Personal meaning now comes from the very activism and consumerism the sixties rejected

Evidence

The genuine—not affectively alienated—personal meaningfulness the authors of phs believed could only come from political engagement at the largest level, from realizing fully the utopian potential of democracy, now comes from modes of charitable social involvement or local, focused activism that were defined as coopted and ‘‘reformist’’ in the sixties—modes that were seen as helping to maintain the unequal capitalist status quo by alleviating the plight of some of its direct casualties. A sense of meaningfulness also comes now from full-throttle engagement with precisely the late-capitalist consumer culture that in the sixties was perceived as the enemy of progressive social change and of any possible personal meaningfulness. — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 475

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The reversal whereby meaningfulness migrated from utopian politics into reformist charity and consumer engagement parallels the aestheticized religion/sacrifice reframings in the noted essays about how cultural forms carry displaced meaning.
• XREF: connects to: Capitalism absorbed the 1960s counterculture as a marketing resource — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 593; Postwar ads co-opted counterculture authenticity to sell conformity — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 376

Broader Connections

• Capitalism absorbed the 1960s counterculture as a marketing resource #contradicts (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 593
• Postwar ads co-opted counterculture authenticity to sell conformity #contradicts (0.70) — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 376