I have seen conservative commentators describing hippies as a bunch of retards who did not understand the need for morality.

What hippies actually believed is that if people love one another they will do the right thing by one another, and there will be no need for morality.

Is that workable? I have seen it work in some situations. At Burningman, there are over 20000 people, many of them naked, living in total anarchy, and everyone is good to everyone else. People I met there said that people weren’t ready for that much freedom. I responded that the way to become ready for something is by trying it out in small doses, and as ability to handle it improves increase the dose.

A Christian priest told me that the substance of the Biblical law is to teach us to love other people, and that commandments are rules by which this love can be accomplished. The question here to ask is, What do you mean by love? There are many different things that are considered to be love. With universal love we see compassion and understanding. With personal love we see passion and partiality. It is valid to extend universal love to everyone; it is valid to extend personal love to some.

Is morality necessary to that effect? I have definitely seen people do good things when they didn’t have traditional values, and I have seen people being hideously abusive in the name of morality. For as long as morality is practiced in a cruel way, that will alienate people who are against cruelty from morality. This will create a paradoxical situation in which the better people do not believe in morality and the worse people do.

My thought on this is as follows. If you can be trusted to do the right thing by the next person then you do not need morality; if you cannot then you do. An anarchist once told me that the options are either to treat people with respect or to submit to the law. It appears that there is a place for both love and morality, with different approaches appropriate to different people and at different times in their lives.

So no, the hippies weren’t retards. They had some quite profound ideas, and these are ideas that can be instructive for the rest of us. These ideas had a transformative effect on the way in which Christianity was practiced, enriching people’s experience and understanding of the faith.. They provided love in a faith that was meant to preach it but forgot it. And that is a significant contribution and one that deserves respect.