Psychedelic Era and its Impact on Culture
— Raghav Ahuja
Introduction
One form of art that exists can be clearly defined as following a sort of structure or narrative and is meant to make cohesive sense to the one consuming it.
And then we talk about psychedelic art, which can be broadly divided into these forms - music, art, fashion. The term psychedelic is derived from psychedelic drugs, which consist of LSD. A psychedelic experience consists of seeing some perspectives and feeling certain feelings in your mind that were never there. It can be described as a hallucinogenic experience with a heightened sense of reality. A person can often go into hypnotic or trance states, which lead to feelings of enlightenment and revelation which form a major part of the psychedelic experience.
Psychedelic art often tries to imitate this hypnotic feeling, too. Psychedelic art is characterized by being very colourful in its inherent sense and trying to invoke a feeling of hypnosis in the viewer.
Psychedelic fashion is characterized by the same thing as well, involving a lot of colour and males often have long hair, something that sets them apart distinctively.
Psychedelic music often puts more stress on instrumentation, table, sitar; the guitar is often heard, and the songs often don’t follow a conventional music structure but rather there is greater stress on creating a hypnotic vibe to the song.
Beauty
There was a certain beauty to how this era was, a sort of dreamy feel about it. The idea of a bunch of hippies forming a communal together and having a shared experience together through the use of psychedelic drugs might sound tribal to some but aren’t they bringing about the beauty of humanity, a bunch of people coming together to help each other and enjoying life no matter what the cost.
It’s also important to talk about the ideals they followed. The idea is that we as a human place too much stress on the materialistic and economic aspects when the priority should be autonomy and self-expression. They often followed left-leaning ideas that were inspired by Marxism and vehemently opposed capitalism wanting to place greater autonomy on the individual.
Also, this idea of travelling together as a community just for vibes, this level of freedom and expression is something not seen anymore. A heightened sense of spiritualism existed in this era wherein they tried to follow the spiritual instinct of a person rather than embracing mainstream religion. This admittedly led to the formation of some cults, but well every mainstream religion is a cult in itself.
Sex as a whole was redefined during this era as something that a human must use for pleasuring themselves rather than a necessity after marriage.
Impact
This era had a lot of impact on modern society as a whole, it was the first era that stood up for the fact that when a conflict happens, it isn’t the duty of the citizens to serve their country for a conflict done to spread imperialism. The counterculture movement was the first one to do anti-war protests and recognize the fact that the state as an authority needs to be rebelled against.
They also set up this precedent about collectivism over individualism by staying in communal and rejecting the ownership of private materials. The basic idea was to keep travelling with as little baggage as possible to prove the futility of materialism and how we as humans are meant to live as a community.
It was the first time that LGBTQAI+ rights were recognized in some sort of way, and with the type of clothing the people wore, it was the first time someone set a precedent over how we are not supposed to conform to gender norms.
Not only did this era give birth to orgies and drugs, but it also changed the social dynamics of the world and inspired a lot of youth in the future to rebel against authority, and also paved the way for many social changes to come.
Further resources
Psychedelic Music:
Psychedelic Movies (yes, they exist)-
