The Re-emergence of Individualism in Postwar America

When Alexis de Tocqueville described his 1830s observations of America in his book Democracy in America, he pointed out as a people, Americans were highly individualistic: "They owe nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any man; they acquire the habit of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they are apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands" (Tocqueville OL). Tocqueville was not alone in taking note of America's unique individualism. America has long been known as a focal point of individualism, from the time of its birth, with Jeffersonian ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all men and a government founded on the idea of divided sovereignty between individuals and the nation, to the twentieth century, where Herbert Hoover reminded the nation of its history of rugged individualism.

Somewhere around the 1950s, America began to lose much of the individuality that had so long distinguished the nation. Church membership climbed to 70 percent and "religious identification was at an all-time high...The popular religion of the 1950s looked like a free-floating mix of God, patriotism, and the American way...The world split into God-fearing people and godless Communists" (Morone 381). "In this setting, good citizenship meant social conformity," and Hollywood reflected this idea, as "'whether [the movies] were dealing with delinquents, dock workers or Indians, they all set out to solve the same problem: social control.' It's up to each man and woman to enforce the rules, to stop his or her own people from subverting a group's values" (Morone 385). The era was lacking the spark of traditional American individuality, although there were a select few that managed to keep out of the "square" society. Discontent with the conformity and lack of individuality in the postwar America provoked individual empowerment from the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the student activist movement of the 1960s, movements that continue to shape current American moral and political values.

In his 1952 New York Times article, "This is the Beat Generation," John Clellon Holmes attempts to describe the origins of the scene's name: "It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately, of soul; a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself" (Holmes OL). At its very core, the Beat Generation was a group of wildly creative ragtag writers, bohemian vagabonds fed up with American society and the social conformity of the decade. Although several philosophies and ideologies were generally commonly shared within the community, such as interest in Zen Buddhism, a hatred of the military-industrial complex, spiritual and sexual liberation, and sprinkled drug use, the amazing diversity of writers involved redeems their hesitancy to name themselves. "The failure of most orthodox moral and social concepts to reflect fully the life they have known is probably the reason for this, but because of it each person becomes a walking, self-contained unit, compelled to meet, or at least endure, the problem of being young in a seemingly helpless world in his own way" (Holmes OL). The Beats were very much concerned with re-establishing individualism within American society. Jack Kerouac, the writer sometimes heralded as the father of the Beat Generation, wrote his masterpiece On The Road about "his travels across America in a stream-of-consciousness style of writing...On the Road became the model of a subculture of writers, musicians, intellectuals and rebels, all of whom identified with freedom and disdain for the 1950s conformity and political convention." The novel explores Kerouac's journey to find the great American hero, which can be read as a creed of the generation, everybody searching for something that is lost.

Other pieces of Beat literature promote individualism as well. The works of Allen Ginsberg, the greatest poet to come out of the movement, are no exception. His poem "America," written in 1956, is a sarcastic assault on American values. Ginsberg questions the power and role of the media in his generation: "Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?/I'm obsessed by Time Magazine./I read it every week" (Ginsberg OL). Despite his criticisms, including that America, not Russia, was responsible for the Cold War, "America" contains some optimism that only Ginsberg could fit in. He ends the poem saying that he's "putting [his] queer shoulder to the wheel," which sounds hopeful enough (Ginsberg OL). In his poem "A Supermarket in California," Ginsberg ponders individuality by asking, "Who killed the pork chops?" (Ginsberg OL). The supermarket in the poem represents America, as supermarkets are a completely American invention and sometimes seen as meeting places for small communities. By asking about the past of the pork chops, Ginsberg takes the reader back to Walt Whitman's days, where there was significantly less separation between the person that slaughters the animal and the person that buys the finished product.

Ginsberg rejects the industrial revolution and celebrates the individuality of the consumer. In his "Sunflower Sutra," Ginsberg paints a picture of a barren, filthy wasteland, with one single sunflower right in the center of the industrial area. Ginsberg sharp imagery celebrates the beauty of the individual. Quite possibly his most important work, however, was "Howl," the long, winding poem considered to be the principal work of the Beat Generation. In it, Ginsberg mentions various scenes from his life and those of his contemporaries, such as "radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war" (Ginsberg OL). This is a specific reference to an auditory hallucination Ginsberg had of William Blake reading certain poems, namely "Ah! Sunflower," where Ginsberg realized the interconnectedness of all existence on Earth, a realization he attempted to recapture through subsequent drug use.

Ginsberg also slips in "scholars of war," however, in order to attack the military-industrial complex's impact on the American education system at a time in which many private universities, including Columbia University where Ginsberg went for his undergraduate degree, were working hand in hand with the government in order to carry out new military research. The middle segment of "Howl," the author launches an attack on American capitalism, calling it "Moloch," a term for an ancient Phoenician ceremony in which children are offered by fire sacrificially, in an attempt to show the ills of finance and industry; capitalism is the Moloch, and individuals are being sacrificed to the fire with each passing second (Ginsberg OL). Through clever use of allusion, Ginsberg is able to capture the essence of individualism that was missing from his generation and express his political views in no uncertain terms. After the first ever public reading of the poem in 1957, authorities arrested the owner of the store at which the reading took place, and both he and Ginsberg faced obscenity charges. Ginsberg fought the charges and won, setting a strong precedent of free speech if works of literature have redeeming social importance.

