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0 pointsjrumbut3y ago0 comments

In the present moment, the counterculture is always hard to find and identify. That's what makes it the counterculture.

Now you can read and listen to the Beat poets anywhere, but that would have been challenging in the early '50s. You had to go to the right coffee shop on the right night and if you went and saw what was going on you might question if these were geniuses pushing the frontiers of expression or a bunch of degenerates exploiting impressionable young people.

You can still have that experience today, probably easier than ever.

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pieix3y ago

> if you went and saw what was going on you might question if these were geniuses pushing the frontiers of expression or a bunch of degenerates exploiting impressionable young people.

To be fair, a lot of people still have this question about the Beat Generation.

luckylion3y ago

The hippies were the counterculture, weren't they? Yet they weren't hard to find or identify. I guess it can get muddy, but what you're describing sounds more like underground culture to me. It can be happily compatible with the mainstream culture, it's not oppositional, it's just obscure and hidden because of it.

jrumbutOP3y ago

I would argue that a counterculture has to be oppositional and can't be happily compatible.

The hippies who were burning their draft cards, dropping out of school, and living as mendicants were a counterculture that could not truly coexist with the mainstream.

These dramatic characters inspired a youth culture that adopted more moderate signifiers (long hair, folk/rock music, nonviolent protest, maybe vegetarianism/meditation/yoga) that could coexist with the mainstream.

s1artibartfast3y ago

Hippies were until they weren't. Counterculture either becomes culture or dies off.

Naziism was counterculture in 1920's Germany, Mainstream in the 30s and 40's, and back to counterculture now.

rnd03y ago

An argument could be made that there is a lot of ideological overlap between current far right GOP/Qanon people and the tenants of Nazism. Considering the number of elections won by the GOP you cannot tell me they're not mainstream.

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