Should The 1960s Be Classified As A Second Lost Generation?

After World War I, or what some labeled as the “Great War”, a new type of culture developed, one in which consumerism was at its highest and people enjoyed life after a time of extreme hardship not only in the United States but across the world. However, this did not come without some resistance as a “Lost Generation” developed in which writers felt that society had lost its inherit values. Lost however, in the 1960s, 40 years later, was how lost society had become which valued drugs and enjoying life among many other things that shared characteristics with the consumer life in the 1920s. Overall, although some may argue that the 1960s should not be classified as a second Lost Generation because of the fact that it was not a literary movement,

A new type of generation, one that society had never seen before, is supported by WB Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming”, when he says that “Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming!”(Yeats). This second coming that Yeats talks about is a representation of something new, and different that exemplifies what these hippies were all about in their mission to ultimately change society. For instance, one of these matters, Vietnam, was heavily protested by students due to the fact that they opposed violence and people getting hurt which in turn made them a foe to President Nixon at the time who advocated for the war. During the midst of the protests one New York Times article by E.W. Kenworthy titled “Thousands Reach Capital to Protest Vietnam War” details that “The demonstrators-most of them young and of draft age, but many in middle life-arrived by chartered buses and trains, by driving or hitchhiking”(Kenworthy). This helps show that in a country that usually embraced war, this new generation was trying to change that not only so they would not have to be drafted but also because as aforementioned, some of them being hippies hated violence as one of their main stances is advocating for world peace. Although in another time period they might be called “cowards” for not going to war, through this new group of kids they showed how times were changing and that through protest they could accomplish their goals. As noted in “The Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society”, they enhance this point of view saying that the past generations were “Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might thrust out of control”(SDS). However, not only was their protest against war or with society itself but within the standards of