The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition

313 Pages·1969·18.61 MB·English

by  Theodore Roszak

THE MAKING OF A COUNTER CULTURE
Theodore Roszak waS born in Chicago in 1933, attended
the University of California at Los Angeles, and received his
Ph.D. from Princeton in 1958. He is a member of the history
department of California State College at Hayward, and was
editor of and contributor to The Dissenting Academy
(1968). He has had articles and reviews in many magazines,
among them The Nation, Liberation, New Politics, and The
New American Review.
THE MAKING OF A
COUNTER CULTURE
Reflections on the Technocratic Society and
Its Youthful Opposition
THEODORE ROSZAK
ANCHOR BOOKS
Doubleday 6 Company, Inc.
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
The Making of Cl Counter Culture was published simultaneously in
a hardcover edition in 1969 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Portions of chapters I, 11, IV, V and VI originally appeared in The
Nation in March and April 1968, and have been revised for pub
lication in this volume.
Anchor Books edition: 1969
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for perrnissioJl
to reprint their material:
American Sociological Association and John T. Gullahorn
Excerpt from "Some Computer Applications in Social Science," by
J. T. and J. E. Gullahom. American Sociological Review, vol. 30,
June, 1965.
Dr. Harvey Bluestone and The American Journal of Psychiatry
Excerpts from "Reaction to Extreme Stress: Impending Death by
Execution," by Harvey Bluestone, M.D., and Carl L. McGahee,
M.D. The American Journal of Psychiatry, volume 119, pages 393-
96.
City Lights Books
Lines of "Wichita Vortex Sutra" from Planet News, by Allen Gins
berg. Copyright © 1968 by Allen Ginsberg.
Corinth Books, Inc.
Lines from Empty Mirror: Early Poems, by AIlen Ginsberg. Copy
right © 1961 by AlIen Ginsberg; excerpt from Introduction by
William Carlos Williams to Empty Mirror.
Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
Excerpt from Poems 1923-1954, bye. e. cummings.
International Times
Excerpt from "Paradise Now," by Julian Beck. IT, July 12-25, 1968.
The Julian Press, Inc.
Excerpt from Gestalt Therapy, by Frederick Perls, Ralph HefIerline
and Paul Goodman
University of Oklahoma Press
Excerpt from The Social Impact of Bomb Destruction, by Fred
Charles Ikle. Copyright © 1958 by the University of Oklahoma
Press.
University of Chicago Press and Ure Smith PTY, LTD.
"The Lightning Snakes," from W orldof the First Australians, by
R. M. and C. H. Bemdt.
Copyright © 1968, 1969 by Theodore Roszak
Printed in the United States of America
All Rights Reserved
CONTENTS
Preface xi
I. Technocracy's Children 1
II. An Invasion of Centaurs 42
Ill. The Dialectics of Liberation: Herbert
Marcuse and Norman Brown 84
N. Journey to the East . .. and Points
Beyond: Allen Ginsberg and Alan
Watts 124
V. The Counterfeit Infinity: The Use and
Abuse of Psychedelic Experience 155
VI. Exploring Utopia: The Visionary Sociology
of Paul Goodman 178
VII. The Myth of Objective Consciousness 205
VIII. Eyes of Flesh, Eyes of Fire 239
Appendix: Objectivity Unlimited 26<}
Bibliographical Notes 29
1
Art Degraded, Imagination Denied:
War Governed the Nations
* * * *
Rouse up, 0 Young Men of the New Age! set
your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings!
For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court
& the University, who would, if they could, for
ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War.
-WILLIAM BLAKE
PREFACE
As a subject of study, the counter culture with which this
book deals possesses all the liabilities which a decent sense of
intellectual caution would persuade one to avoid like the
plague. I have colleagues in the academy who have come
within an ace of convincing me that no such things as "The
Romantic Movement" or "The Renaissance" ever existed
not if one gets down to scrutinizing the microscopic phe
nomena of history. At that level, one tends only to see many
different people doing many different things and thinking
many different thoughts. How much more vulnerable such
broad-gauged categorizations become when they are meant
to corral elements of the stormy contemporary scene and hold
them steady for comment! And yet that elusive conception
called "the spirit of the times" continues to nag at the mind
and demand recognition, since it seems to be the only way
available in which one can make even provisional sense of
the world one lives in. It would surely be convenient if these
perversely ectoplasmic Zeitgeists were card-carrying move
ments, with a headquarters, an executive board, and a file
of official manifestoes. But of course they aren't. One is there
fore forced to take hold of them with a certain trepidation,
allowing exceptions to slip through the sieve of one's generali
zations in great numbers, but hoping always that more that
is solid and valuable will finally remain behind than filters
away.
All this is by way of admitting openly that much of what
is said here regarding our contemporary youth culture is sub
ject to any number of qualifications. It strikes me as obvious
xiv THE MAKING OF A COUNTER CULTURE
the technocracy surrounds itself without seeming to speak
a dead and discredited language. Especially so if one admits
as I do (pace the doctrinaire eschatology of old and new
left) -that it may well lie within the capability of the tech
nocracy to utilize its industrial prowess, its social engineer
ing, its sheer affluence, and its well-developed diversionary
tactics, to reduce, in ways that most people will find per
fectly acceptable, all the tensions born of disorganization,
privation, and injustice which currently unsettle our lives.
(Note that I do not say it will solve the problems; but rather,
like adjustive psychotherapy, it will cunningly soothe the
neurotic hurt.) The technocracy is not simply a power struc
ture wielding vast material influence; it is the expression of
a grand cultural imperative, a veritable mystique that is
deeply endorsed by the populace. It is therefore a capacious
sponge able to soak up prodigious quantities of discontent and
agitation, often well before they look like anything but amus
ing eccentricities or uncalled-for aberrations. The question
therefore arises: 44If the technocracy in its grand procession
through history is indeed pursuing to the satisfaction of so
many such universally ratified values as The Quest for Truth,
The Conquest of Nature, The Abundant Society, The Creative
Leisure, The Well-Adjusted Life, why not settle back and
enjoy the trip?"
The answer is, I guess, that I find myself unable to see
anything at the end of the road we are following with such
self-assured momentum but Samuel Beckett's two sad tramps
forever waiting under that wilted tree for their lives to begin.
Except that I think the tree isn't even going to be real, but
a plastic counterfeit. In fact, even the tramps may turn out to
be automatons . . . though of course there will be great,
programmed grins on their faces.
THE MAKING OF A COUNTER CULTURE