People often talk about cultures. These are often basis for personal identities, that keep people distinct from one another, create basis for different nations around the world and so on. There is also plenty of talk of subcultures, small colourful things that allow people withing any given country to distinguish themselves from their peers without necessary going against main culture.
What gets rarely mentioned and almost always negatively is a counterculture. It often viewed as dangerous, violent and undesirable. However far not every counterculture is violent or about violence. I wrote one other article about this topic but now think it was not enough to cover this phenomenon sufficiently.
To begin with I need to set a definition. In this and my other articles, counterculture is an inversion of the country's official culture. Inversion like the inverted colours of the flags in the picture above. Why it is so I will explain further below.
To begin with I have to outline how official culture is formed. Sure, one might say it develops organically overtime as a reflection of people of any given land and such. However, reality is that government plays much greater role in shaping this culture than most willing to give it credit for. Of course, more often than not it does it in a subtle way to avoid making people suspicious. Government can promote and encourage certain trends and developments while discouraging others. Why do so? Simple, to better shape society to a form desired by elites. Traits elites find desirable are claimed to be part of national character and culture meanwhile traits they do not like are called un-Australian or un-<insert country name here>
Different governments find different traits desirable or not. Sometimes it's just minor matters of aesthetics but other times these differences are much more substantial, producing cultural antagonism between different governments and their societies.
Most recently war in Ukraine can be explained with such cultural differences between Europe and Russia. More and more people in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states embracing European liberal democratic culture and that makes Russian elites fearful of losing their power to the common people. Europeans, who deliver their power from people, do not fear that and mock antagonism of Russian elites. Russian elites fear the same end suffered by Charles I and Louis XVI frantically try to figure out how stop democracy from beheading them as well. They and I have no doubt that they are guilty of the same crimes, these two monarchs were beheaded for. Just like them, they try to avoid being judged for these crimes. I personally want to see their heads roll.
However back to culture. There is a physical concept that any force produces an equal amount of counterforce. If we apply it to culture, we can say that any official and promoted culture will create equal amount of counterculture. Why does that happen? Because not everyone can relate to traits and values, official culture acclaims and promotes. Some bound to find these to be downright wrong and wish for a different alternative values and principles. Gradually these alternative countervalues will produce a counterculture to match.
The stronger and in a more ham-fisted way government tries to shovel its official culture down people's throat, the stronger the resistance to it will grow, eventually resulting in stronger and more cohesive counterculture. Generally western liberal democracies handle this much more subtle and skillfully than dictatorships. Thus, western countercultures typically remain weak, scattered and undeveloped. Only truly lunatic people embrace them.
In contrast many dictatorships that overuse censorship and coerce people into official culture using police and threat of prison often end up with strong and cohesive countercultures with their own symbols, ethics, values and more. Sometimes these countercultures could even pull off a revolution and overthrow the regime. Clearly dictatorships are shooting themselves in a foot there, but they do not see it this way.
Just like cultures differ from one another, countercultures also differ from one another. Russian counterculture will hardly have anything in common with a British counterculture. In fact, most countercultures tend to think of themselves as having more in common with official cultures of one or another foreign country. Western leftists idealise "Socialist" countries, rather erroneously thinking they are the same as their countercultural views. Russian and other eastern countercultures idealise Western democracies instead for much of the same reasons. Once again there are differences between Russian counterculture and official cultures of most Western countries, but these are less apparent than between Western socialism and actually communism.
As I mentioned before counterculture is an inversion of any given country's original culture. Its traits are opposite of the tenants of the official culture, traits official culture labels as flaws and wrongs, becoming virtues of counterculture. It's much like psychological trauma that pushes a person towards the polar opposite of things that hurt them.
For example, when it comes to picking one's girlfriends and wives, men tend to choose someone who resembles their mother. However, if they had conflicts with their mother and associated psychological trauma, they will instead look for a girlfriend who is unlike their mother in every way imaginable, the more different the better. They will think they will not repeat the same mistake so they will not choose a person that shares any similarities with their mother.
In the same way, counterculture treats anything that resembles their official culture with wary and disdain. Western leftists equate social democracy with fascism because some commie once said so, eastern anti-communists think anything with word socialism in it will mean Gulags and Pol Pot style purges.
On the other hand, counterculture can justify a lot of traits typically considered bad. Most official cultures wanted to cultivate one or another form of virtue. Some of these virtues could end up being seen negatively by counterculture that will instead value a corresponding vice. Western countercultures tend to indulge in social disturbance, property destruction as well as blaming West and capitalism for every problem out there, no matter how unrelated. Russian countercultures tend to approve tax avoidance and downright stealing from the state as well as calling state and government in itself evil.
Reasons for these behaviors lie in certain aspects of the official cultures of any said countries. For example, in the West there is strong emphasis on rationality, skills and abilities. Common good is praised but not at expense of self-interest. Facts matter more than emotions and emotions are sometimes mocked altogether. Thus, counterculture embraces these things instead, going all "my feelings do not care about your facts", as well as embracing the benefit of majority ethos of socialism. Finally western respect for property and value of material things lead towards counterculture just wantonly destroying these things for no particular reason other than just to show how they do not care for material things.
As for some real-life examples, then for example in Russia official culture emphasize so called statism: devotion and service to the state. State is object of near religious worship and people should deny themselves anything if it is for the common good, benefit of the state and the county. Calling the country "motherland" is all to further instill this sense of devotion and reverence to it.
