Hippies: The Rise and Fall of Our Cultural Ancestors 

A great portion of the 1960’s hippies came from upper middle class backgrounds. The working class couldn’t really afford to live as a hippy, or even be authentic and be a free thinking

As someone living in Berlin this sublation process seems very clear in the current techno culture: everyone says it's about being yourself and expressing yourself freely, but it's becoming more and more stylized and commodified to the point that people even start gatekeeping techno - which is the exact opposite of accepting everyone as they are

I like the idea of hippies automatically becoming comformist the moment they defined their style as non-comformist. Reminds me a bit of Zizek's critique of ideology: the most ideological thing is to believe you can step out of ideology.

What this video really exposes about hippie-ism is the falseness of its revolutionary pretensions. Though there were definitely radical movements in many western countries at that time, on the main, hippies were not actually seeking a fundamental change in the social order, political economy, etc. whatever they may have said to the contrary. What they really sought was, in a postmodern sense, difference rather than contradiction. They were carving out their own niche in society rather than creating a new one. In our neoliberal era, products are marketed to such niches. If you define yourself as outside society you are merely trying to find a separate space for yourself in the current one, rather than trying to create a new one. One thing that struck me, and that the epilogue highlights is the ultimate cynicism of the hippie movement, not only in the modern sense but in the original, ancient sense of cynicism, that of Diogenes. The hippies rejected social mores and artifice, lived outdoors, practiced free sexuality, and in all senses lived like dogs as Diogenes would have wanted. Later artistic and cultural movements like punk abandoned the unnecessary and contradictory emphasis on authenticity while retaining the nihilistic attitude toward society.

I’m reminded of The Simpsons, which became so popular as counter-cultural television that it became mainstream. Not because it confirmed to the culture, but because the culture conformed to it.

Please do more of these cultural genealogies Georg. So interesting.

Excellent analysis. The best I have seen/heard ever. I am now 66 and can remember the cultural shifts. The main problem of the hippie movement was the strong hedonism which represents a contradiction to several values of the movement. And being against something is not sufficient on the long run. Freedom from something is not not freedom for something. The counter-culture quickly won over the zeitgeist but imploded without a concept for what the cultural and personal freedom should get used beyond drowning in dopamine.

One of the major contributors to the hippy culture as a rebellion against the highly structured, conformist society of our parent's generation, was the psychedelic movement and the music that ensued. With the "doors of perception" (Huxley) sprung wide open, another deepening encounter with self took root known as modern spirituality. This movement, saw the bridge between Eastern and Western philosophies merge both traditional as well as novel ways. This period in time also saw the rise of holistic health and natural foods that continues as major enterprises to this day.

IMO, there is something about that movement that feels extraordinarily interesting. Thanks for covering this. I'm writing this before watching, just to show appreciation.

I liked how Herr Moeller's interventions were intended to look spontaneous while making a tour around reality through music movements.

Hello! I am a 72 yo woman, retired and living in Jamaica. Born n lived in Germany 16years, influenced by UK (music n clothes etc); years before it came to the US where I lived the remaining of my working life. I have to tell you how much I enjoy this video and your words. Thank you so much for bringing me back with such a pointed historical account of my past.

THe hippie culture is still alive, and these tendencies of conformity to non-conformity is a factor, but it's highly exaggerated. I'm speaking from personal experience, as a participant of many "hippie"(they are not called hippie gatherings, of course, but embody core hippie values) gatherings. Drug use, nudity, hairstyle,clothing,musical taste,monogamy or polyamory, etc, varies greatly, as well as levels of education, employment status, attitude towards technology.. I could go on and on. You don't see this variation, because the hippies that deviate from how you perceive hippies to be, are not visible as hippies from the outside.

I was young in 65-75 so it's interesting to hear your take. There was a richness and a diversity that is hard to communicate. It wasn't so much a particular group of people, but a gigantic wave that swept through society. It affected every aspect of society. Since I was a reporter, I saw it in journalism - the underground newspapers and new ways of writing. It changed politics, relationships, sex, music, food, technology, attituds towards work. Our modern computers came out of that era. If someone wants to learn about that period, I'd encourage them to go beyond the stereotypes of Haight-Ashbury, rock music and drugs. Read autobiographies and biographies of some of the figures. Not the wildly famous ones, but the more normal people. It's good to read the documents of that time - the underground newspapers for example, like the San Francisco Good Times (aka Expres Times). Your sentence "They are the ancestors we can’t get rid of." contains one truth - they are your ancestors, and one self-reveal - the ambivalence you feel. Even now, the 60s are threatening in their openness and courage. They are an irksome reminder that we can be more than the constained pesonalities we tend to be now.

