Why did all the hippies give up hope?

*Idealist

Because they didn't have a real solution. They just protested, smoked weed, used psychotropic drugs, made love and thats all. There was an ideology behind everything, but for most of them, hippie movement was just an interesting thing to do at that moment, and later the interesting thing shifted and they started to work, to have a family and to earn money. Of course there were some frustrations when they were shifting from hippies to conformists.

If you want to stick to your ideas, you have to have a strong philosophical basis, resign yourself from the wealth, dare to live in isolation etc. For many it was just not worth it. Others stick to the ideas-way of life and were seen as freaks and outsiders. And I think that some of them slightly transformed-improved their ideas for more practical purposes and realized them - I think thats the best way.

The ones which gave up their hopes were sheeps. At first they followed hippie movement leaders (because that was the hot thing), and later they shifted to conformist living and started folowing the stereotypes because this was the safe way and the herd was goind that direction.

I will add here to what I just wrote in reply to "souched" (??) at the end of this thread, so please read that post as well, i won't repeat those ideas here ...

What I would add to you concerns your notion that somehow the Baby Boomers (who have been known as the Baby Boom Generation since they were born, not just "now") are "greatly responsible for the economic system we're mired in" -- Yes, we're definitely mired in an economic system, but one that was already entrenched long and well before Baby Boomers entered the work force, much less ran it. Baby Boomers have only been in positions of ostensible power in this economy for the past 20 years and, even then, only in some sectors and some positions. Yes, we had the first Baby Boomer President as of 1992 and ever since, but one of the awful truths of what this era has exposed is that CEOs run the government far more than the government runs CEOs. The lack of public financing of elections is the single biggest culprit - a cause that many Baby Boomers have fought to change – in how money buys our politics. And that preceded and eventually disillusioned many a Baby Boomer and once-upon-a-time hippie among us. Fighting for change and seeing that politicians of all stripes are eventually bought off by those who finance their campaigns with the rarest of exceptions is a key (not exclusive but key) factor in what led many to turn back instead to idealism on a local or small or homefront scale because fighting for real change on the societal level -- even though much change did happen but only a fraction of what was hoped for and envisioned -- began to feel to many like beating one's head against a brick wall.

But for every Baby Boomer who then got seduced, as Hardenburg rationalizes in the film, into doing whatever it took to find financial security and then sucked into materialism for its own sake, there is at least one (and i'd bet more than one) Baby Boomer who has maintained their idealism but most have channeled it into quiet work lives - in teaching or grassroots movements or into habits of recycling (I meant to add to my prior post that the environmental movement, as well as the anti-war and women's rights movements were significantly fed by hippie/boomer idealism - there was no such thing as recycling or widespread ecological awareness until this generation became active in its cause) and conservation, and intending (successfully or not) to raise a next generation. (And I wouldn't generalize about the outcomes of those rechannelings - in your generation as well as mine, there are plenty of new idealists as well as those who've bought into the notion they have to be millionaires by 30.) The media, alas, all bought out by corporate and materialistic forces these days, paint in broad strokes that feed simplistic images of whole movements.

Some Boomers like myself still struggle to hold idealism in the face of ever-more deception, of seeing leaders offer hope for change and then also "drink the koolaid" and succumb to the forces of capitalist elections (i.e., he [sic] who garners the most $$ -- and thus owes the most to his creditors -- wins).

When you hit 30 and realize you make much more money than you can spend, you realize that:

a) You didn't see the big picture when you were younger, and you find yourself doing stuff you never wanted to do(sacrificing time with family to make enough money to support them, letting go of friends who didn't change as you did, stop smoking weed and drinking every day, etc)
b) You worked your ass off, and now think you don't have to share what you earned
c) Your friends who are still poor, spent all their lives complaining about the system, while you were pulling the extra hours... And the taxes, oh my god, what they are doing with your taxes...

They say that if you were never a commie as a youngster, you have no heart, but if you're old and still a commie you have no brain.

Having been a part of that era in San Francisco I believe the Manson "family" contributed to this, as did the end of the Vietnam war. It is interesting to note, what the young people were doing in the film in rich people's homes was first done by the Manson family before the terrible murders. They called it, "creepy crawls".