Counterculture - Western (1960s and 1970s) Counterculture

Western (1960s and 1970s) Counterculture

In the United States, the counterculture of the 1960s became identified with the rejection of conventional social norms of the 1950s. Counterculture youth rejected the cultural standards of their parents, especially with respect to racial segregation and initial widespread support for the Vietnam War, and, less directly, the Cold War — with many young people fearing that America's nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, coupled with its involvement in Vietnam, would lead to a nuclear holocaust.

In the United Kingdom, the counterculture of the 1960s was mainly a reaction against the social norms of the 1940s and 1950s, although "Ban the Bomb" protests centered around opposition to nuclear weaponry.

As the 1960s progressed, widespread tensions developed in American society that tended to flow along generational lines regarding the war in Vietnam, race relations, sexual mores, women's rights, traditional modes of authority, and a materialist interpretation of the American Dream. White, middle class youth — who made up the bulk of the counterculture — had sufficient leisure time, thanks to widespread economic prosperity, to turn their attention to social issues. These social issues included support for civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights movements, and a rejection of the Vietnam War. The counterculture also had access to a media which was eager to present their concerns to a wider public. Demonstrations for social justice created far-reaching changes affecting many aspects of society. Hippies became the largest countercultural group in the United States.

"The 60s were a leap in human consciousness. Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, Mother Teresa, they led a revolution of conscience. The Beatles, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix created revolution and evolution themes. The music was like Dalí, with many colors and revolutionary ways. The youth of today must go there to find themselves."

Rejection of mainstream culture was best embodied in the new genres of psychedelic rock music, pop-art and new explorations in spirituality. Musicians who exemplified this era include The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Cream, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, and, in their early years, Chicago. New forms of musical presentation also played a key role in spreading the counterculture, with large outdoor rock festivals being the most noteworthy. The climactic live statement on this occurred from August 15–18, 1969, with the Woodstock Music Festival held in Bethel, New York — with 32 of rock's and psychedelic rock's most popular acts performing live outdoors during the sometimes rainy weekend to an audience of half a million people. (Michael Lang stated 400,000 attended, half of which did not have a ticket.) It is widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history — with Rolling Stone calling it one of the 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll. According to Bill Mankin, “It seems fitting… that one of the most enduring labels for the entire generation of that era was derived from a rock festival: the ‘Woodstock Generation’.”

Sentiments were expressed in song lyrics and popular sayings of the period, such as "do your own thing", "turn on, tune in, drop out", "whatever turns you on", "Eight miles high", "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll", and "light my fire". Spiritually, the counterculture included interest in astrology, the term "Age of Aquarius" and knowing people's signs. This led Theodore Roszak to state "A eclectic taste for mystic, occult, and magical phenomena has been a marked characteristic of our postwar youth culture since the days of the beatniks." Even actor Charlton Heston contributed to the movement, with the statement, "Don't trust anyone over thirty," in the 1968 film Planet of the Apes; the same year, actress and social activist Jane Fonda starred in the sexually-themed Barbarella. Both actors opposed the Vietnam War during its duration, and Fonda would eventually become controversially active in the peace movement.

The counterculture in the United States lasted roughly from 1964 to 1972 — coincident with America's involvement in Vietnam — and reached its peak in 1967, the "summer of love". Unconventional appearance, music, political activism, public protests, drugs, communitarian experiments, and sexual liberation were hallmarks of the sixties counterculture — most of whose members were young, white and middle-class.

In 1967 thousands of young people flocked to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. The counterculture lifestyle integrated many of the ideals and indulgences of the time: peace, love, harmony, music, and mysticism. Meditation, yoga, and psychedelic drugs were embraced as routes to expanding one's consciousness. In Toronto, Canada, the Yorkville district served as a kind of Haight-Ashbury North, serving as another major hippie and musical crossroads. In Quebec, the Front de libération du Québec was in a quest for an independent socialist Quebec during the 1960s to early 1970s. The group, an example of some of the countercultures seeking to disrupt society, resorted to bombings, kidnappings and murder in order to try achieve their quest.

The movement divided the United States population: To some Americans, these attributes reflected American ideals of free speech, equality, world peace, and the pursuit of happiness; to others, they reflected a self-indulgent, pointlessly rebellious, unpatriotic, and destructive assault on America's traditional moral order. Authorities banned the psychedelic drug LSD, restricted political gatherings, and tried to enforce bans on what they considered obscenity in books, music, theater, and other media. Parents argued with their children and worried about their children's personal safety, while the children worried about the world's future. Some adults accepted elements of the counterculture, while others became estranged from sons and daughters.

The counterculture collapsed circa 1973, and many have attributed two major reasons: First, the most popular of its political goals — civil rights, civil liberties, gender equality, environmentalism, and the end of the Vietnam War — were accomplished (to at least a significant degree), and its most popular social attributes — particularly a "live and let live" mentality in personal lifestyles (the "sexual revolution") — were co-opted by mainstream society. Second, a decline of idealism and hedonism occurred as many notable counterculture figures died, the rest settled into mainstream society and started their own families, and the "magic economy" of the 1960s gave way to the stagflation of the 1970s — the latter costing many middle-class Americans the luxury of being able to live outside conventional social institutions. The counterculture, however, continues to influence social movements, art, music, and society in general, and the post-1973 mainstream society has been in many ways a hybrid of the 1960s establishment and counterculture — seen as the best (or the worst) of both worlds.