I think that’s mostly fair; I just want to add that first of all, it was a valid expression of the “shift,” secondly, that the “shift” was in fact an authentic and organic outgrowth of the basic American ideology emerging from the best trends of the Enlightenment, and this includes the strengths of the CC, awhile its weaknesses also stem from deeply American roots. And finally I think we shouldn’t underestimate the ways the CC helped to foster and transmit some of the bes, arguably “deeper” and more fundamental, expressions of the basic trend to take the American dream seriously, such as feminism.

And who can imagine modern life without rock music?

The colonies which were made independent in the 1960s (particularly the British ones) were riding on the coat-tails of the work done by Gandhi in India during the nineteen thirties and forties. The Indian colonies were granted independence primarily because the alternative was to have another war (even more bloody than the 2nd world war) in order to retain India as part of the British Empire. However, the people of India didn’t get things all their own way - one of the last things the British did as they left was poison the metaphorical well by splitting the colony into three (India, Pakistan, Ceylon). It’s now four, because Pakistan couldn’t administer what later became Bangladesh with the bulk of Northern India in between the two of them. But have a look at the border between India and Pakistan, and you’ll see a feud which is probably going to foment for centuries - if either side doesn’t just get fed up and start launching their nuclear weapons at the other in order to ease the tension.

The Indian independence movement sparked a lot of others, and the British, being well and truly aware they had far too much happening at home to be bothered with trying to keep their empire, decided to give in gracefully, and withdraw. Other colonial powers, who had been sticking it out with the hope that the British (or the US) would support them, soon realised this wasn’t going to happen, and they started pulling out too - generally taking with them all of the important infrastructure, and a lot of the country’s wealth. Britain originally started the Commonwealth back in the late 1920s, as a way of shutting up the politicians in Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, who kept making disgruntled comments about wanting to have at least some say in where their troops got to do the dying (the muck-up at ANZAC cove, as well as several other battles of WW1, certainly led to a loss of colonial support for the British military machine). They kept it as a way of maintaining a few different trade treaties, some of which had been in place since the era of Charles the Second (1600 or so… have a look at the early history of the Caribbean nations to get an idea of what the story was).

Those trade treaties were then abandoned without even looking back when the UK was offered the chance to get into the European Common Market (as it was then - it’s now the EU), and led to some rather severe consequences for a lot of Commonwealth nations as a result. The most usual one was the loss of a previously guaranteed market for a commodity which had become a core component of the national economy (for Australia, this was wool - our wool market didn’t start to pick up again until the 1980s or 1990s).

So yes, there were a number of colonies who gained their independence during the 1960s. In all, twenty-one different nations were recognised as members of the Commonwealth of Nations during the 1960s. However, the Commonwealth didn’t stop adding members until approximately 1995… so not all of the liberations of colonies happened then.

I’d still argue the fuss and bother of the 1960s was mainly a manifestation of knock-on effects from earlier eras, and that a lot of the “big changes” of the era were actually things which had started earlier, or were still ongoing from earlier eras. Don’t underestimate the two World Wars as a big leveller of perceived cultural chasms. Atheists aren’t the only ones who tend not to be found in foxholes - I have a strong suspicion you wouldn’t find many bigots in them either. Being treated as an equal during the war would have made it a lot harder for the black soldiers to come back home and pick up the subservient role again. Being treated as worthwhile during the war made it difficult for many women to put down the welder’s mask and the reins of the household, and step back into the “submissive wifey” spot.

May this be the “get off my lawn” of the new era? I sure hope so.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the hippies that were into this. There was a new left current that embraced anti-governmentalism too. When I finished college I went out and got a job, eventually, in what turned out to be a quasi-law-enforcement capacity, child protection. I had conversations with other leftists who were very wary about this. I pointed out to them that I had had a small role in breaking a child pornography operation, and pointed out too, that this was an example of that oppressive institution called patriarchy, and that government took an ambiguous, but generally progressive approach to it.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the hippies that were into this. There was a new left current that embraced anti-governmentalism too. When I finished college I went out and got a job, eventually, in what turned out to be a quasi-law-enforcement capacity, child protection. I had conversations with other leftists who were very wary about this. I pointed out to them that I had had a small role in breaking a child pornography operation, and pointed out too, that this was an example of that oppressive institution called patriarchy, and that government took an ambiguous, but generally progressive approach to it.

