Question by : Why did the counterculture of the 1960s start?
In class we are learning about the counterculture movement of the 1960s but my teacher hasn’t really told us much about why it began. I know it’s because a lot of the young people in America were against the war, but I feel like there has to be more.
If you have any insight or good websites that talk about this that would be great. Thanks!
Best answer:
Answer by Katy
Rebellion against the constricting social roles of the 50s.
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The counterculture of the 1960s began in the United States as a reaction against the conservative social norms of the 1950s, the political conservatism (and perceived social repression) of the Cold War period, and the US government’s extensive military intervention in Vietnam. The movement quickly spread to Europe and the rest of the world.
The major counter-culture group of the 60s was the Hippies. The Hippie Movement started in San Francisco, California and spread across most of the US during the late 60s and early 70s. Unlike the Beatniks, there were no real leaders of the Hippie Movement. The Beatniks were basically an intellectual movement that rejected the norms of society. The Hippies simply preferred an alternate lifestyle from the mainstream and had radical beliefs dealing with love, drug usage, war, and lifestyle. Hippies came from all different backgrounds but all were young and many came from wealthy families. Some rejected their parent’s lifestyle while others were simply outcasts of society and could only fit in with the Hippie population.
Timothy Leary became the spokesman for the Hippies concerning drug usage. He favored the use of LSD and his famous admonition to the youth of America was “tune in, turn on, and drop out.” Bob Dylan became the major symbol and spokesman of Hippie culture as well as other singers, like Janis Joplin.
~There was no “counterculture” “movement”, per se. “Counterculture” was the label imposed on those people who were different from, not part of or were resistant to and trying to change mainstream society.
During the sixties, young white middle class Americans had a lot of leisure time and no PlayStation. They read. They became aware, especially of social issues and perceived wrongs, and they tried to do something about it. There were many diverse and unrelated issues extant and groups began to form and coalesce around those issues. They hit the streets to protest and bring the issues to light and to enlist support and prompt social and legal change, and they tried to invoke change by other means. Those who refused to take part in mainstream society or be accomplices to perceived wrongs simply dropped out, but they were a tiny minority. Most tried to bring about change from within.
Colleges and universities played a leading role in the phenomenon. People went to school to learn, and learn they did. There was a push to force schools to adopt “relevant” curricula. “Relevant” was a big buzzword of the day. Instead of being taught the timeworn myths, legends and memetic algorithms that had been drummed into them since Kindergarten, they demanded to learn “the truth” and they learned how to research and read and analyze and conceptualize information and to form their own informed conclusions, especially in the fields of Political Science, Philosophy, History and Government. What they found and what they learned was appalling to them. They saw for the first time (perhaps being the only generation in American history to have done so) the Emperor Uncle Sam in his real clothes. The mantra on campus was “question everything and believe nothing without reliable proof and evidence”.
Some banners and causes around which they rallied were: black rights; segregation; women’s rights; the idiocy of nuclear proliferation (a ‘movement’ that had migrated from the UK); the insanity of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction); the environment; the lunacy of wasting the planet’s limited and finite non-renewable resources and the poisoning of the earth’s air, water and soil; the suicidal population explosion that was beginning to threaten mankind’s very existence and the foolish laws and religious mores banning or discouraging responsible reproduction birth control; gay rights; the interference by Uncle Sam in the internal affairs or sovereign, free and independent nations (they knew, for example, that it was CIA backed coups that had put repressive tyrants and corrupt despotic killers and madmen in charge like Saddam Hussein, Shah Reza Pahlavi, Ngo Dihn Diem, Castillo Armas, Carlos Branco, Augusto Pinochet, Papa Doc Duvalier, Mobutu Seko, Suharto and the juntas of Greece, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, to mention but a few) and they knew the lies that were being spewed out of Washington about them); They understood the truth behind US involvement in Vietnam and that FDR had promised Ho Chi Minh to help him and the Vietminh in their fight for independence, freedom from the French and Japanese, and how he double-crossed them at Tehran.
