Hippies of the 1960s developed their own music, fashion, perspectives, and styles of life. Many traditional morals of the past drastically changed due to the open minds of hippies and their views on society. Because of the hippies, unmarried couples can now live together without being frowned upon, religious and cultural diversity has gained greater acceptance, and the message of peace is widely spread. The hippie movement had a large impact on today’s society. Before hippies there was a group of individuals who did not conform to society’s trends by expressing their own ideas, they were called the Beatniks. Jack Kerouac was a writer who made up the phrase “beat generation” to describe a group of struggling poets and writers who were simply tired of conforming …show more content…
In the 50’s people who did not conform would be branded a communist, but the beat culture believed if you didn’t conform you were hip and not brainwashed (Thomas). The beat generation wrote books, songs, and poetry as a form of expression. Beatniks participated in non-American religion, and commonly practiced Zen Buddhism (Thomas). Beatniks were the hipsters of their generation, and when the 60’s rolled around they formed into hippies who drastically impacted society. Hippies were individuals with a mindset much different than society’s, they did not conform to the orthodox ways and morals of the 1960’s. The movement started in San Francisco, a large group of hippies flocked to the corner of Haight Street and Ashbury Street, which came to be known as the Haight-Ashbury District (Saville). Hippies saw themselves as being misunderstood by society; they practiced their own types of fashion,