The Hippies vs. The Woke

Open vs. Neurotic

Openness to experience, or simply openness, is a basic personality trait denoting receptivity to new ideas and new experiences. It is one of the five core personality dimensions that drive behavior—known as the five-factor model of personality, or the Big 5. People with high levels of openness are more likely to seek out a variety of experiences, be comfortable with the unfamiliar, and pay attention to their inner feelings more than those who are less open to novelty.

Neuroticism, one of the Big 5 personality traits, is typically defined as a tendency toward anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and other negative feelings. All personality traits, including neuroticism, exist on a spectrum—some people are just much more neurotic than others. In the context of the Big 5, neuroticism is sometimes described as low emotional stability or negative emotionality.

— Psychology Today also here

Watching college campuses roiled by demonstrations, it is tempting to compare 2024 with the Hippie era. There are plenty of similarities, but there are also important differences. I claim that the stereotypical personality of the Hippie was high in openness. The stereotypical personality of today’s social justice activist is high in neuroticism.

Incidentally, you may have seen me mentioned by David Leonhardt in the New York Times about the campus protests. He cites my oppressor-oppressed axis to describe progressives and civilization-barbarism axis to describe conservatives. He says that campus administrators are caught in the middle. I think that scheme is actually a better fit for how people look at the Israel-Gaza conflict itself, but it also pertains to the protests.

Both in 1968 and 2024 there were campus protests that drew the attention of the media. In both cases, campus administrators were reluctant to crack down on disruptive protests.

Both in 1968 and 2024 there were radicals who denounced America and praised the the insurgents that most Americans thought of as bad guys—the Communist Vietcong in 1968 and Hamas in 2024. It should go without saying that the radicals who cheered the Communists were wrong on moral grounds. And the radicals who cheer on Hamas are wrong on moral grounds.

In 1968, the Communist-supporting radicals were at the fringe of the anti-war movement. John Lennon made that point, singing “But if you go carryin’ pictures of Chairman Mao, You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.”

Most of the 1960s anti-war protesters were not pro-Vietcong. They were upset with the sacrifices Americans were making and the casualties on both sides in a war that seemingly had no end. They wanted American policy to aim toward peace, even if this meant conceding that the war would not be won.

Much of mainstream America came to agree that the war was a terrible mess. They were tired of being lied to by President Johnson. They were tired of watching what was happening to their young men in a far-off jungle land. They were tired of South Vietnamese generals whose prowess was at staging coups rather than fighting the enemy. They were tired of the nightly television news that made the war seem grotesque and hopeless. Even Richard Nixon, the candidate of the more hawkish Republican Party, campaigned on a slogan of “Peace with Honor.”

In 2024, my sense is that the protesters are limited to the fringe that supports the bad guys. There is no broader peace movement, as far as I can tell. I could be wrong, but I suspect that the anti-Israel movement on campus is not as popular with the student body as the anti-war movement in 1968. For most people, sympathy for Hamas is too much of a stretch.

I also suspect that the anti-Israel movement is not going to gain a large following in the general public, the way that the anti-war movement gained a following in the Vietnam era. American lives are not being lost in the Middle East. Many Americans admire Israel and view it as a stalwart ally, which was not their perception of South Vietnam.

In less than a decade after 1968, the Hippies had blended into the rest of American society. Mainstream America adopted their music along with some of their style of dress and looser sexual norms. And the Hippies themselves found jobs, without taking political crusades into the work place.

I think that the Hippies were mostly healthy psychologically. Although some cults did form, and some factions were extremist in their goals and tactics, the overall Hippie phenomenon was not a cult and the extremists were a minority. Because its distinctive personality characteristic was high openness, it was aligned with free speech and with trying to persuade (the early anti-war actions on campus were “teach-ins” at which government officials were invited to debate anti-war faculty) rather than to cancel. People who were mostly straight could still be accepted by Hippies.

Because Hippies were not highly neurotic, the anti-war movement was able to do more than sprout protests on campuses. It was able to gain sympathy and support from the general public and engage successfully in the political process.

The social justice activists strike me as closer to being a cult than a movement. I think that the cult attracts people who are unhealthy psychologically. They have a lot of negative emotions, and the social justice ideology serves to validate and reinforce those emotions.

At the work place, they are increasingly being viewed as toxic and impossible to integrate. And perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part, but I doubt that their anti-Israel protests are winning many converts among the general public.

Noah Smith seems to agree with me.

Leftists would like to believe that the Palestine protests are reinvigorating their movement; instead, I think they represent a dead end that the movement won’t easily be able to recover from, no matter who wins the election in November.

substacks referenced above: @

Palestine is the end of the line for the New Left