There had been a revolution in music underway in the UK. The Beatles lead the bubblegum crowd in that revolution, but the real innovations were in English Blues movement, with groups like Trinity and Steampacket spawning acts like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. The English blues scene was tremendous influence on those who adapted it in the States, like Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. By 1965, Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues and Jethro Tull were headliners across the Pond. The Beatles fought to keep up and produced “Sgt Pepper” in ’67, the same year that gave us “Surrealistic Pillow”, “The Doors”, “Are You Experienced”, “Days of Future Passed”, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”, Disreali Gears”, “Indian War Whoop” and “Songs From the Wood”. The music explosion was in full bloom in every direction and there would be no turning back. Art, theater and cinema were undergoing similar changes at the same time. Suddenly, the airways and movie houses and museums and galleries were filled with a diversity of product never seen before. TV struggled to catch up (and never did, although some “counterculture” driven shows like “All in the Family” and “The Smothers Brothers” and “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” were hugely successful.
The media noticed something was afoot and began to cover sensational aspects of “the Movement” like the street protests, the Civil Rights marches, the bar burnings, the environmental and anti-nuclear demonstrations. Of course, the Nightly News and the newspapers only covered that which would generate ratings and sell advertising minutes and inches, so the caricature was being painted even as the “movement” evolved.
With so many groups and so many causes, it was difficult to keep track of them all and some enterprising soul came up with the name “counterculture” thus lumping everyone together, creating the ridiculous notion that the groups were all connected and somehow working together. Nothing could be less true. Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver, for example, had very little respect for what Martin Luther King, Jr, Philip Randolph and James Farmer were doing and Malcom X condemned them all. Likewise, to most people with half a brain, Jerry Ruben and Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies (Youth International Party) were counter-productive jokes, harming everyone’s causes and creating the illusion that America’s youth was an addled collection of misfits and dropouts interested only in drugs, sex and rock and roll. David Dellinger and Tom Hayden may have gone on trial with Rennie Davis, Hoffman and Rubin, but they hardly shared political ideologies. Even the SDS condemned the Weathermen when Mark Rudd and Bernardine Dohrn split them off. Bob Dylan was a symbol of the “movement” and his music, some of it, was in tune with the “counterculture” philosophically, but he was no “leader” of any group within the “counterculture” An icon, yes, but not a leader. He himself said he wrote and performed to make money. The concept of producing art, including music, solely for monetary gain was anathema to many “counterculture” groups. That is why so many of the premier counterculture bands remained unknown, except to their followers and fans. Although the Weathermen took their name from a line in Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”), Dylan hardly supported, endorsed or condoned anything that the Weathermen stood for.
Gatherings like San Francisco’s “Summer of Love” and Woodstock did happen. They were part and parcel of the era and could not have happened without the “counterculture”, but they were isolated events, and the false mythology was already growing around them even as they were underway. Although symbols of the time, they were not representative of it. Many factions came together for the People’s March on Washington and the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. They came from all sorts of backgrounds and causes but they were hardly a cohesive group working for a common goal and purpose. Some were even sincere. Many (most?) were there for the ‘happening’ and it was a good party weekend. There were a lot of frauds that identified themselves with the “counterculture”. So many of them, in fact, that they were a “counterculture” in their own right.
Some of the drop-outs did think it was “hip” to not bathe, wear second hand and army surplus clothes, get stoned and turn on and tune out’. The name “hippie” was born and the power structure immediately latched onto the image, made a caricature of it and lumped the entire “counterculture” into that pejorative generalization. That is the image that survived. Yes, drugs were rampant and Berkley chemists did drive up and down the freeways inventing new drugs in the labs in their vans faster than the government could put them on the controlled substances lists. As has generally always been the case, musicians used and drugs found their way first into underground music and then mainstream top 40 songs. Influenced by their heroes and icon, many did turn on but not to the extent the mythology would have one believe. Many in the “counterculture” were drug free.
Parts of the “movement” live on in art, music, theater and clothing. The legacy latched onto by all too many is the sexual revolution and drug use. Our social awareness and activism seems to have died a premature and unnatural death. I was there, I was part of it and I miss it deeply and cannot understand where we failed, why we did not pass our intellectual curiosity, awareness, demand for truth and justice and dedicated activism on to our children. The complacency and acceptance that so appalled us has returned, stronger than ever. We made changes, some for the better and some for the worse. The change we wanted most, to get people aware, to make them want to be involved, to care about our fellow man/woman and to demand fairness, equality and justice for all, to demand accountability from those in power (in the economy as well as in government) and to thirst for the truth and to dig and research and question until we found some semblance of it, all pretty much died with the devil’s spawn of the sixties: the Disco Generation, the Me Generation and Generation X.