A certain Soviet era propaganda character, called Pavlik Morozov, emphasize Russian government's official ethos. Pavlik's grandpa hid a portion of harvest from the government officials, Pavlik learned of it and reported that to government officials who arrested and shot the grandpa, confiscated hidden grain and gave Pavlik a medal for service to the motherland. Government message is clear: be like Pavlik Morozov, report any crime even if it's your relatives or against your own best interests, be loyal to the state and society first and foremost, treasure government medals and decorations. People like Pavlik grandpa are selfish, endanger common good and the motherland with their selfish actions and thus deserve contempt and punishment. People like Pavlik Morozov adorned many propaganda posters all across USSR, all emphasising how important and honorable it is to sacrifice for motherland.
Russian counterculture instead emphasizes not being as Pavlik Morozov in every possible way. Hide wealth from government to prevent them from confiscating it. Never report anyone to officials, no matter what they do. Steal from government because all they have was stolen from people like Pavlik's grandpa. Ignore state and common good and get rich and then retire in Rio de Janeiro (or similar tropical paradise place) like Ostap Bender wanted to. Pavlik Morozov and Ostap Bender became two antagonising characters of Soviet culture and counterculture. Bender is downright swindler and crook with hardly any redeeming qualities, but people love him regardless because he is polar opposite of hated Pavlik Morozov.
Western people will hardly call Bender a hero, self-interest may be Western value, but fraud and stealing are not. To top it up Bender has rather unpleasant personality and does not hesitate to swindle even his associates and run for it. They will not endorse Pavlik Morozov but will hardly praise Bender just because he is not Morozov.
Ostap Bender is just one example of such counterculture idol, not everyone is inspired by him, but I am pretty sure that almost every Russian Oligarch was inspired by him and likely employed his methods to get what they own.
Another countercultural icon of Russia is Victor Tsoi and Kino band. Their melancholic songs about personal concerns and reflections about world and life around them, still attract huge crowds long after the person himself died in car accident, allegedly orchestrated by KGB. Government wishes people would move on already, but public stubbornly graffities "Tsoi lives" on walls of apartment blocks and other areas, imitating Soviet slogan: "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live".
I doubt it is possible for me to find characters that held similar impact on western culture or counterculture. Some might call John Galt from Atlas Shrugged or Ayn Rand herself as Western analogue of Pavlik Morozov because Western leftists are so hell bent on hating them. However official culture does not promote them in any way, so they are hardly poster children of the system. Real life self-made businessman like Elon Musk or Warren Buffett probably fit this role better. There are also war heroes and presidents and more. Prometheus from Greek myth or Jesus is possibly Western analogue of counterculture hero. Western lefties tend to believe that western prosperity needs to be stolen and shared with the rest of the world, just like Prometheus stole Fire of Gods and gave it to people. Lefties relieve Prometheus life by voting to increase migration or advocating black people's rights and then endure right wing backlash. All that will mostly apply to the United States as Australia and Europe are rather different in that regard.
One might want to mention Ned Kelly or Eureka Stockade as a counterculture hero, but Ned Kelly does not polarise society as other examples here do. There is a dichotomy between wowsers and larrikins as well as between Tories and Laborites, but I do not think there are characters that archetype each of these groups. We in Australia go easy on propaganda and ideals; instead, we surf, drink and barbeque food instead.
Also, I would like to mention that it's not necessary only a single counterculture for every given official culture. In any given country there could be several different countercultures with different opinions about each other, they can see themselves as complimentary but different or even oppose each other even more than official culture.
If we compare cultures to atomic structure, then official culture or cultures are like protons forming the core or monolith of the state and giving it positive charge, subcultures are like neutrons, also hanging around the core but with no charge, just atomic mass, finally countercultures are elections, negatively charged and revolving around the core at a distance and hoping to escape to another atom.
Negativity towards official culture does make one think that things are better elsewhere where culture is different. However, cultures of the idealised foreign countries are almost never the exact match to the counterculture of another countries. That said they are still closer to the countercultures of the said counties than their own official cultures are.
Thus, countercultural people on average are more inclined towards individuality, solitude and negativity. In general, countercultural people exhibit electron like behavior. Unlike official culture people or subcultures who like to band together like protons and neutrons in atomic core, countercultural people keep their distance from people around them as they float at the distance and thinking of switching from one core for another.
Just like in atomic physics some atoms are more inclined to lose their electrons while certain other atoms instead gain them. Smaller atoms with just one of two electrons on outer layer often lose these electrons to atoms with many electrons on outer layer. It works the same way with cultures. Monocultural and autocratic societies with few countercultures tend to lose its countercultural members to the multicultural societies with many subcultures and countercultures. I forgot how it's called in atomic physics but in human societies it's called brain drain.
Finally, about flags. Since counterculture is inversion of any given county's official culture, it would be natural to use national flag of inverted colours as a counterculture flag of any given nation. For example, this is inverted flag of Russia and this one is of Australia. There are more in the picture above. As I mentioned in another one of my articles that Bahamas are likely the most un-Russian country in the world. True to this idea inverted flag of Russia or Australia has broadly the same colours as flag of Bahamas. So are most other nations inverted flags as white inverts to black, red into turquoise and finally blue into yellow.
Black stands for defiance, turquoise for tropical paradise sea and yellow for sand on the beach of such tropical paradise. That is possibly something most countercultures could agree on. All these values, principles and sacrifices are pointless (unless they exist to protect this tropical paradise lifestyle, like EU liberal democratic values do), what matters is 5-star resort living in a tropical paradise. I call it 5-star-resortism, the only ideology that touches my soul.
To that end we can adopt flag of Bahamas as international counterculture flag. Flag of people who do not give a fuck about your feelings and values, will not sacrifice for your stupid shit and in it only for themselves and their tropical paradise living.
