To be clear, I am sympathetic to some aspects of the hippie movement. I am strongly aware of changes which need to happen in our society. I am not counter-cultural so much as pro-evolution. I can’t use the word progress because it has been destroyed by the fucking hippies. And I get the importance of exploration and experimentation. What I DON’T get is absolute solipsistic selfishness masquerading as something else.
What prompts this was reading up on Courtney Love. She was in two Milos Forman movies, and I realized I didn’t know much about her, so I looked her up. This is what Wikipedia has to say about her childhood:
Love was born Courtney Michelle Harrison[a] on July 9, 1964 in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Linda Carroll (née Risi) and Hank Harrison, a publisher and road manager for the Grateful Dead.[3][4] Love’s godfather is the founding Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh.[5][6] Her mother, who was adopted as a child, was later revealed to be the biological daughter of novelist Paula Fox.[7][8] Love’s great-grandmother was screenwriter Elsie Fox.[9] Love is of Cuban, English, German, Irish, and Welsh descent.[10]
Love spent her early years in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco until her parents’ 1969 divorce, after which her father’s custody was withdrawn when her mother alleged that he had fed LSD to her as a toddler,[11][12] which he denied.[13] Love’s mother, who was studying to be a psychologist, had her in therapy by the age of two.[3] In 1970, her mother moved the family to the rural community of Marcola, Oregon, where they lived along the Mohawk River,[14] while her mother completed her degree at the University of Oregon.[15] She described her parents’ household as being full of “hairy, wangly-ass hippies running around naked [doing] Gestalt therapy. My mom was also adamant about a gender-free household: no dresses, no patent leather shoes, no canopy beds, nothing.”[16] Love was adopted by her then-stepfather, Frank Rodriguez.[14] He and her mother had two daughters and a son who died in infancy of a heart defect when Love was ten; they also adopted a boy.[17]Love attended a Montessori school in Eugene, where she struggled academically and had trouble making friends.[18][19] At age nine, a psychologist noted that she exhibited signs of autism.[16][18][20]
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In 1972, Love’s mother divorced Rodriguez, remarried, and moved the family to New Zealand.[21] There, she enrolled Love at Nelson College for Girls, from which Love was eventually expelled.[22][23] Love’s mother sent her back to the United States in 1973, where she was raised in Portland, Oregon[24] by her former stepfather and other family friends.[25][26] During this time, her mother gave birth to two of Love’s other half-brothers, Tobias and Daniel.[14] At age fourteen, Love was arrested for shoplifting a T-shirt from a Woolworth’s,[27] and was sent to Hillcrest Correctional Facility, a juvenile hall in Salem, Oregon.[19][28] She was then placed in foster care until she became legally emancipated at age sixteen.[12] She supported herself by working illegally as a topless dancer[29][30] at Mary’s Club in downtown Portland[31] adopting the last name “Love” to conceal her identity; she later adopted “Love” as her surname.[14] She also worked various odd jobs, including picking berries at a farm in Troutdale, Oregon,[32][33] and as a disc jockey at a gay disco.[34] During this time, she enrolled at Portland State University, studying English and philosophy.[35][36] Love has said that she “didn’t have a lot of social skills,”[37] and that she learned them while frequenting gay clubs and spending time with drag queens.[38]