The CountercultureEssay Preview: The CountercultureReport this essayThe Impact of the Hippie Counterculture of the 1960sThe “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. They wore out their clothes and when a hole occurred they would just patch it up to show that they were not materialistic and preferred living off the land. Both men and women had long hair, and the men usually had fuller beards. Most of their clothing was self-made to protest against the American society’s materialistic values and their clothes showed their laid back or casual lifestyle. Many of the music artists that they admired determined what the counterculture would wear and listen to.
The hippie movement had a new and different preference in music called rock �n’ roll. Rock �n’ roll is a type of music that evolved from earlier jazz music. This type of music took countercultural topics such as peace and drug use and put it into lyrical form. This music idealized and encouraged the use of drugs to promote free thought and artistic expression. Be-ins were a large part of the hippie lifestyle which were rock music festivals that were held in public places and outdoors. One of the largest and most known 1960s rock concerts started on August 15, 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Festival. The promoters of Woodstock expected around two hundred thousand people at the most to show up but an estimated four hundred and fifty thousand people attended. These people camped out for three days in the rain near Bethel, New York on a six hundred acre piece of muddy farmland. 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
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Another part of the hippie counterculture environment?
Pioneering of LSD and psychedelic drugs was part of the counterculture, and it was part of the lifestyle of the hippie generation.
A typical hippie would buy 3 or 4 bottles a day from stores that had marijuana in it for some time. A small group of members from their party would leave the house before noon and return after 3-4 hours of doing so. The hippie generation, led by their hippie parents, would leave through the evening where they would spend a couple of hours getting drunk and “junked up.”
In the summer of 1977 some members of the band The Doors were arrested and imprisoned for marijuana use, for two to ten years. However, they were released a few years ago, after being sent out to America, at the request of the government. Many of the arrested members of the group were held in custody until 1978, when the drugs were put on tape as a means of making money by the hippie family.
With the introduction of psychedelics into the mind, there came a time where hippies began to see a connection between the drug and the society and culture it supposedly helped to build. For starters there were some hippies who believed in LSD, which became an integral part of the culture of the hippie counterculture. However, the fact that this religion is so similar to that of the hippie counterculture was shocking to those of us with traditional beliefs. Many hippies considered this an “indeed, a lie” and considered it to be “a good thing that we were so screwed up by drugs”. As the hippies began looking into their own religion and were aware of how their society felt about them, the culture of the hippie counterculture changed and changed again. In the 1960s it was reported that around 5% of the hippie population was considered “indifferent” to Scientology, and a further 5% deemed this culture as a dangerous cult. The reason why the hippie counterculture changed now was because these religions were now so similar to Scientology and that it was no longer necessary for the cult to adapt to their new lifestyle.
The cult of the hippie counterculture in particular was once considered a cult for its lack of respect for individuality. These beliefs were often based on drugs and that was in fact a very negative attitude towards the new society, while others would also consider it an ideology, which in turn meant it was a conspiracy to put things in order. Most of the hippies involved in hippie counterculture were religious people who came from other cultures across the land. This was not uncommon, but many of the leaders involved in the cult believed that everything in existence was just too complicated and that we were all in the hands of a single one and simply needed to adapt. They also believed that our lives were completely up to our own rules and it was not an option for us to adapt at all. This was the only place that seemed to hold true for the rest of us in spite of all these misconceptions about the culture, and they did it with a very clear sense of what the society was truly.
In fact their beliefs about the society were very far down to earth. But, unlike their beliefs on spirituality and spirituality’s spirituality, the hippie counterculture believed in a