Making of a counter culture

The Making of a
Counter Culture
THEODORE ROSZAK
'Most of what is presently happening that is
new, provocative and engaging in politics,
education, the arts, social relations (love,
courtship, family, community) is the creation
either of youth who are profoundly, even
fanatically, alienated from the parental genera-
tion, or of those who address themselves
primarily to the young.
Starting from this premise, Theodore Roszak
examines in detail some of the leading in-
fluences on the youthful counter, culture
Herbert Marcuse and Norman Brown, Allen
Ginsberg and Alan Watts, Timothy Leary,
Paul Goodman-and shows how each has
helped to call into question the conventional
scientific world view and in so doing has set
about undermining the foundations of the
technocracy.
He then turns his attention to 'the myth of
objective consciousness', and suggests that a
culture which subordinates or degrades
visionary experience commits the sin of
diminishing our existence. For the question
facing us is not 'How shall we know?' but
'How shall we live?' And in finding the
answer we must reconstitute the magical
world view from which human creativity and
community derive. So that, finally, the
'
primary project of our counter culture is to
proclaim a new heaven and a new earth so
vast, so marvellous that the inordinate claims
of technical expertise must of necessity with-
draw to a subordinate and marginal status in
the lives of men.'