OK guys, which is it going to be: The counterculture was all overrated, or there was a major paradigm shift?

There was a major paradigm shift that was not a product of the counterculture itself. The counterculture expressed the shift but did not generate it.

1960s counterculture =/= the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Liberation, Gay Liberation, etc.

And when I say “counterculture,” I’m using the common definition of it, which is the hippies. That’s the other thing that drives me nuts in these discussions — there were and are multiple countercultures, some of which overlapped, some of which did not, but a lot of people act like there was one big counterculture that all did the same thing and that it was driven by the people who went to Woodstock.

It also drives me nuts that people usually pretend the dark side of the counterculture didn’t exist. Woodstock and Altamont happened within six months of each other. The Manson Family is just as much a product of the counterculture as the Chicago Seven.

I also think there’s something to the anti-modernist and anti-government stance of the hippies.

Betsy, I was too young to be there, and my reading about the period is scattershot to say the least. I’m wondering, however, how much you can really pin on “intentional appropriation.”

Could it rather be that once that hippie trend broke out from among the ranks of earnest white privileged youth, and started to touch rural and working class whites, that i began its accomodation to social-conservative and proto-fascist movements?

I suggest this, knowing several boomers who went from hippy/protester in their youth to Christofascist in middle age….

…and having flirted with off-the-grid, back-to-the-land concept myself ca. 1990 (emerging out of a certain elite West Coast campus). I saw reactionary tendencies in the gen-X “freaks” (we actually called ourselves this) I knew; there was especially a lot of easy communication between them and redneck “survivalists” — and a pointed lack of concern (verging on disdain) for real issues of class, race, and gender. We were howling down “PC” louder than the campus Republicans were.

I think that the modern neo-pagan movement is a direct descendant of the hippies and the counterculture. That was absolutely my observation at the time. People later joked that the “Jesus Freaks” were the natural consequence of smoking pot while listening to Jesus Christ Superstar, and IMHO that was only half a joke.

I also think that one of the most enduring cultural transformations of the 60s was the rise of popular music as both a rallying point and a marker, a crucial element of self-identification — as the current custom of “Friday Random 10″ illustrates. It’s kind of boggling to me for Amanda to talk about how the counterculture is “irrelevant”, when Austin is one of its capitol cities. And it is still a *counter*-culture, because Austin is definitely counter to the culture of the state around it.

The counter culture did not create charismatic Xianity. I was in the Haight the summer of 1968 when all the mind fuckers, the trolls scooping up the burn out runaways came through.

Charlie Manson was no different from the Children of God or Jim Jones or the Jesus freaks.

In our more enlightened 1970 parents were able to use deprogramers to rescue their children from these cults

Or, just to throw out a theory, all of mainstream of society was going through a major paradigm shift and the hippies were merely the knee-jerk by product of it.

OK guys, which is it going to be: The counterculture was all overrated, or there was a major paradigm shift?

Of course there was an enormous shift in attitudes regarding race, sex, government, music, drugs, sex society, corporations, etc. I claimed facetiously it was the hippies, but it wasn’t caused by anything. It happened; it was not overrated. Arguably the modern conservative movement is little more than a reaction against the changes that were wrought.

Were the changes lasting? Yes. Were they instant and complete. That is just silly. Most of what has been said above denigrating the counterculture could have been said about the Civil War: It didn’t achieve racial equality, it provoked a backlash, etc.

And equating the Boomers with the 60s counterculture is nonsense. The Boomers, as depicted, represent the culture. What the 60s did was allow a reexamination of many cultural assumptions. It is not an accident that the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, drugs, sex, music, etc. all took a progressive turn in the 60s. The zeitgeist was such that everybody’s complaint was heard with fresh ears. But there was an openmindedness that is sorely lacking today.

Amanda’s apparently tired of hearing how much more exciting it was to live then, but what would she rather hear from her elders: What I did in the war? I look forward to her defense of the early days of internet blogging to the next generation. (And I will support her as this too is game changing.) But the country was making an almost unique turn toward the progressive in the 60s. If you don’t think it was significant, ask any stakeholder in the status quo at the time. As I said, the modern conservative movement has waved goodbye to Edmund Burke, and now has the hippies as their focus and bête noire.

Ungrateful punks. You kids can’t even roll a proper joint.