The 1960s brought about a whole new political and intellectual scene, with subculture complaints now being focused on the war in Vietnam rather than the military-industrial complex. The movement of the era was divided into two groups. The first of these were the Hippies, the direct descendents of the Beats, who concerned themselves with pacifism and non-violent demonstrations, such as civil rights marches. Hippies achieved individual empowerment through free love and sexual revolution, with almost every form of consensual sex considered kosher, and recreational drug use in order to expand the mind. Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters, in what became known as Acid Tests, spread Timothy Leary's infamous new drug, LSD, to thousands at a time. The Hippies also expressed their individuality through their clothing styles, oftentimes wearing clashing colors, tie-dyed clothing, bell bottoms, and ripped jeans. The clothing made a statement of individualism and free thought, and isolated the hippies from the rest of society. Susan Sontag, in responding to a questionnaire sent out by the editors of the Partisan Review, expressed her views on the activities of young people in the late sixties:
"Yes, I do find much promise in the activities of young people. About the only promise one can find anywhere in this country today is in the way some young people are carrying on, making a fuss. I include both their renewed interest in politics (as protest and as community action, rather than as theory) and the way they dance, dress, wear their hair, riot, make love. I also include the homage they pay to Oriental thought and rituals. And I include, not least of all, their interest in taking drugs---despite the unspeakable vulgarization of this project by Leary and others..." (Sontag 124) Sontag's response shows support for the counterculture lifestyle, although it is important to note that this enthusiasm was by no means universal.

On the other side of the spectrum, an increase in student activism created what scholars call the New Left. In 1961, "more Harvard graduates had applied for the Peace Corps than for corporate jobs" (Morone 433). Student-run organizations, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for black college students or Studies on the Left, a journal run by Wisconsin graduate students, began to pop up across the nation as students gathered to fight against the war in Vietnam and for greater racial and economic equality, free speech, and other beliefs. One "group of students, primarily from the University of Michigan, founded the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). That organization was dedicated above all to the idea of participatory democracy..." (Young 197). "We are the people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit," (Hayden 536) the manifesto begins. The statement is loaded with ideals of individualism. The statement claims that "Men have unrealized potential for self-cultivation, self-direction, self-understanding, and creativity" (Hayden 539). It calls for a participatory democracy such that the individual can be heard and protected:
"As a social system we seek the establishment of a democracy of individual participation, governed by two central aims: that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life; that society be organized to encourage independence in men and provicde the media for their common participation" (Hayden 540).

Hayden believes that with a participatory democracy, political order will fix problems more quickly and more easily, as subjects can easily express their grievances and action is taken regardless. People could finally have a direct say in making decisions that significantly impact their lives. Participatory democracy, however, "was not...intended to substitute for representative democracy; instead, it was a supplement to it" (Young 201) in order to further empower the individual. Students for a Democratic Society eventually disbanded, when a splinter group broke away from SDS, calling themselves the Weather Underground Organization, or the Weathermen (borrowed from Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues). The Weathermen attempted to take action through violent acts and bomb-making. The Weathermen remained active until the late 1970s, and most of the former members have managed to reintegrate into a society they once so deeply despised. Students for a Democratic Society did not last through the 1970s either, and Hayden summed up his ambivalent feelings towards the group's accomplishments with this epitaph: "'We ended a war, toppled two presidents, desegregated the south, broke other barriers of discrimination. How could we accomplish so much and have so little in the end?'" (Morone 439).

The history of 20th century individualism, from Hoover's rugged individualism to the quieting of it during the 1950s and the subsequent reemergence, is closely linked to counterculture movements that respond to social and political discontent. The Beats, hippies, and Students for a Democratic Society have all contributed to the reemergence of individualism within the American society, and the results of these movements has shaped American moral and political values. Because of the sexual revolution of the Beats and Hippies, our nation exhibits today what would have been an unthinkable amount of tolerance towards those leading alternate lifestyles. Because of Ginsberg's obscenity trial and the creativity and inventiveness of all of the writers of the Beat Generation, our free speech was secured during a time when celebrities were being jailed for merely wearing red. Because of counterculture politics and the student movement, there actually has been an increase in participatory democratic institutions within our political system, namely the popularization of protests, marches, and community-based politics. Most importantly, however, the underground movements of the 1950s and 1960s helped to once again secure the tradition of individualism within American culture.

Works Cited

Ginsberg, Allen. "Allen Ginsberg." PoemHunter.Com. 30 Apr. 2007 .
Holmes, John C. "This is the Beat Generation." The New York Times Magazine 16 Nov. 1952. 30 Apr. 2007 .
Morone, James A. Hellfire Nation. New Haven: Yale UP, 2003.
Sontag, Susan. "What's Happening in America?" Partisan Review (1966).
Tocqueville, Alexis De. "Of Individualism in Democratic Countries." Virginia.Edu. 30 Apr. 2007 .
Hayden, Tom. The Port Huron Statement. Students for a Democratic Society. Port Huron, 1962.
Young, James P. Reconsidering American Liberalism. Boulder: Westview P, 1996.