I love how it ends with David Bowie singing "Heroes" in German. That was a pleasant surprise. I remember Bowie saying in an interview that his album Heroes and Iggy Pop's album Lust For Life were "purely German products" as they were both recorded in Germany in 1977.

#Critique: Born in 58 I still remember my long journeys to other countries, especially staying alltogether one year in Nepal. Many of us lived with natives and tribes as our german ethnopharmacologist Dr. Christian Rätsch who died this year. He lived for 3 years with the Lakandon tribe where he did research. He gives a perspective about the hippie movement beeing the revival of the cyclic reemergence of dionysic cults. Personally I am a graduated biologist and professional gardener with some studies in cultural anthropology. This deep longing for tribal roots as a birth right is not understood in the video! Well, free will is a philosophical construct and I give a citation from neurophysiologist/biologist Professor Robert Sapolsky that 'free will is a myth'. People from the hard sciences are not always so happy with the superficial cognitive constructs made by philosophy.... Nowadays I see many young permaculturalists still living a branch of the hippie path with success (Example: 'Der Zirkeldreher' on RU-vid).

My parents and their friends were hippies. They are obviously from an easier freer time. You could say economic freedom of movement and independence ended around the 80s, but I think culture was still fecund until the about the year 2000. 2012 might be when everything started to slide into the abyss psychically and now the cost of living is so powerful nothing like the culture of the 60s 80s or 90s could survive. People like Jimi Hendrix would be filtered out now by the high cost of living. They were able to move around freely without always wondering how to pay rent which is now almost becoming impossible. The barriers to independent living and success weren't the same for boomers and now they are naive observers of a much worse world in my opinion. they didn't need to endlessly enhance their profilicity as you call it to go into the world.

Really interesting video. I really does seem like many social movements or subcultures suffer from the same contradictions. I have a close friend from high-school that was in the punk scene at the time and he got out of it for similar reasons that are laid out in this video. When the anti-conformist subculture starts to mandate conformity, somethings definitely gone wrong. The social obligation to perform "radical individuality" to be seen as a part of "counter culture" has got to be pretty stressful.

Mary Woronov: "Hippies were scum." Captain Sensible: "Punks are just Hippies with teeth." Frank Zappa about The Velvet Underground: "It's electric folk music, in the sense that what they're saying comes right out of their environment." Iggy Pop: "I think I helped wipe out the sixties."

Very thought-provoking as always! Would love to see a follow-up exploring punk and new wave in more depth. Thank you again, Professor Moeller!

What a brilliant synopsis... THANK YOU!

The insistence on authenticity, non-conformity, individuality, and non-violence (where reasonably possible) goes back long before the hippies and it's silly to define them this way so as to imply that they invented this stuff. In every time in Western history, some amount of people were expressing views like this.

That was fun! Had to laugh so many times reminding my own past!

Thank you, Georg! I have been interested in the hippies and the beat generation for a while and am writing a novel to explore the rise and fall of the hippie ideas further. Your analysis is very interesting and contains valuable criticisms that go further than when people just laugh about the hippies as a product of the past. I find the way you look at profilicity and authenticity very useful and interesting. I’d love to see a video on surrealist art and its connection to absurdism and existentialism! I’d also be interested in a video on idealism, looking at people like John Lennon, Allen Ginsberg, or even Fred Rogers. Thanks again! Love the long-form video essays

your cultural criticism is so on point. truly, you are a great intellectual

Engaging, informative, and contextual and culturally sensitive. Great video! ☀️🌊🎭

My mother-in-law is a hippie in the purest, most stereotypical quintessential form. So watching this brought me so much understanding of who she is now, in her late 70s, and still clinging to the height of hippiedom in the late 1960s. My wife and her brothers were little naked hippie brats running around the music festivals. It is fascinating to see how each one rejected the culture they were brought up in and lived utterly contrary to their early upbringing.

