7 ms·

Recently read a description of 1960's ideology. The claim being that its all propaganda, and what we know as 60s ideology (peace love etc) actually never really

• germinalphrase 3y ago
  Unless we are defining that “ideology” very narrowly, the sheer volume of cultural output (fashion, music, cinema, etc) would be a clear counterpoint.
  • ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
    How long did that period last? It died very fast, and was really only 5 years at maximum. Probably not much longer than the time that covid started until now. A flash in the pan.
    • dylan604 3y ago
      The lingering effects might very well last longer than the actual event itself though. Hell, the effects of LSD last much much longer than the drug itself lasts in the body. So to me, you're harping on the wrong thing. Sure, maybe the movement lasted a short time, but the mindset is still out there
    • moelf 3y ago
      1960s is only 10 years so if something went on in the public mind day on and day off for 5 years (like COVID did for 3 years), I think it's a good candidate for the decade-defining theme
    • frutiger 3y ago
      There’s a related occurrence of the same principle — we have had movies/stories about the wild west for longer than the archetype frontier period existed.
  • mrangle 3y ago
    Cultural output pushed by media, continuously and inarguably well after the movement ended? If there's one thing that's clear beyond all else involved in the topic of popular culture, it's that the media chooses what culture to push and what to ignore.
    • at_a_remove 3y ago
      I think that the "Mondo" films played a part. For those not in the know, Mondo films (that's usually the start of the title, like Mondo Freudo) gathered together very disparate samples of different slices of life, with a heavy emphasis on the titillating, the criminal, the bizarre, not to mention almost anything that might be numbered among the counterculture, and presented them in a vaguely documentary-like format. How much was staged, how much wasn't? Still, aside from the almost obligatory nudity, you got a very strong feeling of "look at the strange stuff these people get up to!" My guess is that they had kind of an outsized impact for what seemed like half "nudie cuties" of the 50s married to a casual National Geographic feel of different cities in Europe, the United States, and associated territories.
• chimeracoder 3y ago
  > The claim being that its all propaganda, and what we know as 60s ideology (peace love etc) actually never really happened. What did happen was that those that prescribed to that line of thinking either moved to communes, or they dropped so much acid they were societally irrelevant. This sounds like something you'd read in a pop psychology book, not an actual piece of historical analysis. Given the visible cultural impact that the "ideology" (to use your word) had, and the sheer number of artifacts we have to attest to that, it's almost impossible to imagine how this claim could be substantiated. Ironically, the only thing in that that's close to a correct statement is the line about communes and acid, which were actually a very small part of the "ideology" that you're referring to, and relatively rare, but which were amplified in public perception due to media portrayals.
  • ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
    No this opinion comes from Academia. A large volume of media was created in a very short time, and then essentially disappeared/stopped production over night
    • kamranjon 3y ago
      You say this but having an actual source would be great.
      • mistermann 3y ago
        LSD is a hell of a drug, but it's nothing compared to consciousness + culture.
    • revscat 3y ago
      This is an incredibly difficult position to defend, and I would challenge you to do so.
  • ericmcer 3y ago
    Couldn't we make the same claim about all polarized views (both right and left) that the media love to amplify today, but not many people actually hold?
• feedforward 3y ago
  There's almost universal opinion on the mainstream, left and right that a cultural shift happened in the US between Eisenhower leaving office and Woodstock. It's not some narrative invented and pushed out. The media does manufacture narratives. Youth in New York and San Francisco had a subculture in the 1950s which was framed as beatnik, and soon sitcoms were mocking beatnik. Small basement performance places would have patrons not clap to avoid noise complaints, so patrons would snap their fingers as applause. This was then presented as something unusual and pretentious, minus its original context. The same thing with San Francisco hippies - they arose organically, the mainstream culture took notice of them and presented them a certain way, and the cycle goes on. Every social movement that arises is met with an attempt to coopt and to commodity by the corporate media and corporate America, this has happened for a long time.
  • altairTF 3y ago
    In the same way, Woodstock '99 broke all that was left of the mainstream hippie movement, giving rise to the new metal one
    • zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
      Metal hippies? Is that a thing? I'm more familiar with the 2010s hippy festival goers eating mushrooms and research chemicals while listening to a combination of jam bands and various electronic genres
      • altairTF 3y ago
        Sorry, Nu metal. It was more in the sense of the hippie movement falling out of mainstream for good around the 00's, at least on my view of the world, of course
        • zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
          Oh, ok that makes sense.
