The 1960s were intended as a rebellion against the materialism, mindless conformity, soullessness, and general inhumanity and immorality of commercial and bureaucratic (“corporate and militaristic”) America. The answer, it was thought, could be found in freeing ourselves from a society gone wrong by rejection of social forms, pursuit of intense experience, and “doing your own thing”—making individual choice the supreme standard.
The solution made the problem worse. The ’60s turned society much more than before into a mass of contending wills with no higher standard to order them. Rebels and activists debunked what was left of traditional culture without offering anything to replace it. In the absence of a definite higher standard, or any way to determine one, people fell back on the most mundane, content-free, and soulless standards possible: money, bureaucracy, and social position, who gets hold of what and who’s in a position to do what to whom.
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