that you have to 'dig dirt' (that most strange dirt of all, actually, that which says 'these artists are also humans like me, they have day jobs, they are not satan LIKE THE LEAD ME TO BELIEVE WHEN I WAS 12 ) on your bygone heroes.

Yeah, I remember that post where they had King Diamond posing with a puppy or something. It actually was kind of funny because it was not something you’d expect him to do, but they just used it to make fun of him and in the process revealed a lot about themselves. Also, in the same post they made fun of Cliff Burton in a picture that I thought was really cool (I think he was driving a bulldozer). It reminded me of the days before Metallica were rock stars and wouldn’t be caught dead doing actual work.

I can really relate to what you’re saying about humor. I am more likely to find humor in things like puns and incongruous situations than in the ridiculing of others, and as a result I can sometimes be labelled humorless.

As for hippies and drugs, I actually don’t do any drugs but I consider myself a hippie because of my political beliefs and somewhat “natural” lifestyle.

[Helm]

Yeah I actually enjoy that Manowar aren't really rich or king diamond hugging a puppy... where's the problem?

[Piotr Sargnagel]

Mocking is fine, I see no problem with racist jokes, sexist jokes, jokes about the handicapped but it is necessary to make sure that everyone knows that this is supposed to be a joke, not a deeply held belief - then it's just psychotic and can lead to dangerous things, like caricatures of Jews in German school books of the 1930s - those drawings were a ridiculing and dehumanising (sorry to any Germans btw - I'm Austrian, I know all about post-war guilt). I would not listen to Metal if I did not have a dark sense of humour. I'm sure other people here are the same. Sorry, this post should be in the Drunk Thread