Very nice organizing all I've heard throughout my life into something coherent. This also (kind of) confirmed my idea that with most grassroots youtu movements it's about when the person is able to say that they're part of it and then that defines the culture and not the other way around

I suppose I was a hippy. We are still around, maybe you don't know.....Many went on to become educators, writers, artists, ecologists etc.....Some lived/live in intentional communities, some moved to Costa Rica, Sweden etc. and some stayed on.....the thing is, the hippy movement got cashed in on.....and still is being commercialized. It really doesn't get the message that the hip movement was all about. I think the hippies of 2023 are trying to stop the next war. That's the big thing today...having peace and freedom. No one can ever win a war, it is a big loss to everyone. So if you want to be a hippy create peace wherever you are. Be kind, help each other, educate people to the ways of peace.

Thanks, great wrap up of the times. We are very close in age, and here, in Melbourne, the punk times were a cultural blossoming. One could be very cynical about the whole thing with the luxury of retrospect, but at the time we were all so committed and enthused, being in the midst of it, and it was glorious (and deadly...to quite a few).

I wish I had something specific and intelligent to comment, but unfortunately my brain is fried from frenzied term paper-writing. So I'll just express my honest reaction: "Wow, that was fantastic!" I'd love to see more philosophical analyses of music culture in future videos if you are interested in making more.

We were the Baby Boomers come of age. Long hair was self adoration and a rejection of conformity. I worked in a McDonald's in Santa Monica and I was paid $1.75 and hour. Out of that money, I bought my food, clothes, paid my rent and my motorcycle and had even money left over for pot. I protested the War and saw the Doors at the Whisky for $5. Like a magic spell, it appeared and then vanished like music in the air...

I’m still here😍

prof. Moeller, although you didn't live through the hippie "age', you have captured the essence of the time [period] better than if you if you actually lived through that time . congart's to you! very impressive!

Superb, thanks!

I loved this video. I would love to hear what you think about more recent generation’s youth.

interesting video; thanks for putting the time and work into making it

Wunderbare Analyse einer Bewegung. Vielen Dank für dieses Video. Alles Liebe

Fascinating.

so wonderful, thank you

Please do a video on hyperpop and the culture surrounding it. I think that goes as far as we've gone on a mainstream scale when it comes to style.

What i like about your videos is that it is an original take on philosophy. Your point of view is new to me. Something i did not hear before. Most RU-vid philosophy videos are about rehashing the old. Not that there is anything wrong about that, but the world needs new perspectives. Your words are a good start. Thank you.

I recently was called a “old fucking dirty hippy “ he was twenty something years old I’m fifty two . He thought I would be offended. Hey thought it was a slam on me. It was in fact a compliment to me .

Eloquent! Hervorragender Kanal - Danke!

Damn the algorithm for keeping this from me for so long! I've "hit the bell" for the first time ever... but 26:57 I can't wait :D

Amazing video as always!

Nice! I'd love to hear you go on into the late 80s and 90s pop culture.

This is one reason I Love the album, "We're Only In It For The Money" by The Mothers of Invention!

Hello. What translation of the Zhuangzi would you recommend as most academically accurate? I'd greatly appreciate an early response, since I plan on buying it online for Christmas. Thank you very much.

I loved this video. It wasn’t authentic but had something genuine.

Bravo...brought back memories ( born in 67')... if there will be a part two, maybe we can look at how our capitalist society(ies), absorbed or accommodated these rebellious flare ups, and commodified ( reified ) their signs and symbols ( for example the Che Guevera t-shirts ? ).

Banger video as always!

I’m 69 and part of the hippie culture. I made it to SF in 71 and the culture was still happening but starting to fade away, drugs was getting stronger and more mind control elements. Music was still great and sex was free and common practice. Thank god for penicillin. I had long black hair and a black beard. Girls and guys were attracted to me therefore my gay exposure with bisexual activities. I moved back to home when my draft notice came. I reported and classified as F4. Meaning since my brother had died in Vietnam 1967 and I was the only surviving son that I could be drafted but serve in non combat assignments. I passed. Nixon ended the draft and lucked out. Thanks to my dead brother and political movements. I lived as hippie through my college, graduated with honors and awards, and had big job offers. But went with the company that was ok with my hair and beard (trimmed). Which I still have today, I still do drugs, and enjoy music. I’m retired now and still flying. It was a great culture and life theme. Peace out

Thank you!

