Fear and Loathing in a Clockwork Age

Ah! The noble search for identity. That intangible achievement that all artists lust after and lay in torment over. And during the post war era that struggle reached incredible magnitudes. The world cried out for legions of anti-heroes, who were only virtuous in their unapologetic and brutally honest lack of virtue. And the art world provided as many counter culture messiahs as was needed to "Damn the Man". The Beats, hippies, and punks are evidence that behind the white picket fence of suburbia lay an America that wanted more out of life than the sugar coated portrayals of domesticity and patriotism it received from pop culture. The unfortunate side of authenticity often lead to the conclusion that autonomy was an impossible dream and that just mere existence required an individual to compromise his integrity. The post-war generation developed an interesting love-hate relationship with the mass culture of it's time. Some, like Andy Warhol, embraced the inevitability of mass culturalization in order to control the beast (yes, this is a reference to Revelations). While others recognized the American Dream as being a hypocrisy and so chose the Golden

Examples of such beliefs can be found in the famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet. Where Hamlet recognizes that only while he is inactive does he have possibilities. As soon as he commits to any one course of action his fate is set. Oberon, in his speeches expresses similar sentiments. The last stanza equates emptiness with a state of total knowledge, which is destroyed once we become something. "Everything", which is the opposite of the void, is ignorant. While the void, or the starting place, is Teaching. The implication is that if one were to " numbly not get there" they would be able to achieve and maintain a state of divine emptiness and knowledge. Part of that knowledge was an acceptance of everything else as divine(Hipkiss,p.70).

To the Beats the only solution to a life of domestic stagnation was to pack up and let life lead you down one winding road after another. There was a certain comfort in the unknown. Ambiguity turned survival into a triviality, while one could find the deepest meaning in chance and whimsy. When mere existence doesn't seem to be guaranteed it's the little moments of perfection that become one's focus. No other Beat poet understood that concept as well as Jack Kerouac. "Jack Kerouac single handedly created the beat generation. Although Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and William Burroughs Brought their separate and cumulative madness to the beat generation, it was Kerouac who was the Unifying Principle."(Krim,p.4)

The Beat generation and early hippies sought

Some common words found in the essay are:
Board Education, Golden Eternity, Damn Beats, Hamlet Hamlet, Age Ah, City Blues, Wei Hipkiss, Postwar America, PrincipleKrimp4 Kerouac, Buddhism Eastern, golden eternity, beat generation, blissful void, allen ginsberg, mere existence, jack kerouac,
Approximate Word count = 1018
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)