Neohippies or Neo-Orthodox?
Daniel writes, in relation to a short essay in The Spectator:
It was interesting to read Reihan’s discussion of the new hippies, but as much as I enjoy his ongoing one-man war against the Prius and his energetic denunciation of Planet Green–a channel that seems to inspire mockery and loathing across the spectrum–I was surprised that he made no direct references to the convergence of hippie and traditionalist values or the moves (and false starts) of socially conservative greens (or green social conservatives). The “crunchy cons” are one example of this, but along with them would be the broader array of neo-agrarians, Wendell Berry devotees and Christian homeschooling families. Reihan briefly alluded to homeschooling families, but took it no further. There is to some extent a cultural overlap between hippies, greens and American converts to Orthodoxy that is a very small phenomenon in American society, but I think it is representative of a more general trend within socially conservative Christian churches in the rising cohort of 18-29 year olds. I would be interested to hear where Reihan thinks these people fit into his analysis.
I pledge to never attack the Prius again! It occurred to me to reference “crunchy cons.” As a friend of Rod Dreher, I’m convinced that the phenomenon is real and appealing in its own way. But I wrote the piece while in the Bay Area, and I think that a certain kind of secure post-materialism can, pace Daniel, endure.
Ultimately, it seems to me that a “revival of hippie values” will not create an enduring post-materialism, because a diffuse “hippie” culture on its own has no stable spiritual foundation, and because there is no particular rationale for the ascetic discipline that such post-materialism requires.
I guess I had in mind a less ascetic discipline and more a renewed emphasis on family, friends, and independence — so the neohippie revival can range from highly-educated ex-professionals literally living in a camper in the desert to highly-educated ex-professionals choosing to live in houses with victory gardens in gritty neighborhoods and buying very few non-durable goods out of (soft) environmentalist conviction. The latter is a fairly familiar phenomenon, but it is, I think, meaningfully different from, say, affluent Park Slope grups who eagerly take part in all kinds of status competitions in which money is the essential currency, as opposed to the offbeat status competitions that Clay Shirky, Tim Lee, and Julian Sanchez were mulling over at TPMCafe.
I’ll add that James Poulos makes an excellent point:
Especially given the development of internet technology that’s well wired into the real world, neo-hippies who ‘head for the hills’ can expect to live crunchy, earthy lives of unprecedented cosmopolitanism. Reihan reads hippie values as inimical to overlarge houses. Correct, but what about his other example — custom cabinets, which might be constructed with loving attention and artisanal care? It’s not entirely clear where hippie-inimical materialism ends and hippie-friendly materialism begins. This is why hippie culture was able to reintegrate into capitalist culture. And this is a good thing, because the alternatives are far worse (e.g., permanent cultural war between the Cleans and the Filthies.)
I chose these words very carefully — the bobo-driven return of labor-intensive durable goods is a key driver of the changing consumption picture, i.e., skyrocketing inflation for the rich and near-rich. This is definitel bobo-friendly materialism, and perhaps hippie-friendly materialism too — but I suppose I imagine the hippies building the cabinets themselves rather than contracting out the work. Or I imagine them having a friend build the cabinets in exchange for tutoring or babysitting or a place to crash for a couple of months.
I took a slightly sarcastic tone at the close of the piece.
I’m by no means convinced that consumerism and inequality are the worst things in the world, or that we are hurtling towards environmental doom. But wouldn’t it be nice if all those who believed these things to be true moved to bucolic communes where they’d busy themselves with handicrafts instead of tormenting the rest of us?
So I should note that I’m very sympathetic to the neohippies, and am of half a mind to join them. I definitely overconsume, but I do feel guilty about it, and I’ve tried to minimize my footprint. Actually, I have really small feet, which helps.
Look.
I water my garden and plants. I wanted to do so in a way that consumed less water from the tap. I dug out an old garbage can and used it as a rain barrel. I used it to water my garden for awhile. I found, though, that having the standing water in the barrel made it an attractive place for mosquitoes to grow their larvae. So after a little thinking, I started taking used cooking oil from the kitchen and putting a little bit into the barrel, not much. The oil sits at the top and keeps the mosquitoes out. I dip the watering can into the water and water the plants, with no problem from the oil.
