The new Woodstock generation

21 June 2008

Reihan Salam predicts the dawning of a new hippy era as critics of consumerism head to the hills

In late May, New York magazine noted a highly unusual advertisement that appeared on Craigslist. A young Brooklyn couple had decided to sell virtually everything they owned, from electronics to furniture to designer shoes, for $8,500. As it turns out, the couple was planning on taking their two young children and setting out for the open road. Two weeks earlier, the New York Times profiled several other couples who had made a similar choice — to surrender their accumulated possessions and, with toddlers in tow, to leave a dreary, consumption-driven urban existence behind for something nobler and more environmentally sound. One couple, the Harrises, have been chronicling their adventures on a website called ‘Cage Free Family’, a clever reference to the cage-free hens so dearly loved by the ecologically correct. Though Jeff Harris had achieved financial success as a computer network engineer, he and his wife felt very keenly that they needed to reconnect with the land. And so the Harrises intend to leave bustling Austin, Texas for the greener pastures, literally and figuratively, of Vermont.

Now, it could be that these back-to-the-land bohemians are mere curiosities, puffed up by New York and the Times simultaneously to delight and guilt-trip their status-obsessed readership. No one knows how many Americans are embracing ‘voluntary simplicity’, whether by becoming ‘freegans’ — that is, people who dive into rubbish bins for food out of choice, not necessity — or by abandoning suburban ranch houses to live in communes or campers. But my hunch is that these cage-free families represent the coming of a new hippie moment.

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Reg

June 20th, 2008 12:20am Report this comment

Speaking as a refugee from office work and as a current maker of 'custom cabinets' (no, really), I can assure you that I have no intention of moving to a commune and eating 'thin gruel' (or any gruel) whilst wearing a grass shirt and recycling my nightsoil.

But then, my cabinets are high quality and expensive (and require electricity and diesel to produce).

vb

June 24th, 2008 10:48pm Report this comment

Why would you want to inflict these people on the countryside?

ariadne

June 25th, 2008 12:03pm Report this comment

I am one of those original "hippies" from the sixties and I can tell you that to this day I still gag at the least whiff of Patchouli. Worse yet I can attest to the utterly moronic nature of 90% of my compatriots as they smoked, snorted, shot into veins and ingested virtually any substance that would alter their minds. The old nonsense of "expanding your mind" usually led to their minds expanding out of their ears down their arms and onto the ground. Which, in any case is where most of them belonged. If they come back in any guise I guarantee they will smell even worse and their children will be even more of a pain in the ass than the last batch. Don't say we didn't warn you.