Culture: The Counter Culture Movement Of The 1960s

“A stratum of American and western European culture that began in the mid-1960s. Its adherents, mostly white, young, and middle class, adopted a lifestyle that embraced personal freedom while rejecting the ethics of capitalism, conformity, and repressive sexual mores.” (Gustainis, Counterculture) Art is expression, a delivery of meaning and allure. It comes in many forms and is used in many ways. Coexisting with society is a “no holds banded” type of counterculture. In reaction to society’s dress codes, standards, and unwritten laws, a counterculture of tattoos, piercings, unusual hair-styles and clothing styles embellishing in every city, fashion runway and popular magazine, and is spreading quickly to the bodies and closets of today’s youth. The counter culture movement of the 1960s was a cultural revolution that changed the once conservative American mind into an extreme, liberal mind that now supported radical ideas such as protests, dropping out of school, drugs and sex. The counter culture movement was established by individuals who had an anti-conformist approach, they sought to expand social boundaries ant to trial the authority that once existed in the United States. The old ideas of religion, philosophy, rivalry, materialism, and education were slowly fading, for new and modest ideas such as love and peace soon became the central dogma of the hippies. No longer believing in the ideas of the Christian church, the hippies became more interested and familiar with the study of astrology. Their philosophy on life was to live freely and in the harmony of nature, without the everyday materials and concerns most people had for they believed that society was too much concerned. This idea, that society chooses to conform and accep...

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...rugs, Kesey’s experience shines in the novel, and it is noticed that what he experienced and witnessed, is a message to the reader. As a reader, one may feel historically educated in a sense about what life was like during that era. During the 1960s, America was going through many changes and social movements. The issues of the counter culture movement of the 1960s were the most fundamental obstacles in achieving the highest ideals for America’s identity. The new lifestyle of a hippie, the idea of power in art, and political activity were all vital to the new American identity that was formed in the 1960s. Without those issues, there would have been no reason to alter the American identity and we might not have the same identity as America’s today. Our identity today is all thanks to the counterculture movement and the changes America experienced during that time.