Hippies and Peaceniks

The other day I pulled into traffic behind a car that sported a "Support Peacemakers" bumper sticker in English and Spanish, and I thought to myself, "There's a Mennonite." Then I thought to myself, "Why would you think that?" While that was an easy question to answer since I know a preponderance of Mennos who support peace and who have spent time promoting it in Spanish-speaking lands, I also know that in no way should that definitively categorize the person in front of me. First of all, all Mennonites are not pacifists. Settle down, now; it's true. Nor are all of the Menno pacifists particularly interested in Spanish-speaking service. So, with those two generalities debunked, I got to thinking about knee-jerk reactions to the concept of peace and which of those I've ascribed to during my 32 years.

Hippies
Now we still hear this one a lot from nationalist conservatives: "What are you a hippie or something?" So did hippies really want peace? Well, without doing any research, I think we can safely say that some did. Some were more focused on getting high and others were more focused on getting laid. I knew some people who claimed to have been hippies (though they were on the young end of that group) who were actually quite against peace. These would have been more at home on the Hell's Angels end of the counterculture spectrum. (Sidebar: I did a paper on this spectrum once that focused on the popular conception that counterculturalists were all peace-driven, liberal hippies. Hell's Angels, while certainly being a countercultural force in the late 60s, were violent, misogynist, militant, nationalists who dreamed of a bloody revolution whereby they would take power by force. Read the autobiography of Sonny Barger, Hell's Angels founder for more on that.) The "hippies" that I knew growing up expressed some regrets about not volunteering for Vietnam, preferred a fistfight over a discussion, and invested money in drugs instead of social programs. Ultimately, though, the hippie movement was overrun by addicts and perverts who saw the philosophy of peace and love as an opportunity to feed their demons. George Harrison said it best in an interview that can be found in The Beatles Anthology, 3:

You know, I went to Haight-Ashbury, expecting it to be this brilliant place, and it was just full of horrible, spotty, dropout kids on drugs. It certainly showed me what was really happening in the drug culture. It wasn’t what I thought of all these groovy people having spiritual awakenings and being artistic. It was like the bowery, it was like alcoholism, it was like any addiction. So, at that point, I stopped taking it, actually, the dreaded Lysergic [LSD; Lysergic Acid Diethylamide]. I had some in a little bottle, it was liquid, and I put it under a microscope, and I looked at it, and it looked like rope, just like old rope, and I thought, "I’m not going to put that in my brain any more."

Mennonites
Well, although I am a Mennonite by virtue of belonging to a Mennonite church, I'm not a Mennonite by heritage or by blood, so I don't really speak from a place of authority on this. I am, however, completely certain that not all Mennonites are in favor of peace. Now most are in favor of service and helping humanity, but I know of a number of Mennonites who have joined the military, as well as a number of Mennonites who believe in the divine right of the United States to wage a just war on behalf of its interests. I can remember being particularly angry with some of these folks after 9/11 when they were calling for war when I felt pretty certain that they'd take a conscientious objector status if it came down to it. So again, this general assumption about peace doesn't work.

Cowards
I can think of two specific times when relatives of mine, both veterans, described the peace position (nonviolence or conscientious objector position) as "cowardly." Now, both of these conversations revolved around Mennonites, but the objection was not to any theological philosophy, it was strictly expressed as being "cowardly" to refuse to fight for their countries.

Hmm.

Well, I've already established that we can't define peaceniks as Mennonites (there are pacifists in every religious tradition) so let's ignore the context of those discussions and focus on the view that pacifists are cowards. First and foremost, any number of pacifists from any number of philosophies or theologies have been killed for believing in peace; of those, untold numbers actually chose to die for their beliefs. Not cowardly. Second, it takes guts to stand for your convictions even when your life is not on the line. Not cowardly. Third, peace is not the mainstream focus, so it takes chutzpah to form your beliefs outside of the accepted norms. Not cowardly. Frankly, there's nothing cowardly about believing in peace over war. It's downright brave.

It's frustrating sometimes to look around me, near and far, and see and hear the warmongering, the nationalism, and the bigotry. I salute all of you who work to make it a more peaceful world every day. Many members of the military believe that the work they're doing will someday bring peace. I disagree, but salute them for trying to reach that end. Keep working, keep trying. Never give up. As John Lennon said at the concert to free John Sinclaire in 1971:

Apathy isn't it...we can do something.
So Flower Power didn't work. So what. We start again.

Be well.