counterculture

plural countercultures · alternative counter-culture · alternative counter culture

1. countableuncountableAny culture whose values and lifestyles are opposed to those of the established mainstream culture, especially to Western culture.

   I suspect that just about everything we still consider valuable and interesting from the Victorian decades will turn out to have belonged to the Victorian counterculture.

   1985, Morse Peckham, Romanticism and Ideology

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   Seneca's literary contemporary, Petronius, reflected the " seamy " side of city life by representing Roman "counterculture" in his racy and imaginative farce the Satyricon.

   2005, Robert B. Kebric, Roman People, McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages

   Finally, of course, there is an unending succession of countercultures oriented around lifestyle choices and recreational interests, from nudists and health food enthusiasts to Polar Bear Clubs and skateboarders.

   2015 March 26, Gina Misiroglu, American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in U.S. History: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in U.S. History, Routledge, →ISBN

alternative counter-culture · alternative counter culture

1. A cultural movement most prominent in the 1960s and 1970s, associated with peace, free love and opposition to commercialism; the hippie movement.

   The concert was a cultural happening for members of the counterculture in the St. Louis area.

   1971 August 16, W. Thomas Stewart, “A record turnout for The Who at Mississippi River Festival”, in St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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   The sexual revolution has wreaked havoc on the American family: increasing rates of divorce, illegitimacy, and single-parent families. The glorification of recreational drug use, from which the wealthy and middle class have only recently begun to recoil, has contributed to the emergence of a permanent urban underclass. The self-indulgent notions of no-fault living, the cult of victimization, the futility of work, and the inherent injustice of American society, which the counterculture promoted, have corroded the respect for merit and personal striving, which are the human virtues surest to help individuals grow, develop moral codes, and achieve success.

   1994, Richard Nixon, “America Beyond Peace”, in Beyond Peace, New York: Random House, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 235

   The counterculture has long since outlived the enthusiasm of its original participants and become a more or less permanent part of the American scene, a symbolic and musical language for the endless cycles of rebellion and transgression that make up so much of our mass culture.

   1997, Thomas Carr Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN