August 11

I was out practicing guitar this afternoon, midway down St. George Street on the U of Toronto campus.

Dressed, as always, in “Garcia-wear,” i.e., a t-shirt, jeans and sandals, with my long hair flowing in the breeze.

Looking, that is, like a fine hippie.

Two teenage boys, out of high school for the summer, came riding up the sidewalk on their bikes, screwing around about ten yards in front of me. (The street has explicit bike paths adjacent to the curb in both directions, but they still needed to use the sidewalk. Illegally.)

And as the “alpha biker” rides past me, just for fun he says:

“Get a job.”

Because, obviously, a long-haired guy out playing guitar on a beautiful Saturday afternoon must be some sort of drain on society, eh?

Of course, being just a high-school kid, his idea of a “real job” is probably just stocking shelves at The Gap, or some other McWay of earning money for a new iPod.

I wasn’t even busking—which itself is uncontracted entertainment, i.e., a legitimate “job,” not to be confused with begging. (That difference is well understood in Europe, even if often missed in North America.) Rather, I was simply practicing for an upcoming gig ... for which I will indeed be paid. Besides, since when is “rising folk/rock star” not a job? For that matter, so is “drug dealer.”

As a Comp Sci Ph.D. candidate who’s doing his research in robotics at the U of T said to me afterwards, when such “insights” come from high-schoolers, they’re likely either based in a blind rebellion against authority, or on something deeper (and more sinister).

My guess is the latter—‘cause, since when am I an authority figure?—and also that the overgrown rugrat in question (i) learned that bigoted (i.e., “hairist”) attitude from his parents (esp. his father), and that (ii) he’ll carry the same prejudices into adulthood and his career in middle-management or the like. And there, his bigotry will actually be “good for the company,” in easily weeding out undesirable/unreliable employees who cannot in any case ever be presented to the public as appropriate representatives of the corporation. (Ask me why I have no wish to ever again “have a job” in that kind of intolerant, prejudiced short-hair environment.)

In between now and embarking on that “valuable contribution to society” career, though, he’ll surely make a fine misogynistic, conformist-mentality frat boy. Because hippie-phobia, homophobia, misogyny and racism are not at all so far apart as you might like to imagine.

With the absence of “hippie rights” groups, you can still be a hairist in today’s polite society and (wrongly) consider yourself to be better than the explicit racists in the world. But at its basis it’s all just in-groups and negatively stereotyped out-groups, i.e., there’s no meaningful psychological difference between racism and hairism.

Yes, I realize that I choose to look this way, whereas blacks (etc.) have no choice in the color of their skin. But, when you try to marginalize or otherwise crush the spirit of someone simply because he’s creatively expressing his individuality, that’s actually worse than mere racism.

Like the black man in Vegas said, “They’re taking away the most important right. The freedom of expression.”

What separates us from the animals isn’t the color of our skin—there are plenty of black, white, and even black-and-white animals, after all. There have also been plenty of white-skinned slaves in the history of the world, e.g., in ancient Rome, where Greeks were kept as forced labor.

Rather, what makes us uniquely human is our individuality—the ability to go consciously against the “herd”—and our intelligence and degree of creativity (even just in tool usage, never mind in art and science). If you’re just using your faculty of reason to rationalize going along with the in-group crowd rather than living as a creative individual ... you might as well be a dumb animal, useful at least for your meat, if not for your brains.

That creativity and independent reasoning and freedom of expression is exactly what is being embodied by non-conformist individuals such as myself ... and that’s also what is then being discriminated against by others who can only see a one-dimensional, negative stereotype where a real person exists.

A person, too, who has already contributed more to the betterment of the world than some snot-nosed, bigoted, might-as-well-be-racist teenage rugrat on a bicycle ever will, if I do say so myself.

Thankfully, the hippie community knows better than to judge people for how they look. Unless, of course, you’re a punk sporting a mohawk, as one such mohawk-punker guy observed on tour with the Dead:

It seems to me like most of what I’ve heard about [the friendliness of the Deadhead community] is not true because we’ve gotten a lot of nasty comments, nasty looks, because of the way we look.

It’s like people will be open-minded towards you if you look like you belong at a Grateful Dead show, but if you don’t look like you belong, then you get treated just like people treat you anywhere else where you don’t belong.

Apparently it’s, you know, how you look, you know, if your dreadlocks are the right length, if your skirt’s baggy enough.

This is the last place I expected to be shunned because of the way I look.

‘Cause even with “peace, love and grooviness” hippies, you’ve still gotta “dress to fit in.”

In-groups and out-groups, my friend. In-groups and out-groups. That will never change.