Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The 1960's

In the literal twilight zone of pre-color TV, everyone huddled around the CBS "eye" and watched the so-called "British Invasion" on Ed Sullivan. The mass hysteria ushered in what came to be known as the "counterculture"; with MIT's Timothy Leary exhorting young people to "turn on, tune in, and drop out" (with the aid of LSD which he'd received from Brave New World author, Aldous Huxley).

"Make love, not war" was the slogan of the day, taken from Marcuse's One Dimentional Man,
which emphasized "eros" over "ethos"; sensuality over principle; feeling over thought.

"Are you experienced?" taunted Jimi Hendrix, suggesting the notion that you had to lose your mind in order to become "liberated."

Eros as body armor played out on Broadway in the musical, Hair, a Dionysian spectacle that concluded with a group grope in the nude.

Huxley, meanwhile, having spawned cults of Isis on the West Coast (where the peace symbol came from), supplied the "electric kool-aid" to Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters, whose psychedelic school bus marquee read, FURTHER.

In other words, no particular destination, other than the next group grope. Cont...

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