The scandal would only explode when Timothy Leary, expelled from Harvard, appealed to the

courts and complained, in the name of science and democracy, of the right to continue his

experiments. In less than a week, a confused America and soon the world became aware of

the "psychedelic" phenomenon. Leary was arrested and confessed to having already applied

LSD to more than a thousand people, half of whom were religiously trained, including 69

Protestant ministers or Catholic priests. Of these people, 75% acknowledged having reached

an intense religious mystical state, and more than half claimed to have had the deepest and

most real experience of their lives.

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The "psychedelic revolution" was the path that much of the youth was choosing or would choose. From the middle of the decade came the explosion of flower-power hippies, devotees of LSD and Cannabis. But, in parallel, a problem would take on international proportions also from the years 65-66. Every day, in various countries - from Brazil to Japan, from the United States to Czechoslovakia - students replaced the routine of classes with the routine of strikes, demonstrations, protests

and occupations of universities. Their political organizations multiplied and clashes

with the police became frequent. Common protests gave the same meaning to

demonstrations in various parts of the world: the demonstrations were against the

Vietnam War, against racism, for peace, for the underdeveloped.

​

Through a vast variety of forms, youth sought to break with everything: with the

university, with the family, with art, with parties. What was new began to have a

value in itself: tradition had to be destroyed. One word went around the world in this

furious storm of denial: contestation.

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More than the young, the world had changed. Industrial society was advancing, breaking principles, modifying relationships and living conditions; the media broke regional values and introduced a uniform, borderless culture. In the face of values such as love, freedom, justice and brotherhood, a new reality emerged - consumption - establishing its own values: efficiency, success, competition. More effectively than sociology in its quest to shape youth, large commercial organizations discovered the full potential of consumers in young people: in just forty years, the number of young people under 24 would double. An entire production line - records, clothes, shows - was designed from them for them. The characters that young people transformed into idols (from the Beatles to Che Guevara), precisely because they had challenged the system, were returned to them, commercialized: Mao fashion, shirts with Che's face, Beatles posters. Consumption transformed the contestation of it into a profitable consumer product.

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A new dynamic emerged. Young people challenged society and society consumed the challenge. A desperate search for affirmation to make their negation valid began to be carried out in all fields - in fashion, painting, cinema, and especially in music. Their colors screamed as much as their sound, aggressive and agonizing. The romantic nightclubs gave way to discos where everything moved, especially the light and the bodies. The "rock'n'roll" of the 50s was rejuvenated by Chubby Checker's "twist", then by the "jerk", "frug", "monkey", "surf", "let kiss", "drag", all short-lived, where only the gestures and names varied. Dancing became the most imperious and exclusive form of expression. In Tokyo and New York, São Paulo and Paris, discos and musical groups multiplied, as well as in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia. Everywhere, the Beatles. To these rhythmic extroversions, the retreat into drugs was opposed. The search for "trips", escapes and "self-knowledge" intensified vertiginously.

It was pointed out as a sociological singularity of youth the fact that, being essentially transitory, it did not constitute a social category. But young people were increasingly grouping together in clubs, nightclubs, and gatherings. The insistence on appearance (dress, hair), on the typical gesture (own language, dance) was already considered as a first step towards becoming a social category. The large gatherings - such as Woodstock, where hundreds of thousands of people gathered to talk about peace, music and to live days of complete freedom - demonstrated the deep sense of

community that was forming among the young people of that decade and the

mystical understanding of themselves as a separate group: an "us" in open

opposition to "them". "They" are the adult world of parents and their impotence

in living the values they preach. "They" are also the social systems incapable

of filling the void between ideal and reality. The realization of the failure of the

civilization created by previous generations - of wars, social injustices,

violence, oppression - and the contemplation of the amorphous mass of cases, files and numbers in which man is sometimes transformed by consumer society, exploded in the consciousness of the young people of the 60s, who began to deny all the visible manifestations of this civilization.

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To withdraw or to participate in the destruction of society: this was the choice they faced. Withdrawal was the hippie response. More than 400,000 young people in the USA alone turned their backs on society and set out in search of other truths. The hippies marginalized themselves and attempted a revolution of morals and customs. Young people in socialist countries demanded political freedom, while those in the industrialized countries of the West contested the consumer civilization that alienates man. In the third world, the struggle was for economic freedom.

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"Do you know what's happening?" No, nobody knew. Obsolete forms of struggle were unearthed (stones, barricades, clubs), temples of knowledge like the Sorbonne were invaded, idols of other generations like Sartre and the historical communist Aragon were booed, cars were set on fire, theaters were taken over. Imagination had seized power. All official and traditional values were written in quotation marks and provoked laughter. The streets were renamed by hundreds of euphoric youths who chose the new names with applause: Red Orient Street, Heroic Vietnam Street, Guevara Street. Red and black flags fluttered over austere monuments and covered historical relics. Love and politics began to be made on the streets.