Every complex, modern society has a mainstream bent of popular culture which includes a probable majority of people ad that dominates the overarching society to such a length that those who belong to different values and lifestyles are said to be outside the stream. There are many subcultural groups that keep some particular practices and beliefs but might otherwise join in mainstream culture either in part or whole. For example, Italian immigrants might hold a strong affinity for opera that places them apart from other American groups but joining operas does not preclude subscribing to practices which are mainstream. How when subculture members engage in practices opposed to or completely different from values which are mainstream so that adherent to the subculture either do not wish to function inside mainstream then this subculture can be rightfully called a counterculture. Hippies, as counterculture followers, rejected the mainstream of society and the culture it adhered to in favor of their own set of values..
Professor Diana Kendall defines culture as the values, customs, knowledge, language and other material objects that are passed from one generation to the next in a human society (Kendall 74). In United States, there is often a division drawn between high culture and popular culture. High culture makes up the opera, live theater, ballet and activities which are patronized by elites, and are composed primarily of upper-classes and some portions of upper-middle classes who have the money, time and knowledge which is assumed necessary for the appreciation of these cultural forms. In the United States, high culture is often considered to be international in its scope as it arrives through a diffusion process because many of the art forms originated in European nations or other parts of the world. Popular culture, by contrast, is the services, products and activities that members of middle classes and working classes assume in society (Kendall 74).
The phenomenon of the hippie movement can be seen specifically as a value gap between hippies and the popular culture values of the middle class. The hippie movement has been characterized by Professors Jack Levin and James Spates as an attempt to replace or substitute a true alternative in the place of the traditional American patterns of value (Levin & Spates 61). From this point of view, the hippie phenomenon can be seen as a distinctly ideological issue which is related directly to the values and ideals which are the most general guidelines for mainstream popular culture for action within society. One example of this may be the general ideal held by Americans that everyone must achieve success individually through one’s efforts in one’s occupation (Levin & Spates 62). There is a basic gap between middle class popular culture views of life and hippie views of life. Values are society’s most general directives for action, in that they form the most generally shared views about the correct ways to behave. Hippie culture thus presents a challenge to the popular culture social system’s values.
The mode of existence of the hippie cannot be known separate from the value structure of American society. Hippie culture has risen directly from the middle class system of values within the majority of young hippie were socialized initially. Levin and Spates estimate that over 70 percent of hippies come from a middle or upper class background (Levin & Spates 63). Middle-class values specify acts which are geared towards the future and normally require an individual to inhibit his or her emotional expression of life in order for his or her resources to be fully geared towards the rational solution to tasks in life. In the American case, the pattern of middle-class behavior shows itself in the economic pursuits, that is, in rational efforts to increase economic profits and status in one’s own occupation through extended education and working hard. This dimension is wholly achievement-oriented and cannot be emphasized more. The middle-class structure of values places demands on each individual to achieve success in one’s job, not just in terms of personal wealth or status but as an obligation in the moral sense to contribute to the good building of society. Success in its most basic terms is defined in personal as well as social terms. From the perspective of the middle-class, the businessman who is hard working who makes $40,000 a year is much more respectable than the drug dealer who makes ten times that amount. It is the businessman who will see his status recognized as upstanding in society.
These core features of the middle-class way of life is its achievement, economic and thinking dimensions, all which subscribe to a goal-oriented way of activity in and within the system. The hippies hold that the subculture they subscribe to is a radical departure from the value system which dominates the popular culture of American society and which they view as wholly materialistic, not authentic and alienating (Davis 10). This viewpoint is reflected by the nearly whole rejection of the individual economic mode of life that is considered a force driving the contemporary American society and which is also illustrative of the hippies’ rejection of values pertaining to the middle class.
Hippies present a unique aspect of American cultural history because they were hostile to the establishment norms that were forced on society through public opinion channels and legal sanctions. In particular, hippies resented the pressure to conform on topics like sex, drugs, hair and work. They, as a group, celebrated amongst themselves in their non-conformity. In this way, hippies expressed a libertarian or anarchist view. This kind of attitude was also consistent with a hippie value of hedonism. The authority from the mainstream was seen to be the source of virtually all political, social and economic ills, ranging from the Vietnam War to racism, corporate power and the oppression of hippies themselves as well as their lifestyle. Hippies rejected the view of the nation state, its huge size and its brutal use of force, its militaristic adventurism as seen in Vietnam (Miller 22). Hippies thought this was no way to run a society.
The Hippie movement was one marked by a distinct counterculture which went against the dominant cultural value paradigm in American popular culture. It rejected the middle class orientation towards economic success and middle class values which assessed a person’s status or success level based on the economic contribution they make to the broader society as well that which emphasizes the virtue of hard work and occupational status. In place of these values, a new paradigm was established which emphasized ideals of self-expression, free love and finding value in the world outside a paradigm of economic and material concerns.
Works Cited
Davis, Fred. "Why all of us may be hippies someday." Trans-action 5.2 (1967): 10-18.
Kendall, Diana E. Sociology in Our Times, 2018. Web.
Levin, Jack, and James L. Spates. "Hippie values: an analysis of the underground press." Youth &
Society 2.1 (1970): 59-73.
Miller, Timothy S. The hippies and American values. Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2012. Web.
