<<

<B: Well, I will admit that "Back to the Earth", "Down with the Draft", and hurrah free love and LSD, and Woodstock etc. did all happen together in the late 60's. But I think the initial organizing principle was the VN war and the draft and the fallout out from that reached over into other areas of our culture.>> K: No, there were no initial organizers. The precursor's were Gertrude Stein's and the French folks (30's), San Francisco and Greenwich Village beatniks (50's), and Jack Kerouac and the UC gang of Ginsberg and Savio 50/60's. All wonderfully recreated in MTV's Daria (my favorite personality after Bugs Bunny).

B: <<By "existential' I assume you do not mean some organized philosophy that took over the culture, but rather several dilfferent trends and coalitions that swept away 50's approaches (not to mention the "pill's" technical contribution to the sexual revolution that was underway as well).>>

K: Existentialism, is nothing more than a rising of consciousness. An awakening, like Zen. A state of mind and awareness.

And as Marshall Mcluhan would have said. It makes sense it was the beatnik artists of North beach in SF and Greenwhich village, who first engaged it in (in this country) as they are trained to "see".