The Counterculture Movement Of The 1960s A Study Of The Hippie Culture In The U.S.A

In both academia and general public, the Sixties are often viewed as the most turbulent, most confusing, and most eventful times of the 20th-century America. The long decade was almost an endless pageant of political and cultural protests, beginning with the Civil Rights Movement, continuing with the New Left, the Counterculture and the Feminist Movements, and, finally, culminating in the nationwide Anti-Vietnam-War Movement. Like tidal waves rolling forward with irresistible force, these movements came along one after another, some questioning the hypocrisy of American liberty and equality, and some challenging the fundamental values of American mainstream culture. While they did not shatter the roots of American political and social system, these inter-related and oftentimes overlapping social movements did hit a hard blow to the value system of American mainstream society, leaving behind them many disturbing questions to be addressed and numerous deep scars to heal.Of all the movements taking place in the 1960s, the Counterculture probably wrecked the greatest havoc to the dominant value system of the US, both in scope and depth. If the Civil Rights and the Feminist Movements took the Establishment to task over its discriminatory position on racial and gender issues, their criticism and denunciation was made largely within the framework of existing American political and legal system. In other words, for both Blacks and Feminists, the problem was not so much with the political and cultural beliefs of the system itself as with the way liberty and equality were defined and delivered. Consequently, rather than fighting to change the beliefs and values themselves, they demanded for inclusion of all citizens in the system, regardless of race or gender. By contrast, the Counterculture questioned the legitimacy of the Establishment in its entirety, not only its institutions, but also its value system. Indeed, for the Counterculture, virtually everything in the mainstream society was wrong, from its rationalistically based technocracy to its long-held Protestant work ethics, from its hot pursuit of materialism to its reckless destruction of natural environment, and from its suppression of sexual desires and individual development to its emphasis on social and cultural conformity. Since these challenges touched the raw nerve of the mainstream culture, and more importantly, since the Counterculture tried to counter and indeed subvert every cultural value the dominant society stood for, it not only aroused strong reaction, but also met with stiff resistance and fierce counterattacks from the latter. For this and many other reasons, the Counterculture became a controversial and sometimes politicized issue, provoking both scholars and political and religious leaders to examine the causes of this Movement, to define the nature of hippie culture, and finally to argue over the impact, both positive and negative, of the Movement on American value system, particularly its impact on youth culture.So intense was the debate between the pro and con camps that neither side could find peace with the other. Over the past three decades or so, the meanings and implications of the hippie movement continued to attract the attention of people from academic, political, religious and mass media circles, who tried every possible opportunity to either praise or denounce the hippie values. Turn to any page of newspapers or magazines where cultural values are discussed, and one is sure to find the term Counterculture being mentioned repeatedly. Indeed, for anyone who is concerned with the value changes in contemporary American society, it is virtually inconceivable for him not to trace these changes to the hippie culture. In a similar vein, scholars in the academic community have also pitted themselves against one another, rolling out publications in rapid succession, either in the form of monograph or in the shape of Ph. D dissertation. However, in whatever form they made their cases, the views of the people in the debate can be summarized into two types. One can be labeled as"pro-hippie", and the other"anti-hippie". As their prefix indicates, the former regards the Counterculture as"cultural revolution", i.e., having fundamentally altered the cultural values of the nation, while the latter considers the Counterculture to be"cultural destruction", i.e., having worked havoc with the fundamental values of the country. While phrases like"cultural revolution"and"cultural destruction"are eye-catching and sometimes even illuminating to a certain point, they, by no means, tell the whole story of the hippie culture. Rather, they are either too simplistic to do any justice to the complexity of the Counterculture, or too partial to be fair to the essence of this cultural revolt.More importantly, in discussing the origin and significance of the Counterculture, scholars and public commentators either tend to view it from a narrowly defined perspective, such as generation gap and psychological rebellion, or approach it in conjunction with other social reform movements of the Sixties, such as the Civil Rights and the New Left Movements. While the narrowly defined perspective offers a detailed and well-focused analysis of one aspect of the Movement, its shortcoming is quite self-evident——unable to see the wood for the trees. Similarly, while the holistic approach provides a broad picture of the Counterculture in the context of other social movements, its weakness is equally apparent——unable to laser-beam on the unique characteristics of the Counterculture. Clearly, if we want to avoid the defects of these two approaches, we need to find a way to combine the strengths of the two so as to provide a broad yet in-depth analysis of the issue.To attain this end, the present dissertation has made two attempts. One is to avoid to fall into the thinking pattern of binary opposition, or either/or approach, by which the Counterculture is viewed and judged to be either"cultural revolution"or"cultural destruction". The other is to get out of the analytical framework of simple generalization, where the part may be taken for the whole, and the whole may eclipse the part. Instead, this dissertation is going to examine the Counterculture in the historical context in which it took place, using dialectical materialism to analyze the phenomenon and its implications. In order to reveal the essence of this Movement, it will distinguish the irrational factors from the rational ones, assess its impact, significance and legacy on the basis of actual results rather than verbal claims, and, finally, find out the reasons for its failure to deliver the promised revolution. Such an approach requires a multi-pronged intellectual inquiry, involving such disciplines as historiography, sociology, psychology, political science, and cultural studies. Handled with care and sophistication, this approach will yield a more comprehensive and more balanced interpretation of the hippie culture.Conceived in this way, the dissertation begins with the definition of the terms Culture and Counterculture, establishing the working definition for the discussion of the hippie movement of the 1960s. Following that, the dissertation proceeds to the literature review of the Counterculture scholarship, singling out their useful findings and dubious conclusions. Based on these understandings, the dissertation then defines its own research approach, which, to put it simply, begins with an investigation of the social, historical and ideological origin of the Countercultural Movement, to be followed by an inquiry into the causes of youth revolt. After the establishment of the origin and the causes of the Movement, the dissertation moves on to examine the hippie culture itself, identifying their rebellious forms, analyzing their ideological groundings, and assessing their actual outcome. On the basis of this careful and detailed study, the dissertation finally tries to provide an objective and balanced evaluation of the significance and legacy of the Counterculture Movement in contemporary American society, arguing that the Counterculture of the'60s is not an isolated case, but rather a cultural phenomenon that has occurred and reoccurred in modern Western history, playing, on balance, a positive role in promoting liberty and diversity in Western countries.In the concluding part, the dissertation points out that, from the perspective of dialectical materialism, counterculture can be viewed as a logical reaction to the (over)development of the mainstream culture, for the two together constitutes the unity of opposites. In other words, when the dominant culture goes to extremes, becoming repressive, suppressive, or manipulative for example, it is, in fact, laying the breeding ground for the emergence of its opposite, that is, counterculture. Indeed, the paper argues, if we apply Hegel'theory of thesis and antithesis to the analysis of dominant culture vis-à-vis counterculture, we may safely conclude that the appearance of counterculture at any given time in history is the direct result of the domination of the prevailing culture of that era. In short, as long as dominant culture (thesis) exists, it is sure to create counterculture (antithesis) as its opposite, for they are an inseparable unity of opposites: one cannot exist without the other. Viewed in this light, the Counterculture Movement of the'60s can be interpreted as a direct reaction to the repressive and manipulative culture of the'50s and'60s of the United States, a logical outcome of the law of the unity of opposites.