  • 3y ago
• elsjaako 3y ago
  I love the way Hunter S. Thompson described it. I'll strip it a bit for brevity, but the whole book (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) is worth reading. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. ... So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
  • takoid 3y ago
    Another relevant quote from Fear and Loathing that was posted on HN a little over a week ago by isoprophlex: ... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody - or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.
    • opportune 3y ago
      This is such a great succinct summation of my feelings on “psychedelic culture” as someone who has actually participated. It drives me crazy when people act like psychedelics open a window into deep spiritual truths and that taking them makes you some how more enlightened. This culture is still pervasive - probably accounting for the majority of people who actively argue for decriminalization and research - and a bad spokesman. It reminds me a lot of the people who think Cannabis can’t be addictive, cures cancer, and has no negative effects. In some ways, it fetishizes and ascribes magical properties to drugs just as much as the “drugs are bad with zero exceptions” crowd does. Except, in many aspects it’s worse, because it downplays risks and pressures people to partake. Normal people notice it even if they can’t articulate it, and it does a lot to discredit reasonable people.
      • zikzak 3y ago
        Could not agree more. I have tripped countless times. But in the late 80s and early 90s. No hippies to be found. I did have some interesting revelations but nothing I wouldn't have come to via other means of conversation or introspection. For me, and most people I was doing this with, it was just an affordable, long lasting drug. Sure, I had read various books about opening the doors of perception but at some point you realize it's just more "you" that you are finding. I do think psycadelics can be used therapeutically in the right conditions but I'm not convinced ad hoc trips will get you there unless you are already skilled at introspective techniques. The one thing I'll say I agree with is it does change your perspective and can give you a break from your ego. Seeing how nice it is to not be a slave to all the negativity, dwelling in the past, and obsessing over the future is very freeing and taught me that pursuit of meditation was worth doing. Ultimately, I'd say meditation can give you the benefits that people associate with psychedelics if you are consistent in the practice.
• nyolfen 3y ago
  the actual impact of the 60s counterculture was that the hegemonic mainstream culture had its legitimacy broken -- but it was not replaced by the counterculture, or anything else
• morelisp 3y ago
  One thing which immediately reveals the lie in this is that it pretends the counterculture was the only thing going on in the 60s and ignores the New Left, Civil Rights movements, various arts movements, the cementing of the MIC, the rise of the PMC, etc etc. The 60s were a massive rupture and while it’s true the counterculture wasn’t the only influence its bizarre to say it didn’t really exist to any extent.
  • CPLX 3y ago
    And beginnings of the labor market having its back broken of course.
    • morelisp 3y ago
      IMO that’s concomitant with the PMC since it’s the concrete moment workers stop thinking of themselves as workers and a big paycheck is sufficient to make people class-dumb, but I know that’s a contentious view.
    • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      That's more the mid-late 70s. If you follow the long-wave (Kondratiev wave) theory of economics, the 70s was the beginning of the real "drop" while the 60s were still (relatively) boom times. At the beginning of the downturn, there were large strike waves and dissent ... which were then, yes, broken, leading to the collapse of the socialist left wing in western countries (those parties calling themselves [or being called] socialist or social democratic now generally aren't and haven't been for a long while), and a brutal weakening of the organized labour movement.
• asveikau 3y ago
  I disagree, but ignoring this somewhat, I offer this: One remarkable thing is how the hippie stuff often induced by chemical manipulation of serotonin receptors mirrors a lot of religious messages. You can take slogans like "peace on earth, love your neighbor, love is all you need" and say, is that hippie stuff? Or is it, say... The message attributed to Jesus? In that sense, you don't really need the drugs or counterculture to come up with that. It's been an authentic part of history before. Nor can it totally be dismissed as only coming from drug culture, or a brief source for a small moment in time. We've had similar movements and ideas become popular before. I'd go one step further and call it objectively a good thing.
