The 60s And Freedom Essays - Counterculture Of The 1960s, New Left

The 60s and Freedom Most of the time, when thinking back to the sixties, people remember hearing about things such as sex, drugs, and racism. However, what they often tend to overlook is the large emphasis "freedoms" had on the era. This does not just refer to the freedoms already possessed by every American of the time. This focuses on the youth's fight to gain freedom or break away from the values and ideas left behind by the older generation. While some authors when writing about the sixties give serious accounts of the youths' fights to obtain these freedoms, others tend to take a different and more dramatic approach to showing the struggles involved in these fights. Yet, all of the authors have the same basic values and messages in mind. They all, more or less, aim to show the many freedoms which their generation was fighting for. These fights were used to help push for freedoms from areas such as society's rules and values, competition, living for others first, and the older generation's beliefs as a whole including the freedom to use drugs. The younger generation just wanted a chance to express their own views rather than having to constantly succumb to the values and rules left behind by the older generation. The two different approaches used by authors to express these views are often representative of the two main systems used by youths to help gain their freedoms. The first approach, taken by the Port Huron Statement and authors such as Gerzon, Reich, Revel and Gitlin, follows the ideals of the New Left. The New Left represents youths striving for political change through cultural means. People are encouraged to work for their ideals. In contrast, the second approach, taken by Rubin and Didion, reflect the ideals and mannerisms of the "Be-in" society. The "Be-ins" represent another group of youths who attempt to gain freedoms through more radical means. This group focuses on more idealistic goals. The members yearn for a utopian society. However, both groups feel that the youth in society should be able to express themselves and live their lives in their own way, not some way left behind by the previous generation. The way left behind by the older generations is greatly influenced by events which occurred during that time. Unfortunately, because of many of these events, Americans lost their sense of hopefulness in the American society. The reasons are various: the dreams of the older left were perverted by stalinism and never recreated; the congressional stalemate makes men narrow their view of the possible, the specialization of human activity leaves little room for sweeping thought; the horrors of the twentieth century, symbolized in the gas-ovens and concentration camps and atom bombs, have blasted hopefulness (Port Huron Statement 166) Unfortunately, however, these feelings possessed by the previous generation seemed to contribute to their views of man as "a thing to be manipulated, and that he is inherently incapable of directing his own affairs" (Port Huron 166). Supporters of the New Left disagree strongly with these views. In fact, the Port Huron Statement makes a point of cutting down these beliefs, claiming that the New Left will not support the idea of human beings as things or objects. Then the document takes it one step further in saying that the incompetence attributed to humans is, in fact, caused by the society in which they live. They have been manipulated into thinking they were incompetent by their surroundings (166). Reich even goes as far as to say that "it is a crime to allow oneself to become an instrumental being" (Reich 56). The older society, by viewing man as incapable of controlling his own life, has also led their generation to concentrate primarily on institutions, public interest, and society as the basic reality. However, the younger generation deals more with the self. One should be able to create their own values, lifestyle, and culture (Reich 56). Rubin seems to claim, in a more vocal manner, that the older generation has not left a place in the world for the younger generation to live. The older society has already done everything which can be done. Instead of helping the youth in society to learn about being themselves, they seem insistent on controlling the youth. They place them in schools to keep them off the streets, they send them away to Vietnam. The older members of society are only trying to keep the youth from spoiling what already exists. They are intent on molding the