Californian Ideology

The Anthropocene Project. An Encyclopedia

Wholeness, naturalness, self-realization: with this trinity, the hippie movement, which began in the 1960s, questioned ideals of affluence. Their alternatives were based on liberal principles, however, which would soon feed into a new neo-liberalism. As a counterculture of the 1960s already favorable of technology, their alternatives fused easily with techno-utopias in Silicon Valley during the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, ecology, technology, and market liberalism have merged to become globally circulating standards that we encounter as a constant eco-ideological call. With their sarcastic 1979 song “California Uber Alles,” the punk band Dead Kennedys already criticized the virtually totalitarian claim of eco-holism, that excludes those who think differently, presenting itself as a promise of salvation. Illumination with obstacles.