if the beatniks were to make a comeback facing todays issues would they be successful ?

Question

going up against issues like the war, poverty, just alot of things that are going on right now, they don't have to be beatniks maybe a group that is similiar to them.

the reason I've asked is I'm thinking of starting up the Beats or something similiar again, any comments feel free.

Answer 1

The beatniks were an interesting bunch. Their philosophy was a weird and wonderful mix of mysticism and hard edged reality. Many of the issues they were speaking out and acting out against in the forties and fifties were very similar to today's issues. In particular, government secrecy and repression were matters of concern for them. Remember this was the age of McCarthy and widespread fear based on the beginnings of the cold war. Today's color coded terror alerts had their counterparts then in the duck and cover rhetoric of the new atomic age. We have duct tape, they had bomb shelters. Same fear, different props.

I think that a people of a similar outlook could arise today with one caveat. The Beatniks were also very well read, literate and usually historically aware. There doesn't seem to be much of that going on these days. In general today's societal rebels seem a lot more self involved and image conscious. But I feel that there is, as there was then, a frustration against a duplcitious government and an awareness of a need for greater social consciousness.

An interesting note... people think of the beatniks with a negative connotation, misunderstanding the origin of the word. Beat, as in beaten down, was not the intended meaning: the actual source of the word was beatitude:

1. Supreme blessedness or happiness.
2. Beatitude -Any of the declarations of blessedness made by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.
3. Beatitude Used as a title and form of address for a patriarch in the Armenian Church or a metropolitan in the Russian Orthodox Church: Your Beatitude.

Answer 2

Too young to be a beatnik too old to be a hippie, but we shared the same anti-authoritarian attitudes. I sense that today's anti-war movements are getting much more positive attention than they did in the 50s and 60s when they were considered subversive. Peace and Love

Answer 3

I don't think so. The beatniks seemed edgy and innovative in the '50s and '60s; but it turned out that they were just vacuous and drug-addled wishful imaginers, with no pragmatic solutions to any problem the world faces.

Answer 4

You don´t need to be a beatnik to disagree with what is going on!

Answer 5

no