ABSTRACT
The nation's largest and oldest counterculture, the South has much to teach. The counterculture focuses on the quality of life and the need for individuals to have more power over the decisions that affect their lives. Southerners are Americans, and in a real sense the need to be different was forced upon them by circumstances and by outsiders. Southerners, when operating on the "avoidance" side of the American mirror, traditionally have had to define themselves in opposition to the presumed American norm, and in that sense at least, the South is a real counterculture. Rather than something that a counterculture must construct in the future after all the restraints of organized society have been cast off, community for Southerners is a set of conditions and obligations to be fulfilled through courage and honor. Southern history forces us to be aware not only of complexity, but also of defeat and failure.