Similarly to U.S. "punk" in New York, it started without a particular fashion. Or, it contained contradictions of non conformity. However, Malcolm McLaren and possibly other stylists or "entrepreneurs", it was then put into a stylistic and musical box. Despite being shocking at first in the U.K., what they didnt know is that it already was commodified with the management of the Sex Pistols by McLaren

That sitting in the field gave me real zizek vibes love it!

awesome

Thank you, this explains present culture. Could you please do a video on art school. I feel it has far more cultural influence than it’s given credit for. 😊

Well done.

Prof. Moeller, when you had long hair, I always thought that you belonged to a band like White Snake. I appreciate your coverage of the profilic identities of the hippie movement. I was wondering about your thoughts on a similar movement in the 90-2000s called "grunge." It had a similar marketing tendency for authenticity, however, it was aware of its tension between authenticity and instrumentalisation of its image.

Neat to watch, relevant to many subcultures that prioritized anticonformity. You gotta address that Blame! manga in the back though.

It's interesting how many hippies became conservative and religious later in life

Vito Paulekas was kind of the first hippie. He and his band of "freak" dancers kind of cemented the scene for emerging 60's bands.

a suggestion! how about a video on the baader-meinhof gang since it somewhat relates to this subject?

Really loved the editing in this video! Though I found the cut between close and mid shots every sentence to be distracting

Hah I knew that you're going to mention Stirner at 1:18+. Great video Hans (if you don't mind being called by your first name haha)

In a way the emo movement, which post-punk and new wave turned into eventually, is the manifestation in the media of this transition from authenticity to profilicity. And as we all know, rock has been dead ever since, along with the idea that pursuing any kind of authenticity is "cool" anymore. The transition into emo was embodied mostly by My Bloody Valentine (MBV). Funnily enough, MBV seemed almost aware of this inability to be authentic, in contrast to many emo acts that followed. There seems to be an almost ironic humor in their music; the contrast of the heavy instrumentals to the soft vocals that sing what would be lullabies. The only thing they want you to feel in this music is the sadness that you will never reach this authenticity: authentic love, authentic life, authentic being, etc. The vocals refer to childlikeness, or in hippy terms: ego death. They are very similar in their childish simplicity to The Beach Boys in their '67-'70 era (an era that was funnily enough also closed by a very "emo" album in '71). At the same time the aggressive, distorted, unconventional instrumentals seem to harass and mock this childishness; it represents the industrial, modern reality we live in. After emo, white people have not really been able anymore to continue this legacy of rock music in a world in which authenticity is not cool anymore; technologies like social media have lifted the curtain too much. Within black cultures and music genres this striving to be authentic seems to be less prominent: T-Pain sings about his single life even though he is married, Young Thug flat-out admits he doesn't enjoy sex that much while he raps constantly about "fucking bitches", Lil Wayne raps about shooting people and admits he never killed anybody *within the same album.* It is however very confusing that they DO have a heavy emphasis on the notion of being "real". But this "real" means something very different than authentic. Let me demonstrate this by the following tangent: There is this tiktok of an interview with T-Pain, in which he tells he is actually married since he was pretty young, and calls himself the biggest simp. One of the top comments stated that he was VERY REAL for doing this... VERY REAL FOR THE FACT THAT HE LIES IN HIS MUSIC ABOUT WHO HE IS. How does that work? Well, he is not real for lying obviously, but for openly admitting he is not the superhero he paints in his music. "Real" in black american circles means something like being honest about your profile, rather than authenticity. It's being honest about the fact that this is their job and not their life; their life is their kids, their wife, their family, and NOT you, listener. Whether this was always the case, or black people simply were able to adapt to this cultural change better is not entirely clear to me. Of course they just found a better way of hiding authenticity, rather than truly getting rid of it. Therefore, I think in profilicity a basis of authenticity is always hidden, just like their is sincerity hidden in authenticity (as you explained in this video). Disclaimer: When I talk about concepts of "black" and "white", I am talking about it culturally. Eminem belongs to the "black" culture while Hendrix belongs to the "white" culture here. It's simply about a cultural divide that exists in the U.S. and many western countries due to decades of segregation and unwillingness of the government to repair what their ancestors did.

