Counterculture In America

Around the same time within the late 1960’s, a new hippie movement was forming, which was often described as a counterculture.

The 1960s was crammed full of many impacting events and important figures. From Hitchcock releasing one of the greatest thrillers of all time, Psycho, to Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death, to the infamous Woodstock festival. This era changed history completely and made the United States think twice about its youth. Events of the 1960s are still impacting our country as we know it today. The sudden pull from the conservative ‘50s changed America’s views on all aspects of life, including fashion, entertainment, and lifestyles.

The whole hippie culture all together was totally against social norms, what society wanted to see, how everyone else lived, and what they believed in. The hippie culture’s main moto was “make love, not war”. They were strongly against war and the Vietnam War, which was going on during the same time the hippie culture was popular. They thought that everyone should have acceptance of the universe. They wanted to see change in the world, global

With the overwhelming amount of Levittown houses, the obsession to obtain the perfect American “ideal family” as seen on TV and the unspoken agreement to fear any and all foreign ideas and values, the 1950s were revealed to be a decade of prosperity, conformity and consensus. Just ten years later the atmosphere in America was shockingly different; the 1960s were a decade of turbulence, protest and disillusionment due to the ongoing struggle for civil rights, arising feminism, and the Vietnam War.

This thematic standpoint in return provides ground for a second major theme; the 1960s was home to the birth of civil rights movements and forever changed the American idea of the status quo. To a large extent, it is agreeable that that the 1960s serves as the era that led to activism in the US. Anderson is able to confirm and strengthen his standpoint by the fact that it was during one of the greatest milestones of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, that for the first time in the history of the US, the government was subjected to criticism and attacks against their “ways”. This can be evidenced by the fact that Americans, which were majority college students, took to the streets to protest government action. At the time, the policies and actions put forth by the government were seen to be very secretive and wrong. Citizens were hastily informed about the need to stop the spread of communism at the expense of capitalism. Not only were government policies seen as corrupt, the government had kept the American society in the dark concerning the actual situation in Vietnam. There seemed to be no cost that was worth retreating from Vietnam. Draft calls were constantly increasing and the war itself began to result in federal expenditures, deficits, and inflationary pressures ( Anderson 90). For some Americans, the war not only damaging, but unfair. Mexican Americans were the poorest and

The 1960s Hippie movement was a major point in the American history. In the 1960s a certain class of young people associated their lifestyles with the ideas of freedom, peace, and love. Hippies acted against white upper middle class lifestyle because they thought it was based on the wrong ideology. Hippies were against consumerism and American suburban life of the late 1950s and early 1960s was embodied in itself the idea of consumerism. Hippies, on the other hand, felt better about communal life with equal distribution of social goods. Traditional “bigger share” and consumerist greed as concepts of American society were despised by Hippies.

When one looks back on the frenetic 1960s, conservative sentiments aren’t usually the first thing to come to mind. Yet, while the New Left and the radical counterculture were reshaping cultural ideals, it was the New Right who emerged from the 1960s as a viable political force. The New Left can be categorized as a broad, largely youthful, movement with the goal to challenge various social norms and to institute a “participatory democracy”. Moreover, the New Left was “New” in a sense that they differed from the labor-centered liberal elites at the time; insisting on creating larger, more radical changes to society. On the other hand, the New Right was a largely grassroots movement aimed to restore traditionalist values from the “Eastern Establishment.” The New Right was “New” in a sense that it revitalized conservative hope at a time when those hopes looked mighty bleak. When analyzing the wildly different outcomes of the two movements, it becomes apparent that the New Right’s political-oriented manner to achieve their goals proved to be the decisive factor in maintaining long-term stability; something the confrontational New Left did not have the resources to achieve from the outset.

