Creator

Theodore Roszak

Preview

image preview

Date

2017-08-25

Creation Date

1969-01-01

Description

xiv, 303 p. ; 19 cm. Series: Anchor Books ed. A697.

Digital Collection

Irene P. Ertman Science Fiction Book Collection

Object Type

Book

Identifier

ertman_056

Image Format

Physical Object

Repository

Special Collections, Leonard H. Axe Library

Publisher Digital

Doubleday

Rights

The reproduction of images from the Pittsburg State University Special Collections & University Archives requires permission and possible payment for use in both digital and printed works, including books, articles, films and television; and for advertising or commercial purposes. Please see the "Application for Permission to Publish, Quote, Broadcast, or Exhibit Items from the Special Collections & University Archives" in the FAQ for more information. Those using these images and texts assume all responsibility for questions of copyright and privacy that may arise.

Transcript

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 generation, or of those who address themselves primarily to the young.”

Starting from this premise, Theodore Roszak examines in detail some of the leading influences on the youthful counter culture—Herbert Marcuse and Norman Brown, Allen Ginsberg and Alan Watts, Timothy Leary and Paul Goodman—and shows how each has helped 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 marvelous that the inordinate claims of technical expertise must of necessity withdraw to a subordinate and marginal status in the lives of men.”

Keywords

Social history -- 1945-1960; Civilization, Modern -- 1950-

Share

COinS