Tuesday, October 24.1967
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
3
Hippie subculture analyzed by speech class
What are the effects of the hippie subculture on American society?
The objective of freshmen and sophomores who discussed this question in one of KU's new speech classes (Speech 1B) was to analyze leadership and types of groups.
Students taking this equivalent of Speech I discuss topics of their own choice in sub-groups—"things other than people," because personalities are left to more advanced human relations courses.
Some of the questions discussed and their replies included the following:
- "Hippies have not just a personal interest but a communal involvement in the search for self."
"They can be compared to early Christian groups. You can also compare their 'life for the group' to communism—it seems to me they're renouncing the values and convictions of one society in order to adopt others of their own."
"I think they're a bunch of re- clues from society; they don't want to change it because change means pain."
"They are making a contribution by silently showing Americans that our values are fake."
They are fighting force. They want to do what they want to do. They will accept anyone if he is interested in finding himself.
"Their search for self is a basic contradiction. Their philosophy is actually altruistic. In absolute love, the self is lost."
"No, it's an apparent contradiction. You are wrapped up in yourself, but in finding your own identity you recognize its communal nature."
- "Their 'love' is so generalized, it's meaningless."
"A hippie's purpose is not to make people love him but to find himself; to strive toward perfection by doing his own thing"
If their love idea is within the individual, it is a stagnant thing.
If you can learn to love yourself you can find other people.
"All men must have something to lean on, but I won't become so absorbed in it that I'll lose myself."
They're working for a love of everyone, and for peace.
"Are they really working for peace?"
"They show people a real groovy way of life, and don't try to back it up with bullets. The hassle with straight society is that, to hippies, war and killing are meaningless and empty goals."
- Is LSD essential to the movement?
"To get stoned is to be rid of all hangups. To enjoy life immensely, drugs are necessary."
"Drugs are important for personal reasons. Timothy Leary said when you go inside yourself using them, you have to know where you're going."
"Isn't it becoming more of a status symbol?"
"To a hippie, taking it isn't spectacular. The trip and what you learn is."
- "They want to find God within and express him without."
"It gets into their dress; the happy sound of bells, beautiful flowers and colors to express how they feel. Their dress seems sort of superficial and irrelevant."
"They wear the same clothes all day to avoid playing games."
thing new in art and music. This society needs something new."
"Leary is establishing a religion, a spiritual discovery."
"Is anybody a hippie?"
"He seems too pushy and too commercial."
"Is Leary really a hippie?"
- "Hippies are creating some-
"Brahms and Beethoven were radicals. Now their work is classical. Art is a total involvement. It is something that changes a person when he is completely wrapped up in it. You are the music and the music is you. It's a release for pressures and inhibitions."
"Why aren't the hippies classicals? They use drugs or pot to heighten awareness, to become the music. If it breaks, they break."
"It applies to writing. If you have a totally different way of combining words it broadens your consciousness."
"Their music breaks it open. You become aware just through its strangeness. You can freak out on music; go on one thing for hours. They are kind of taking what they have and making more of it than it was."
- "The hippies are becoming less effective."
"A couple of weeks ago in Ashbury they decided to have a funeral for the death of hippies, to purify the movement of plastic hippies."
"A lot is due to teeny-boppers who don't know what it is about and don't care."
"Some of the real hippies are leaving for isolated places where they can really be themselves.
SIGMA PI SIGMA Information Meeting on Graduate Schools and Programs in Physics
Tonight 8:00
Student Union Meadowlark Room Free Coffee All Invited
Quarterback Club presents Color Films of the KU-OSU FOOTBALL GAME
at 12:30 p.m.
Wednesday, Oct. 25 Forum Room of the Union
Seniors,
The factory representatives of Josten's, Inc., this country's largest college jewelry manufacturer, will be on campus October 27 to show the OFFICIAL UNIVERSITY Of KANSAS CLASS RINGS. A new medium weight ring will be shown.
Come in and choose your personalized Class of 1968 ring at the kansas union BOOKSTORE