The countercultural movements of the Sixties were a revolt against the middle class values and conformity of the 1950s. Of the various countercultural movements, "the hippies" were the most influential and the one that most symbolized the Sixties. Hippies proclaimed that the Age of Aquarius was dawning with the 1960s, a New Age of "peace and understanding," a time of enlightenment, self-awareness and brotherhood of man. Their values included:
Source Columbia guide to America in the 1960s by Farber & Bailey (pp. 59-60) and Long Sixties: America, 1954-1974 by C.B. Strain (pp. 108-130).
Source: The Hippie Dictionary: A Cultural Encyclopedia (and Phraseicon) of the 1960s and 1970s by McCleary & McCleary.
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The Merry Pranksters' Bus
"Further" / "Furthur", Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters' famous bus, Bumbershoot festival, Seattle, Washington, 1994.
Photo by Joe Mabel.
"Merry Prankster (were) a group of mostly unrelated people who came together in 1964 and formed a family around Ken Kesey, the author...The Pranksters had a number of adventures in California and one memorable trip across the United States in Ken Kesey's large, painted bus with 'Furthur' written on the front and 'Caution: Weird Load' on the back. The adventures of the Merry Pranksters and their 'Hieronmymus Bosch bus' were related in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." (McCleary p. 338.) Their adventures and their attitudes pressaged, and influenced, what became known as the hippie movement.
"The 1960s were a heady time to be young in the United States...It was, after all, their decade--in part due to the sheer numbers of young people alive during the time...Between 1946 and 1964, approximately 79 million American children were born in an unprecedented 'baby boom'. As their ranks swelled in the 1950s, this generation of young people could not be ignored. Typically neither seen nor heard in earlier times, these young people were not only acknowledged, but also valued...as consumers, as citizens, and as potent new movers in American political life." (Strain p.63)
Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll: the rise of America's 1960s counterculture by 
What the Dormouse Said: how the sixties counterculture shaped the personal computer industry by 
Music of the Counterculture Era by Dissatisfied with organized religion in the West, many in the counter culture turned East for spiritual enlightenment. Here are some spiritual terms used by the searchers:
A Perfect Haze: the illustrated history of the Monterey International Pop Festival by 
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by 
The Bhagavad Gita by 
The Catcher in the Rye by 
On the Road by 
The Portable Thoreau by 
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Farber, D. R., & Bailey, B. L. (2005). The Columbia guide to America in the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press.
McCleary, J. B., & McCleary, J. J. (n.d.). The hippie dictionary: a cultural encyclopedia (and phraseicon) of the 1960s and 1970s. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press.
Ostler, R. (2005). Dewdroppers, waldos, and slackers: a decade-by-decade guide to the vanishing vocabulary of the 20th century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strain, C. B. (2016). Long Sixties: America, 1954-1974. Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Strodder, C., & Phillips, M. (2007). The encyclopedia of sixties cool: A celebration of the grooviest people, events, and artifacts of the 1960s. Santa Monica, CA: Santa Monica Press.
Thoreau, H. D., & Cramer, J. S. (2012). The portable Thoreau. New York: Penguin Books.
