<<Counter culture is, of course, a different topic from existentialism. I've read Tom Wolf's book and liked it. But the national counter culture movement was really quite varied if we are going to include the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam war under that label. As I said in a previous post, C. Wright Mills' work was important. Lots of folk were reading their Marx quite seriously, particularly interpretations pulled through his period as a young Hegelian in the 1840s and as a political pundit.>>
In a nutshell the 60's was about not being shallow.
John, no one was reading Marx. They were reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, Jack Kerouac's Dharma bums, Ginsburg, Watts, Camus, Russell, Saul Alenski and intellectuals in general. The Man in a Gray flannel suit and organization man.
About people conforming without thinking.
Hesse says in Steppenwolf: "I enjoy staying at this clean little boarding house, but object to the blind conformity (almost all wrong, but that is a 45 year old memory) .
Or Thomas Mann's Tonio Kroger which I think, was an auto biography about how the intellectual comes in last and the shallow football star gets everything. Money, the girl and the status. So true today.
There were two primary populations in the counter culture movement. Those who had the security and self confidence to reject society (UC Berkeley and folks like rat) and those who society rejected. They were mixed up and that confused people.
Think about it. We almost crushed the fraternity and sorority system and supported Eugene Macarthy over Hubert Humphrey. |
