Whicker’s World On The Love Generation

By on May 10, 2012 in News 5

In 1967, the BBC program Whicker’s World travelled to San Francisco to investigate the philosophy and lifestyle of what they dubbed “the Love Generation”, who were “cracking the smooth silhouette of American materialism”. Teen runaways, doing LSD in the woods, and confrontations with the square-minded are included in this vision of a time and place that resonates today:

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  • Dante

    There’s absolutely nothing similar between anti-materialist ’60s counter-culture and ultra-materialist OWS culture. 

    Simply being egalitarian materialists does not make one any less of a materialist. The OWS are materialists – they are protesting for people to allocate greater resources for their physical comfort and pleasure. 

    Protesters in the ’60′s were – for the most part – living a lifestyle motivated by a more transcendent, anti-materialist ideology without specific planks involving nuanced policy issues like tax code reform. 

    Anti-Capitalism does not equal Anti-Materialism / Capitalism and Socialism are both materialist-motivated economic-ideological systems 

    • http://twitter.com/jasonpaulhayes jasonpaulhayes

      Nowhere does the article reference Occupiers or compare Hippies to Occupiers so I don’t know where you’re getting that. Occupiers are not Socialists first and foremost, although certainly some are as the movement is made up of people with a variety of political affiliations.

      It’s not a Materialistic motive to say that your house was stolen by greedy loan practices and market manipulation.

      Its not Socialist  to say discrimination based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation must end.

      Its not Socialist to say that Corporations do not have the same rights as living people and that money is functionally the only form of free speech.

      Its not Materialistic to say that the establishment continues to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on foreign oil.

      It’s not Socialist to say the establishment have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

      • Dante

        To whom are you talking? Your monologue was a total disconnect from anything I said. It was a complete non-sequitur. Are you working from a script? 

        • Fat Chants

          It wasn’t a non-sequitur at all, either you haven’t come off *your* monologue, or you have poor reading comprehension.

          you use these terms carelessly to simplify and categorize things which are not nearly so cut and dry. 

          “ultra-materialist OWS culture”

          is rather silly, and he appropriately responds with,

          “It’s not a Materialistic motive to say that your house was stolen by greedy loan practices and market manipulation.”

          what part of that don’t you get?  that he’s simply correct? lol

        • Fat Chants

           hehe I have a very bad feeling that you deem anyone with an appetite or a need to clothe themselves a “materialist”, you may need to redefine for yourself the intended meaning of these terms so as not to make language totally useless like so many ’60s people did with stuff like “God is Love” and so forth

          gravitating toward extremes for the sake of finding a point to make or wiggle in your two-cents worth doesn’t serve you well man, it’s how children argue.

          “ultra-materialist OWS culture” is nothing but that.

          and seriously man, if you really think the ’60s people weren’t  “protesting for people to allocate greater resources for their physical comfort and pleasure.”

          you need to be more honest. but first, in regard to OWS as well as the hippies, you may want to swap out “comfort and pleasure” for “security, social programs, health care, education, venues for creative expression, security, research..”

          your use of the term “pleasure” instead is sheer arrogance.

          while I don’t really think the OWS people are anything to bother with, nor are they moved by what I eat for breakfast, they certainly are not.. firstly, even possible to categorize politically or ideologically, as it is a very mixed bag, but either way,

          to go from “comfort and pleasure”, even if it was this, to “materialism”, is a non-sequitur, as

          I get a lot of comfort and pleasure from things which I fight very hard for which are not “material” at all, with the exception of one or two which are barely material, as you need a microscope to see them.

          good day.