  • matrix87 3y ago
    Maybe because psychedelics wake up the part of the human psyche that understands religion
    • nwiswell 3y ago
      That doesn't seem right. I think of the brain as a "rationalization machine". It observes environmental inputs, and reflexively seeks to ascribe a cause for those inputs. In so doing, a causal model of the world is constructed (whether accurate or not), allowing the agent to make intelligent decisions about what actions to take in order to produce desired outcomes. What hallucinogenic drugs tend to do is overwhelm the brain with sensory inputs that are sui generis and cannot be folded neatly into a pre-existing causal model of reality, but that are so numerous that they cannot simply be ignored. So the "protective mechanism" of the brain, rather than abandoning or risking damage to this highly valuable causal model of reality, is to shunt these experiences over into an "other" category of mystical and religious significance. The fact that these experiences are inexplicable, rather than being an indication of any "malfunction" in the brain which might prompt us to doubt our perception in general, is instead proof of their cause: the incomprehensible divine. This isn't academic, just my 2c.
      • matrix87 3y ago
        At the end of the day, you can either see a beautiful thing and share it with a bunch of people. Or you can see an ugly mechanistic thing and think that you're smarter than the people seeing the beautiful thing I don't think whichever one you see is a choice either, more like the yanny vs laurel thing At one point I made the same argument you make. Now I don't see it that way. And I feel much better honestly
• kingkawn 3y ago
  This is such an absurd overgeneralization of the cultural lives of millions of people
• bratwurst3000 3y ago
  The French Revolution was also 4 years btw and nearly anybody involved in it that did matter was killed. Still it has a profound effect on society to that time And maybe to today. My opinion is also that it is more amplified then justified part of the 60s. The more important part was the social revolution and not the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution was more the pill. People did fuck before.
• mynameishere 3y ago
  They're selling hippy wigs in Woolworths, man.
• renewiltord 3y ago
  To be honest, if you've used psychedelics, you'll know many people have that experience. I definitely have that over-encompassing all-is-one feeling. To be honest, it feels like a lower level of consciousness, less sophisticated, that is just making connections between random things.
• ks2048 3y ago
  I think most revolutions are done by relatively small (and surprisingly small) percentage of the population (social revolutions, political revolutions, etc). I believe there is quantitative evidence of this out there if you look for it.
• ecocentrik 3y ago
  The way we understand history is limited to the mechanisms we have for recording it and reliving it. We experience history through imitation, parody, critique, imperfect recollection and the marketing and resale of cultural artifacts. Media can reduce ideas and people to stereotypes but it can also provide you with hours of raw documentary footage to wade through if you're willing.
• Projectiboga 3y ago
  Here is that book written by someone born in 1968 who is a conservative hack https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Politically-Incorrect-Guide-to-the-Sixties/Jonathan-Leaf/9781596985728 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Politically-Incor... The idea that psychedelic and the alternative life styles not being widespread was true, but the author was coming with his mind set from the start.
  • fuzzfactor 3y ago
    As we can see, some people have been deluded by some kind of propaganda which makes it difficult for them to grasp the way an anti-war movement could have had any long-lasing or widespread effects, much less this far into the 21st century. While anybody who has been paying attention to reality for very long will recall that the preference for peace & love over war & hate was so overwhelming that it was the war that was over within just a year or two after critical mass was reached among young people. Yes it was only a small portion who took the LSD, but the entire generation was influenced in some way or another too numerous to mention. For one thing it was just too stupid to continue being drafted into the army to go and fight for somebody else's country. There were not major anti-corporate attitudes, that was the least of considerations and really just a little bit of collateral fallout against military contractors. Nothing compared to the number of people today who are truly anti-corporate. The entire nation grew to a point where a US President known to be dishonest by millions of citizens, was embarassingly ushered out by the combined attitude of the rest of the country (including those who had voted to re-elect him), way more respectably than deserved. Think how much more widespread a collective attitude among young people against dishonesty would have to be before it could spread further enough for anything comparable like that to be accomplished today. Someone born in the 21st century would be the easiest to be taken advantage of by current disinformation since they simply have no frame of reference, there's nothing modern that compares. When someone born as early as 1968 can come up without a clue. What's really hilarious is whoever is swallowing this propaganda is spending so much time so misinformed it's like (not even) trying to grasp reality while never venturing outside of Disneyland, and having nothing but imaginary characters as a source of guidance. This wouldn't be the first century where some people's perceptions can become far more distorted without any drugs compared to others who are under the influence. I guess you can't trust everybody's description, especially when it comes to ideology. Plus I would think it makes sense to do whatever one can do to discourage the spreading of propaganda.
• ugh123 3y ago
  >Weird to think about how media can amplify a set of ideas, that itself didnt last very long. I feel like something similar happens with various woke/cultural issues
• jrflowers 3y ago
  It is refreshing to read a description of a claim somebody read online, it really makes you think