Essay about The Counterculture - 899 Words

The Impact of the Hippie Counterculture of the 1960s The â€Å"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. One of the main effects that the hippies made is the appearance of the American society. The hippies wore bell bottom jeans and bright colored shirts usually tie-dyed.†¦show more content†¦These concert goers enjoyed no rules, drug use, sex, and loud rock music. Some of the best known artists from this concert were; Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who, The Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones, Sly the Family Stone, and Jefferson Airplane. Another one of the main parts of the hippie counterculture lifestyle was drug use. LSD and marijuana were the drugs most frequently used by the hippies in the 1960s. These drugs drew thousands to the hippie lifestyle and to their beliefs. Drugs were used to escape the traditional values of American society, and to see deeper into ones self. Timothy Leary, a psychologist at Harvard, is known for his experimentations with LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs. Leary would encourage his students and fellow faculty members to go on these psychedelic trips while he recorded their responses to the drugs. In 1966 LSD was made illegal in California then later in 1967 the Federal Government banned it in the United States. Even thought the drug was illegal it didn’t stop the hippies from using it. Many of these drug users died of overdosing, two of the most well known were musical artists Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. The counterculture rejected American values and lifestyles such as materialism and work. Many stopped working their jobs and joined communes where they shared property and attempted to share the work. Some who joined these communes were only â€Å"weekendShow MoreRelatedPositive and Negative Impacts of the Sixties Counterculture1532 Words   |  7 Pageslifestyles and radical beleifs were the shocking blow that American culture-- segregation, McCarthyism, unjust wars, censorship--needed to prove that some Americans still had the common sense to care for one another. The young people of the sixties counterculture movement were successful at awakening awareness on many causes that are being fought in modern American discourse. If not for the Revolution that the hippies began, political or social reform and the Peoples voice would be decades behind. WhileRead MoreThe Hippie Counterculture Movement1751 Words   |  8 PagesHippie Counterculture Flower child, a name that forms in the mind an image of an innocent child, denoted the youth of the mid-1960s. These youth, otherwise called the hippies, relied not so much on innocence, but instead sought freedom to distinguish the conformity the past generations held. Before these youth, the Beats or Beatniks from the Beat Generation spread throughout the Western Worlds around the 1950s. The Beats’ philosophy paralleled that of the hippies, however, their focus centeredRead MoreCounterculture Movement Essay1438 Words   |  6 PagesJohn Lennon of the famous rock band, The Beatles, once said, â€Å"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace†. This quote essentially defines the 1960s and the counterculture movement in America. 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With the passing of the act Americans questioned both preservation andRead MoreA Brief Analysis Of the Counterculture Movement of the 1960s2857 Words   |  12 Pagessense, the counterculture refers to the culture, especially of young people, with values or lifestyles in opposition to those of the established culture in the dictionary. Until its appearance in 1969 in Theodore Roszaks influential book, The Making of a Counter Culture, counterculture, written as one word or two, has become the standard term to describe the cultural revolt of the young. Although distinct countercultural undercurren ts exist in all societies, here the term counterculture refers toRead More The History Of Lsd And Its Effects On The American Counterculture1458 Words   |  6 Pagestraveled around the US, going to concerts and speaking about the spiritual benefits of LSD. Through is philosophical speeches and active participation in LSD experimentation; Dr. Timothy Leary helped lead the American counterculture movement of the mid sixties. The counterculture movement was born at almost the exact same time as LSD was hitting the black-market. For the first time in history, average Americans could trip on LSD for as cheap as one dollar per hit. The LSD of the black-market wasRead MoreEasy Rider and the Phenomenon of the 1960s Counterculture Teenpic3130 Words   |  13 Pagesphenomenon in cinema known as the counterculture youth-pic. This trend in production started in the late 1960s as a result of the economic and cultural influences on the film industry of that time. The following essay looks at how those influences helped to shape a new genre in the film industry, sighting Easy Rider as a main example, and suggests some possible reasons for the relatively short popularity of the genre. The standard story of the counterculture begins with an account of the social