The Counterculture

The Impact of the Hippie Counterculture of the 1960s

The “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