The Hippie Counter Culture began in 1960. The hippie era was influenced more by personal happiness in which books, music, and fashion followed as result of their personification of a blissful society. Hippies did not care what others thought of them and their motto was “if it feels good, do it”. Hippies were seeking a utopian society. They participated in street theater and listened to psychedelic rock. As part of their culture they embraced more open sexual encounters amongst each other in their community and believed in use of psychedelic drugs which consisted of marijuana and LSD. The fashion choice that hippies dressed in was due to set them apart from the mainstream society. They choose to buy their clothing from thrift shops and flea markets (Haddock, 2011). Clothing choices are described as “brightly colored, ragged clothes, tie-dyed t-shirts, beads, sandals (or barefoot), and jewelry” (Haddock, 2011, para 7). Hippies also referred

The Hippie Movement changed the politics and the culture in America in the 1960s. When the nineteen fifties turned into the nineteen sixties, not much had changed, people were still extremely patriotic, the society of America seemed to work together, and the youth of America did not have much to worry about, except for how fast their car went or what kind of outfit they should wear to the Prom. After 1963, things started to slowly change in how America viewed its politics, culture, and social beliefs, and the group that was in charge of this change seemed to be the youth of America. The Civil Rights Movement, President Kennedy’s death, new music, the birth control pill, the growing illegal drug market, and

Following the post-war period in America, the youth of the baby-boom generations began to exercise a growing influence onto the political process and culture of the time, paving the way for the emergence of a "counterculture", that challenged traditional American values and beliefs, as well as a vision that encompassed ideas of social justice and the "liberation" of oppressed groups from limitations imposed on them by American society. This movement not only sought to do away with social injustices but with societal norms and the American middle-class lifestyle. The counter-culture expressed its disdain for social conformity to traditional values through flamboyant clothing, and widespread use of drugs such as Marijuana, an example of how

The World War II. ended, soldiers came back as a national heroes and the United States, turned into a Superpower, were looking into a bright future. Years between 1950 and 1960 represent the economic prosperity and technological boom for most of the Americans. Wages increased and people were moving from the cities to the suburbs, where they tried to pursue their American dream. Families with two or three kids, a car and a dog lived in almost every house in the suburbs. Every morning, the husband went to work, kids to school and the wife stayed at home, cleaned it and cooked for the family as soon as they came back.

The “hippies” of the 1960s had many effects on the American society. The visual appearance and lifestyle of the hippies were in sharp contrast to the conservative nature of the older generation, which defined them as a counterculture. The hippie lifestyle was based on free love, rock music, shared property, and drug experimentation. They introduced a new perspective on drugs, freedom of expression, appearance, music, attitudes toward work, and held a much more liberal political view than mainstream society.

The Sixties were a time of major change in United States society. We had reached beyond modernity with technology, consumerism, and the youth leading us to the suburbs of discontent. According to Hugh Heclo, “There came surge of personal discontent and social self-questioning that would constitute the great awakening of the 1960s.” He goes on to argue that people no longer accepted the status quo and from the counter culture groups we have studied in class this is evident. People were more concerned with morals and institutional openness in order to create a better vision of the world than the traditional ideals of the Cold War era. Heclos’ main argument is that this vision is the legacy of the Sixties is the tendency for peoples to question their governments’ practices, in the name of a more egalitarian society. I agree with his assertions and can see proof in the Yippee movement, Students for a democratic society, and Young Americans for Freedom. The counterculture shows how action was taken to restructure the government in their own way in order to help the newly oppressed. While the groups do not exist in the same way today, the actions they took made a lasting impression on the fabric of society and government.

The time period in which this counterculture movement occurred is very important. In the 1950's, middle-class American life was focused on consumerism. After World War II, the nation was experiencing economic prosperity. Most families were moving into homes in the suburbs.

Counterculture had a phenomenon in the 1960’s unlike any other. It impacted the lifestyles and the mentality of those living in this period due to the way it resisted the rigidity and hypocrisy that surrounded the bourgeois life. Typical conservative values and ideas were presented with direct contradictions that included drugs and sexual advances. But most importantly, the attraction to this concept of counterculture was due to the fact it acted as a gateway to a freer world. The idea of living a structured life, with security and abiding by institutions was not a priority anymore. Counterculture brought this sense of escape from this life. As a result, a battle began within individuals who embraced these new countercultural values but