This reminds me of a section from the David foster Wallace novel the pale king. Conformist non comformers. It would recommend it to you.

I spent a year 1970-71 hitch-hiking around Europe and east to India. I certainly met a lot of people smoking dope and tripping on other things. Many were trying to get away from mainstream society as they understood it and were part of the anti-(Vietnam)war movement. However, very few were Hippies or involved in building alternatives. Perhaps it was the media attention which created the illusion of a movement bigger than it really was. It was certainly a missed opportunity, not evolving into a more peaceful way of sharing this planet than how we live today.

This was awesome

Hippies were some of the coolest people ever!! The government had to infiltrate to separate the masses!!

Very nice :)

Great video. October Revolution next? ;)

HIPPIE = Highly Intelligent Person Pursuing Infinite Enlightenment

love the German version of Heroes at the end. something tragic and the language just accentuates it.

If I had to use one word to describe what you are trying to say it's: Freedom.

I’m a young person and some of my “goth” (no one actually calls themselves goth but you know what I mean) friends will state that they admire hippies and beat stuff. They would never go totally hippie but like I think your right about our genes.

crazy video structure

Nice.

I wonder what you think about Hélio Oiticica and the tropicalia movement.

As you will notice from my profile pic is a pair of 1969's Acoustic Control Corp 360 Bass Rigs. I was and still am a hippie. However, hippieism is a spectrum. Based on my experience, it was about being a "Free Thinker" don't "Trust the Establishment" which is a 180 degrees from modern day hippies. Most of us loved our Country and Constitution and even supported the troops in Vietnam, but we were against The War, which time has proven us right. We as humans want to box everything and unfortunately the minority radicals colored the majority. It truly was about Peace, Love and Rock & Roll.

22:04 “the quest was futile but we cherish the experience”

Im not sure it is so useful to stress the Originality aspect too much, and to infer all these contradictions succinctively. Of course any counterculture must be seen historically as a response to a mainstream that was felt to be unsatisfactory, however I wouldnt go too far into that principle, instead, maybe the core aesthetic, the Values expressed, the music, the clothing and the ways of living with other beings are all elements of its own, that were simply being shared with Love and in that sense it may not necessarily be a contradiction to share these elements, this way of Life at all. Thoughts? I must say I argue this way because for me, a millenial, I deeply admire this very culture and would consider it in many ways the most beautiful, rich and inspiring way of living and being that I have come across.

I don't think they failed. It depends how one looks at it, but they had a huge impact on the Western culture. I wouldn't call that a failure.

"but that's the topic of another video." yeah, that's one I'm very interested in. Texas stayed very hippy for a very long time so back when I was young all the hippies I smoked weed with were also getting into punk too.

I was born in 1958, too young to be a hippy and with a father and his friends who hated the 60s , so I was caught between the intolerance of the older generation and hippies who talked what I thought was nonsense whilst high on drugs. The funny thing was my Grandparents and their generation were quite laid back about it. My Gran liked pop music and danced around the kitchen to the radio, she loved the Beatles, the Kinks, Procol Harum and many more groups and singers. She even got my Grandad to grow long sideburns, which everybody admired, apart from my parents. I liked rock music, but rolled my eyes at John Lennon interviews. Watching Top of the Pops in our house ended up in arguments, it was impossible to watch it. But I also disliked music and movies from the 1950s. There were many things I liked about 1970s culture in the UK, but I was glad when the 1980s came along. I was quite surprised when I was stationed in Munster in the early 1980s with the British Army, there was still was what looked like a hippy culture. Even back then we thought they looked a bit quaint. I think it was the Blue House pub where they hung out.

The search for authenticity is also a part of hipster culture.

"They are at the same time negated and somehow maintained, re-enacted in the wider stage" this as well as what Nitsche said about christianity seem to make a lot of sense in the framework of Ken Wilber and his Integral Theory. Could you perhaps comment a bit on Integral theory prof. Moeller ? As always thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Genuine continued hippie... Dropped out to Haight Ashbury... Feel sorry for youngsters missed what's real... Paid costs other than obvious... Self-defined social outsider: THANX EXPLAINS ALL!

