One of those things you learn as you get older—like how so many more people are consistently on cocaine than you ever realized, or how often, the higher one climbs the corporate ladder, the less they truly know—is that being a hippie takes a lot of capital.
I first had this inkling back in college, where I had to take a class on the transcendentalists. We dove deep into Thoreau’s history, and upon learning that he was a Harvard graduate, consistently lived in buildings his family owned, and that his father was a factory owner, I remember thinking, well, it’s easy to go to the woods to live deliberately when you have family money to fall back upon. Civil disobedience is easier when you’re privileged.
Living in Asheville has cemented this inkling into a fact. It’s easier to live in a yurt and write poetry all day with a trust fund. It’s easier to follow the Grateful Dead around when that same trust fund shares your wanderlust. Going to biweekly protests is much more convenient when you’re independently wealthy, without the parameters of a workday or boss. And you know what’s real fucking expensive? Eating organic. And the less said about Burning Man, the better. Even the most factual website in the world—not ChatGPT, Wikipedia—says, “Most hippies belong to the upper-middle class and lived in urbanized, educated and relatively developed countries…This vast social net meant that hippies can afford social rebellion and conspicuous consumption.”
And I think—and this is a point I make often, so apologies for beating a dead horse (and apologies to any of the hippies reading this for an allusion to animal violence!)—one of Asheville’s major blind spots is very similar to why people who say they are “hippies” frustrate me: the inability to simply acknowledge one’s privilege, combined with the tendency to wear progressive values more like an aesthetic than actually live by them.
I was writing last weekend at a brewery, and a singer there embodied this so fully.
“I used to want to be a hippie so badly growing up,” he told the crowd between songs, “so I’d listen to a lot of Fleetwood Mac.” LOL #1 at him thinking that listening to Fleetwood Mac would make you a hippie. Like, I listen to Fleetwood Mac and also own four J.Crew cableknit sweaters in four distinct shades of beige. “Now, ironically,” he continued, “I am a hippie.” LOL #2 is that when I visited his website while he sang Fleetwood Mac’s deepest cuts—Landslide, natch—I found out he was only 23. I also found out that he was what the youths call a “content creator” (my Millennial ass still problematically says “influencer”), who helps other hippies (he didn’t specify hippies here; I’m making assumptions) “build brands,” “reach the next level,” and “reach 100k followers.” He does this by consulting and selling online courses, and his latest video was about learning to “harness the power of the algorithm.” He has over 60k followers.
How alternative, right? Though he does specify in several of his videos that he’s a “spiritual creator,” so, maybe that’s all it takes these days to not be like the other girls.
