<story><title>When America first dropped acid</title><url>https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/29/tripping-on-utopia-margaret-mead-the-cold-war-and-the-troubled-birth-of-psychedelic-science-benjamin-breen-book-review</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ldjkfkdsjnv</author><text>Recently read a description of 1960&amp;#x27;s ideology. The claim being that its all propaganda, and what we know as 60s ideology (peace love etc) actually never really happened for a real duration of time. What did happen was that those that prescribed to that line of thinking either moved to communes, or they dropped so much acid they were societally irrelevant. There werent many people actually out and about that were pushing those lines of thinking, the ideology died within a year or two, but mass media keeps it alive.&lt;p&gt;Weird to think about how media can amplify a set of ideas, that itself didnt last very long. We keep having this renewed consciousness of ideas, like a microphone blowing it into everyones ears. Even funnier is to think that an ideology that hates mass media (anti corporate 60s culture) may actually just be a product of mass media, much like mickey mouse.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>elsjaako</author><text>I love the way Hunter S. Thompson described it. I&amp;#x27;ll strip it a bit for brevity, but the whole book (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) is worth reading.&lt;p&gt;San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world.&lt;p&gt;...&lt;p&gt;So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”</text></comment>
<story><title>When America first dropped acid</title><url>https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/29/tripping-on-utopia-margaret-mead-the-cold-war-and-the-troubled-birth-of-psychedelic-science-benjamin-breen-book-review</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ldjkfkdsjnv</author><text>Recently read a description of 1960&amp;#x27;s ideology. The claim being that its all propaganda, and what we know as 60s ideology (peace love etc) actually never really happened for a real duration of time. What did happen was that those that prescribed to that line of thinking either moved to communes, or they dropped so much acid they were societally irrelevant. There werent many people actually out and about that were pushing those lines of thinking, the ideology died within a year or two, but mass media keeps it alive.&lt;p&gt;Weird to think about how media can amplify a set of ideas, that itself didnt last very long. We keep having this renewed consciousness of ideas, like a microphone blowing it into everyones ears. Even funnier is to think that an ideology that hates mass media (anti corporate 60s culture) may actually just be a product of mass media, much like mickey mouse.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>feedforward</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s almost universal opinion on the mainstream, left  and right that a cultural shift happened in the US between Eisenhower leaving office and Woodstock.  It&amp;#x27;s not some narrative invented and pushed out.&lt;p&gt;The media does manufacture narratives.  Youth in New York and San Francisco had a subculture in the 1950s which was framed as beatnik, and soon sitcoms were mocking beatnik.  Small basement performance places would have patrons not clap to avoid noise complaints, so patrons would snap their fingers as applause.  This was then presented as something unusual and pretentious, minus its original context.  The same thing with San Francisco hippies - they arose organically, the mainstream culture took notice of them and presented them a certain way, and the cycle goes on.&lt;p&gt;Every social movement that arises is met with an attempt to coopt and to commodity by the corporate media and corporate America, this has happened for a long time.</text></comment>