lady your delusional.

mike, chicago, il

There's just that wee problem of what to do with people like Hitler, isn't there? The love-peace-all-is-wonderful attitude may be fun for a while, and may look comfortable, but just like the '60s, it doesn't last. And the most wretched people I know are those who tried to carry those attitudes with them.

Mary McLemore, Pike Road, Alabama, USA

It's one thing to say that you believe in questionning authority or wanting to save the world and an entirely different one to actually do it. The statistics don't surprise me, with today's awareness of global warming, famine, carbon footprints etc. who would ever freely admit "No, I do not want to save the world"? The 18% who have openly specified "No" should be applauded for their honesty.

SM, Nottingham,

Sorry, I really liked the 50's better except that minorities didn't have it fair. But if we could go forward to the rest of the values of the 50's, I would be very happy.

Mary Contrary, Salem, USA

My particular favourite aspect of the end of 1950s values is that I no longer have to eat solely at predefined mealtimes, at a table, with the family, using a knife and fork. I am now able to graze from the fridge all day whilst watching Trisha.

I'm so liberated.

Eugene Fickles, Bury, UK

Every day violent incidents of one sort or another are reported in the news. Graphic violence is routinely portrayed in films and tv dramas, even The Bill and other pre-watershed soaps. Even if not resorting to physical violence, people - especially young and middle-aged men - hurl abuse at those who happen to upset them, on the roads for example. Yet we're said to have become a kinder nation? What nonsense.

And, except on a sandy beach washed clean by the tide, what on earth's the attraction of leaving your shoes off, with the risk of cutting your feet or stepping in some kind of mess?

Barry, Wallington,

I was unaware that love was a concept of the 1960's. I thought it was about 2000 years old. Silly me, not knowing my history.

Juli, Chicago, IL , USA

Mary Ann how right you are. In the early fifties the nails that stuck out were really hammered down - I know I was there – a timid non-conformist confronted by repressive authoritarian bullies. Beware! They are still with us, human nature being what it is. Peace! Yours ENTJ-fully.

Derek, Lewes, UK

Having grown up in the fifties and turning "hippie" in the late sixties I have a good perspective of both eras. The hippie movement was the worst thing to ever happen to America and the west. Going from the uptight decency of the 1950's to the drug ravaged and morally rudderless 1960's was a trip down the road to nihilism. Look around you now and what do you see? Kids living in one parent households growing up with little or no moral guidance.....no incentives to excel at anything....parents that continue to propagate the low moral boundaries and excesses of the 60's culture. A society in rapid decline because we don't believe in those things anymore that bind societies together. We're multy-culty and politically correct and so afraid of being judgemental. Don't get me wrong...the 50's wern't perfect but they were a universe better than the 60's. The only real positives I can state about the 1960's is that the music was good. The 50's wern't bad either for music but the 60's...GROOVY!

Harry L., Pikesville, Maryland, USA

Some people never seem to grow up. being stuck in the drug, drink and political intoxications of their youth. That is an unwelcome affliction for the responsible members of society to bear, and leaves future generations to pick up the bills for the self-indulgent recklessness of the 'forever young'. People looking back to this time will marvel at the hubris at those who have wrecked so much whilst under the delusion that they are creating a better world (in their own image of course).

Bernard, Norwich, UK

Mary Ann, stick to politics or whatever you normally write about. This is a non-article. We are not "old hippies" here in the western US, however you're welcome to come and visit us in the land of the real man. We like little Brit gals.

Kirk, Spokane, WA, USA

No. They simply swapped one kind of stultifying conformity for another. The great Frank Zappa realised this 40 years ago and correctly predicted how the hippy movement would pave the way for the corporate guys to sell us a whole bunch of useless stuff we think we need in order to get laid.

Ben, London,

Society has indeed become more liberal, in the sense of more tolerant of behaviour that would have been unacceptable previously, but I don't see a lot of evidence of an increase in peace and love.

Andy, Perth,

Sounds great! But you have to take the rough with the smooth. Give me free love and individual freedom any day. But we do need proper border controls (for the sake of the environment in this country as much as anything else), we do need discipline in schools and we do need to be hard nosed about tax and benefits. No one ideal or movement has all the answers.

Richard, Worcester, England

Come now. I don't believe that 82% of the population want to save the planet. I can believe that they want the planet to be saved by somebody else, but that's an entirely different thing.

It is of course nice when people keep telling you that being self-indulgent puts you on the side of the angels. Just look for example at how the French have come to believe that the institutional discrimination of subsidies is really "social justice" rather than the exact opposite.

What would have been newsworthy would have been a survey which revealed that people had turned their backs on such a pleasant approach to life. But that's not going to happen....

Ian Kemmish, Biggleswade, UK

Free love was just men's way of getting what they wanted. But apart from that, I doubt any of today's fashion conscious folk are actually hippies. Being hippy is more than promsicuous sex and a down-dressed fashion sense. It is, as is pointed out above, about questioning authority, but that incldues the media and business as well as the Steta.

Being a consumer, a rampant consumer of market goods, does not a hippy make. The hippy movement, if it can be called as such, was a forerunner of the punk movement. Times and people change, but the message is timeless.

Not many of the people that visit our high streets today, that grumble about paying for eco-friendly sytems of waste disposal, that value that office job more than time with family, or the car it has to be said, are hippies.

Fashion may have torn the heart out of so-called ethnic clothing (I still buy made in Nepal and India), but it has not been able to replicate the ideologies. And non-violence now, is a matter for religion.

Jennifer Hynes, Plymouth, England

In other words we now live in never-never land.

eddie reader, birmingham, uk

"Three quarters of us now agree with sex before marriage... 48 per cent believe in questioning authority."

That's quite sad, actually.

BH, Nottingham,

A very colourful , upbeat and nonconventional write-up.I'm born a "60 boomer" and was fascinated during my prime teens by the culture and life styles of "flower children". They lived a bohemian style of life, with a iconoclastic, rebellious attitude towards societal norms, conventions and moral strictures. Hippie culture or perhaps counter culture brought with it, a youth movement of beatniks, they were anti-nukes, opposing war and nuclear arms race. They personified a genteel, flavoured ideology of love, peace and freedom. Such culture brought about world wide fusion of rock, pop, country music , R&B with living in communes.However the flip side of their way of life, brought about incessant use of psychedelic drugs, marijuana, liberated sex , doping and a sense of hereticism.Yet, somewhere in our heart, we all love to enjoy the freedom ,lead a bohemian life style, and are inborn "hippies" or products of flower children.Our love for nature and greenery, symbolises this trait.

Sanjeev Dheer, New Delhi, India