What I find interesting about all this is that you didn't mention the "Krautrock" from germany, which is kind of distinct actually from americas hippie music in that the hippie music was always more folk in combination with afro-american blues, while german Krautrock was similar but had very interesting influences from classical music (as some of these musicians went first to the very conservative conservatoires in germany)

"the truth is out there" - Slavoj Zizek: sublime object of ideology

id be really curious about your opinion on the early 2000s culture surrounding jackass, when i was young those shows (also wwe) had a huge impact on many people around me back then.

I was expecting in the end at least a mention of the yippie culture as well. There's an interesting link, often overlooked, between hippies and the so-called yippies, that is Jerry Rubin. Some of the interviews and debates with him from 72 onwards are absolutely fascinating to watch. He in many ways manifested all the "authentic" traits, being an unbashedly an individualist and counter culture, except that very thing enabled him to shift away from "hippie values" and become an entrepreneur of the self. New age spirituality is still with us today as well, one could say stronger than ever. I tend to think that hippies and the 70's counterculture paradoxically gave rise to the 80's neoliberal era and to the commodification of the self. The cola add is a great example of this "hijacking" process. But it was never really that hippies were immune or able to resist that appropiation, but rather that they unwillingly gave a significant push to new mode of capitalism, self-exploitation of the individual/self, that is.

Come to Liberty Park in Salt Lake City on a summer Sunday and you'll see us there. Follow the sounds of the Drums.

The may be gone, but their spirit lives on in the Wook

Do a video on Adorno!!!

As a long time punk wannabe, I've always observed a lot of overlap between the hippie and punk ideologies... insistence on being a social outsider, emphasis on wild appearance, focus on finding the authentic self, but clearly the two are different (and often directly opposed to each other, as cultural tribes.) Perhaps, if hippies were the climax of the drive for authenticity, maybe punks indicate an awareness of profilicity and therefore represent a transition: from focusing on authenticity to focusing on profile. It sure seems to me, from my experience, that punks are far more focused on what they project than who they authentically are - although I think this is also true of hippies, at least in the age that I live in. "You end up not dressing natural, but dressing like a hippie" - the same conundrum is ever present in punk culture, you can only find your authentic self through emulating those who came before you, and you have to conform to the style of those around you in order to find acceptance... among those who claim to be free of social status. Non-conformity becoems the new conformity, and if that's not true in punk then I ain't no god damn punk.

Note how if you decide to not see non-conformity as a "pure" concept, but as a specific historic call to a certain type of culture that was dominant at the time, his analysis of non-conformity to be "circular" or ultimately "contradictory" doesn't work anymore. It's ultimately for the reader to decide if they want to focus on the "inherent contradiction of hippie culture" by deciding to view them in this narrow/pure form, or in a proper historic fashion to see them as a reaction towards certain qualities of their time and then to analyze in the specific the previous and after state of culture to then make a judgement on what we can learn from it, or what we like going forward. There were no representatives of hippie culture, as it wasn't uniform, so I think such "genealogies" most often end up more personal than neutral and can often boil down to nothing but personal preference. That it was almost "canonicalized" in some way through media/market-narratives and made into a new conformity, needn't either be "evidence" for any "failure" or "inherent contradiction" in the movement, it could just be a tragic outcome for example, surely we don't consider all historic movements that failed to fullfill their promise in full to have been "utter failures". I think it's hard to miss that Mueller with his moderate centralism is critical of the hippie movement, I think that's about all this video tells us. To then look for "contradictions" in what you don't like post-hoc, sure you can do that, but is this a personal battle that other people should join and that actually leads to something good, or is it just some form of collective resentment. Getting more and more the impression Mueller largely attracts a community of resentment and much like Zizek it seems to me to be very one-trick. When you think you have found a toolchain that works for everything you want, more than not you are actually not a discoverer of new worthwhile knowledge and instead just a personal project to justify your own personal opinions uncritically.

i think the better word is the hippies grew up, there did not fade away.

11:00 "In or out" seems like a false dichotomy. I see it as a Ven diagram (Hair, Drugs, Fashion, Music, Romanticism, Spirituality). Also, in the Woodstock movie there is a young man Critiquing the event quite insightfully.

“It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era - the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant... There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning... And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave... So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark - that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.” - Hunter S. Thompson