Kayla Farrant
English 1550
Professor Roberts
10/16/2013

The Trippy Days

“Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people sharing all the world.” This is a famous quote by John Lennon, a key model figure in the “counter-culture era”. If I invented a time machine and traveled back through time, I would stop in the year 1964. During this time period, the world started to change from a black and white opinion to the freedom for individuals to do and think as they please. The counter-culture era was a period when long held values and norms of behavior suddenly broke down, especially among the young. Teenagers became political activists and separated themselves from mainstream culture. They stood out through their appearance and lifestyle. Many members of the counter-culture saw their own lives as ways to express political and social beliefs. Personal appearance, song lyrics, and the arts were some of the methods used to make both individual and group statements. I chose to go back in time to this particular era because this period was all about going against the status quo. Attitudes about sexuality appeared to loosen, and women started standing their ground openly protesting their old- fashion roles of a mother and housewife, and people lived happy and free.
Hippies catch my eye the most. With the tye-dye shirts, long hair, sexual promiscuity and recreational drugs like marijuana and hallucinogens like LSD, the hippy life is the life for me. The primary concern for hippies was about being happy, not what others thought it should be. Their “ if if feels good, do it” attitude included little thought or concern for the consequences. They were dissatisfied with the life their parents expected of them. Also, hippies resided mostly in the cities of San Francisco and New York as the