![]() One of the counterculture’s protest slogans underscored this plight: “I am a human being. For Kesey, mass society represents big business, government, labor, communication, and religion and thus subordinates the individual, who is stripped of dignity, significance, and freedom. Although Kesey was pro-America and admired American democracy per se, he abhorred those things in society that seemed to deprive people of individuality and freedom. Second, Kesey detested the mass society image that seemed to dominate life in twentieth century America. ![]() Instead, he must immerse himself in the waves so that he can “ride the waves of existence” and become one with the waves. In “Over the Border,” for example, Deboree realizes, as he bobs up and down in the ocean’s waves, that man does not become a superman by isolating himself from reality and life. First, he learned that drugs were not the answer to changing society and that one cannot passively drop out of life. In that it emphasized some major problems in the United States, the counterculture had its merits, but it was, at best, a child’s romantic dreamworld, inevitably doomed, because it did not consider answers to the ultimate question: “After the drugs, what is next?”įrom Kesey’s counterculture experiences, however, he learned at least two important lessons. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) that means to achieve a calm ecstasy, to contemplate the present moment. One of the main avenues to this new type of life and freedom was mind-expanding drugs, which allowed them to grok, a word from Robert A. At the core of the protest was the value of individual freedom. They protested by experimenting with Eastern meditation, primitive communal living, unabashed nudity, and nonpossessive physical and spiritual love. Originating with the 1950’s Beat generation, the 1960’s counterculture youth were disillusioned with the vast social injustices, the industrialization, and the mass society image in their parents’ world they questioned many values and practices-the Vietnam War, the goals of higher education, the value of owning property, and the traditional forms of work. ![]() To understand some of the ideas behind the counterculture revolution is to understand Ken Kesey’s (1935 – 2001) fictional heroes and some of his themes.
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