‘cultural revolution’ as an apt term when applied to ‘the long sixties’
...ry of ‘The Pill’ suddenly presented women with a freedom they had not previously had. There was no longer the worry of unplanned pregnancies, and they were now on a more equal sexual footing with men. This in turn led to a change in attitudes of young people towards sex in the sixties. As society changed, young people began to question authority. As families were more prosperous, more young people began to attend university. There was a move away from the conservative and reserved ideals, and movements began to emerge, particularly in university with student activists protesting against perceived imperialism, questioning the government’s participation in the Vietnam War, for instance, as well as demanding black civil rights. A new youth culture surfaced, and young people began to set trends both in music and fashion. With more money available, recreational drugs became fashionable. Appreciation of the arts became popular, with “a great outburst of individual entrepreneurial activity and private commercial enterprise – much of it, for example theatre clubs, bookshops, boutiques, apparently ‘counter-cultural’.” 2 Families could afford to have televisions in their homes, and became more informed and educated as to what was happening in the world. According to Arthur Marwick, a ‘cultural revolution’ certainly occurred as a result of the changes in material circumstances, in sexual conduct, in family and race correlations, in the way authority was perceived, and in thoughts and principles. The ‘mainstream culture’ as it had been in the nineteen fifties, was certainly eclipsed by the developments prompted by the ‘counter culture’ that surfaced in the nineteen sixties. ‘Mainstream culture’ in the nineteen fifties was respectful and unquestioning of science. Scientific advances were accepted, and advances in scientific technology had never been queried. However, science progressed in the nineteen sixties in a much faster rate than before, Russia launched Sputnik 1, which spurred America, in turn, to be the first country to put a man on the moon. Advances in medical science and drugs meant that new treatments were available. These advances, conversely, also meant that military technology was developing at a pace previously unseen. One of the chief indictments against science at this time was that it had become profoundly militaristic, and was more committed to developing weapons of mass destruction rather than focusing on improving the plight of societies. Eisenhower famously expressed his anxiety in his farewell address broadcast to the media in January 1961. He was troubled by the growth of what he termed ‘a military-industrial complex’, and by the upsurge of a ‘scientific-technological elite’. He implied that these endangered the ethics of democracy. Theodore Roszak, who believed that science had the ability to control, reiterated these views. Up until then, ordinary people had not necessarily understood science, as it was the realm of the educated, whereas with people becoming more educated, they began to question science. Roszak felt that science was corroding their spiritual ideals, and he queried what he termed as ‘technocracy’. According to Roszak, this was a “society in which government based and justified its decisions on the views of technical experts, whose authority was derived from the claim that their knowledge was scientific. And beyond the authority of science, as Roszak put it, there was no appeal.” Roszak blamed science for the fixation with the technology of war, and he wanted to return to a more spiritual and personal democracy with freedom of expression. “In order, then, to root out those distortive assumptions, nothing less is required than the subversion of the scientific world view, with its entrenched commitment to an egocentric and cerebral mode of consciousness. In its place, there must be a new culture in which the non-intellective capacities of the personality – those capacities that take fire from visionary splendor and the experience of human communion – become the arbiters of the good, the true, and the beautiful.” 3 It would seem that the nineteen sixties was the era for questioning long-established philosophies and concepts. However, Marwick points out that, contrary to wanting to eradicate science, the ‘core of the counter-movement’ in science wanted to change it. 4 This was the premise of Rosa’s writings, and materialised in the hippie culture and communes. People began to investigate unconventional and unor...