Well everyone is greatly naive and plain old ignorant, yes? (I see some examples of that each time something like evolution or logic comes up on-list). The difference is that those of a tolerant philosophy (hippies, humanists, etc) acknowledge this while the pseudo-sophisticated clothe themselves in muscular scientism and fool themselves (and unfortunately, often others) about their theories and their fallibility, or so it seems to me in my own ignorance.
Growing up in India, I had a different view of "hippies", India being a destination for many who would fall within that group (and I would extend that to include the spiritual seeking type and some of the artists who came to Kalakshetra). They were often either ridiculed for their strange ways or considered a negative influence.
My own take, as noted, was different: I could see even from my primary education and the life and achievements of my previous generation (of Indians) that scientism and materialism (the attitude, not the philosophy) were at best a fashion and hardly met the claims of superiority implied by its practitioners. I could also see that these attitudes ill-served those who were in the underclass, in terms of their own desires and hopes and the contradictions within. The 'hippies' were to me what I would later read in Heidegger quoting Holderlin on memory:
Mnemosyne
We are a sign that is not read, We feel no pain, we almost have lost our tongue in foreign lands
With all their naivete, frills, ignorance, the hippies pointed to a more meaningful (to me) state of being, that all my analytical pursuits would lead me away from (unless I was very mindful of not forgetting the very ground, tongue, that I stood upon before projecting myself out of it).
In his autobiography, "Killing Time", the philosopher Paul Feyerabend hopes that all that is remembered and remains of him is not some philosophical declarations and technical papers, but 'love', that which he finds the most worthwhile and meaning-giving in his life (and I would include friendship, community, kindness, caring). Not platitudes or touchy-feely stuff, but that which we are born with before our Cartesian speculation can take wing -- that "brotherhood of man" which is "no mere phrase" "but a fact of life" (*).
That is what the 'hippies', at their best, embodied to me and taught me In short: "Don't be hatin" ;-). And I am glad that before I saw anything or anyone else from/of the West, I met with the hippies.
--ravi
(*) Full quote:
> When communist artisans associate with one another, theory,
> propaganda, etc., is their first end. But at the same time, as a
> result of this association, they acquire a new need – the need for
> society – and what appears as a means becomes an end. In this
> practical process the most splendid results are to be observed
> whenever French socialist workers are seen together. Such things as
> smoking, drinking, eating, etc., are no longer means of contact or
> means that bring them together. Association, society and
> conversation, which again has association as its end, are enough for
> them; the brotherhood of man is no mere phrase with them, but a fact
> of life, and the nobility of man shines upon us from their
> work-hardened bodies. -- Karl Marx, 1844 Manuscripts
Only the ignorant and naive ;-), I hope, will think that I am equating Marx's artisans above with hippies.