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The Hippies Book Analysis

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THE HIPPIES: A 1960S HISTORY BY JOHN The Hippies is a narrative of history that occurred in the 1960s. The society had been through the 1950s period that had ideas that deeply contrasted with the emerging group of youth who had come to societal awareness. As such, this created an upset in the society and led to the formation of hippie movement who more or less began reforming the community with their own set of views. The book documents these activities with an analysis of the campaigns and events that occurred in this period. Alienation of the white youth The 1960s was a period where most of the society was influenced by different radical restrictions of the law and other policies that surrounded the environment during that time. The government was dominant in shaping its policies which bordered on different extreme circumstances. The United States was involved in the Vietnam War and this created discomfort within the youth of the time. The white American youth deemed propagation of violence as an anti-social norm that the country had decided to indulge in. There was also a particular distrust of the government system. Reasonably, this furthered the alienation of the youth from the societal norms that pre-existed. In addition to the distrust, the white youth also had the view that the traditional modes of authority were inappropriate for the present society that the youth had grown into. They argued that politics misrepresented the values that the society should adopt. They insisted that politics was a game played by conventional adults. Drawing to this was the insistence that permanent civil and legal organizations were the cornerstone of ‘establishment’ culture which they fiercely rejected. They purported that the agencies were too materialistic and offered an immoral concept that was being hammered and forced down on the society. It was during this time that segregation of minority groups was a norm. African Americans and Hispanics were facing a lot of discrimination and violence against them. This angered the hippies. They were of the opinion that racial segregation was a cruel societal practice that eroded on the morality of peace in the society. They regarded the treatment of African Americans by the

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