The Counterculture essays

The Counterculture essays The history of United States of America starts relatively late when compared to other countries of West European civilization. However it inherited the background and experience of the old world and succeeded in becoming the worlds superpower. Today, the United States dominates the world in politics, economics and culture. The policies of the U.S. government directly affect every part of the world. In order to understand the motives of this superpowers policies, it is essential to understand historical events that shape American way of looking. This paper tries to examine how one of the major social movements, the counterculture movement in the sixties, changed the American perspective towards world issues. After the World War II, the structure of the society changed deeply in the United States. The gap between the government, and the public increased. Racial injustice was very common and people were afraid of foreign ideologies such as Communism (Hayden, 1962). Suburban communities, where women stayed at home, men went to work in his suits, and totally obedient children were the ideal (Mofford, 1998). The American dream components of the fifties were a car and a house with a garage in the suburban area. According to Hayden (1962), the characteristics of the ideal men in the fifties were impersonal and unemotional. The other prominent value of fifties was the sense of security emerged from sameness and conformity. I believe dedication to conformity in American society created a fear towards everything different than the ordinary. This fear was the main reason of the racial discrimination, fear from communism and anger towards the counterculture. In the sixties the young generation that did not accept to obey the existing social rules and tried to change the social conditions, formed a counterculture. Counterculture opposed the social structure of American culture by using literature, music, poetry, and a...