People like troubleshooting. People like crafting. People like finding elegant solutions to simple problems. People like being active. And knowing that they can do a little, tiny bit of good— and people are less illusioned about the net impact of their actions than I suspect you think— they’ll try harder. Will most people? No.
That last paragraph is key. It’s like many of the conservatives you meet in college: underneath their political positions is their dislike of what they think the culture of liberalism is. Often enough, I think if you could crawl into the mind of one of these college Republicans, you won’t find their opposition to abortion or support for war or hatred of gays rooted in an actual belief in the principals undergirding those positions. You will instead find that they like the effect their opposition to abortion or support for war or hatred of gays has on the liberals around them. In that I think is this terrible contrarianism that has ruined American intellectual life, the spirit that drives Slate and the New Republic and other publications that assume that tweaking liberals is a more important goal than pursuing the truth.
I’m not accusing you of bad faith. But I find myself asking, to what degree is your dislike of the actual principles of conversation really just your animus against what you identify as hippie culture? I think you’re far too hard on them, but then ultimately it doesn’t matter. Even if liberals are all really just status-hungry hypocrites, it shouldn’t change the principles at hand. I have this suspicion of a lot of what you write.
— Lifafa Das · Jun 23, 05:25 AM · #
Well, there’s a problem with your analysis. The last paragraph is literally true: I do think it would be nice if critics of rampant consumerism and environmental recklessness would build alternatives to society as it exists, rather than rely exclusively on coercive power to achieve their ends.
— Reihan · Jun 23, 08:41 PM · #
LD: Your third paragraph is interesting, and may be true of some conservatives. But I think you can also find the opposite phenomenon on the left: Not an objection to any particular principle or argument, but a distaste toward religious fundamentalists, frat-boy MBAs, rural red-staters, and other stereotypes. It’s not contrarianism, exactly, because there isn’t usually any spurning of any in-group (unless they are brought up in a religious, MBA, red-state environment), but it is, as you say, a dislike of what they think the culture of conservatism is.
Kind of a hijack, I know, but it reminded me of how unreflective one’s political positions can be, left and right, when we sometimes suppose them to be rational.
— Blar · Jun 24, 07:25 AM · #
Blar, you make some good points about politics as a type of cultural reaction, even on the left. However, from my experience (and can any of us speak from anything other than that?), the sort of politics that LD is discussing is more common than the type you are discussing.
An anecdote: for a long time, there was a billboard on the freeway near my house for a local conservative talk station with the term “Annoy the Liberals!” in big letters for all to see. I figure the marketing people for that station knew their audience, and knew that by telling them that by simply listening to that station, they’d be annoying various unnamed and unknown liberals, they would get listeners. While that phenomenon may happen from time to time on the left, I don’t see most left-liberals conducting their lives in a manner that is calculated to get a hostile response from conservatives, real or imagined. I think there’s the difference.
— Mark in Houston · Jun 24, 05:41 PM · #
Hmm, seems oddly familiar. I was raised in a fundamentalist christian family, homeschooled, left the Republican party because it did not represent anything that I took to be conservative (fiscal responsibility, conservation, personal independence, small business), and became a fan of Wendell Berry after college. My wife an I bought a small (900 sf) house in a not so great neighborhood, and after having a substantial garden in the backyard for several years I am planting veggies in the front yard. I agree with Lifafa Das that people want to mess with things. I worked with you for a few years and it was clear that the greatest lack they had was access to meaningful work that challenged them. Not school work, not volunteering opportunities. Real, hands-on, work that benefited them in some way. Gardening, crafting, building. All of these things can fill that need in the way that the pointless playing of video games does not.
— AG · Jun 24, 07:57 PM · #
If I may offer my own anecdote, a bumper sticker that parks frequently at my apartment complex reads “Doing my part to piss off the religious right.” This speaks to an opposition not to the principles of religious conservatism, but to religious conservatives, because you can’t piss off a principle.
I’m generally suspicious when people of one party claim that people of another party are more frequent exemplars of some type of bad behavior. At best you would have to connect the bad behavior to something cultural or philosophical in the party, which can just as easily become a theory-in-search-of-evidence sort of exercise. At worst you are sparring with confirmation biases.
— Blar · Jun 25, 07:21 AM · #