The hippy dream just led to alcoholism, madness and some very confused offspring

'The hippy dream just led to alcoholism, madness and some very
confused offspring'

http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Ewan-Morrison-39The-hippy-dream.5408362.jp

Published Date: 28 June 2009
By Ewan Morrison

AFTER living for nearly a month in the Scottish countryside, some
strange transformation has taken root within me. As I stare out of my
window at the blue of Loch Long and Loch Goil and the green and grey
of the Arrochar Alps, and as I count the weeks I still have left
within this idyllic wilderness before I must return to Glasgow, I
feel two powerful impulses stirring:
1. Real estate acquisition.

2. Hippyness.

You would think these two impulses are contradictory but they seem to
go well together in the plan that's half-forming in my head; which
whispers to me through the leaves in the trees: "Buy a shack in the
country and drop out of society completely."

Now this is strange because:

1. I don't have any money to buy property with;

2. I hate hippies; and

3. I don't believe in inner voices.

None the less the whispering voice of hippy real-estate acquisition
is becoming more persuasive: "You hate the modern world," it says,
"you're well known for being a ranting miserable git who despises
everything from supermarkets to television. Why not leave it all
behind and live in a wooden hut with no telephone. No more struggling
daily through the stinking alienated masses. Just you and your loved
ones in the wilderness."

To have such thoughts is even stranger considering that this "escape
to the countryside" was pretty much the failed utopian project that
my parents and their hippy friends attempted in the 60s and 70s. As a
child I used to be surrounded by educated escapees from England and
the Central Belt who kept pigs and goats in remote Highlands shacks
with corrugated iron ceilings and no electricity; who walked barefoot
and composed pieces of free jazz based on the patterns of stone circles.

They all ended up miserable, lost, alone and in many cases they ran
back to the very cities they had run away from in the first place
decades before. The hippy dream did not lead to the transformation of
society or to thriving communities, but to divorce, alcoholism,
madness and to some very confused and embittered offspring; me included.

Perhaps the only lasting positive that came out of the experiment is
that a whole lot of hippies now possess large tracts of real estate
throughout the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. This is positive
for those involved but generally they're not very welcome in the
communities they bought into. All of this should really be putting me
off, but the voice in my head is relentless: "Look at the sea, listen
to the little birds, they are telling you there's no going back; the
city will kill you, you must become one with your inner nature. Wake
up to the hippy within."

Other than the fact that I would make a huge financial loss if I did
sell my Glasgow flat and move out here, there is one major thing that
puts me off this escape to the hills. I fear I would go mad in the
woods. Unlike the hippies, I don't believe in the things they
believed in: peace and inherent human goodness. Perhaps what my
inner-nature voice is telling me when it whispers of the beauty of
lochs and glens is: "You hate people. Get a shack and a gun and if
anyone comes into your space, kill them."

Yup, peace and love, man.

.