ms race, and tried to show how stupid it all really was. But as time moved on, the writers, and the entire country, started to take a less narrow minded view of things. The counterculture of the Gioielli 9sixties prompted people to take a closer look at themselves. As thinkers, teachers, lovers, parents, friends and human beings. And people concerned with nuclear weapons started to see things in a broader context as well. Nuclear weapons were something that affected our whole consciousness. The way we grew up, our relationships with others and what we did with our lives. One of the authors who put this new perspective on things was the activist, social thinker and poet Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg first made a name for himself in the 1950صs as one of the foremost of the Beat writers. The Beats in the Fifties were a forerunner of the more widespread counterculture of the late Sixties and early Seventies. And Ginsberg evolved into this. He became a devoted leader in the counterculture, who set many precedents for the Hippie generation. He lived in various communes, delved deeply into eastern religions and experimented with numerous hallucinogenic drugs. In the earlier part of his life Ginsberg had been a rebel against society. He was still a rebel but now he was taking the form of activist. By the Seventies he was involved in many causes that promoted peace and world harmony. What separated Ginsberg from other activists is that he was one of the first and original members of many of these movements. Now he was the father figure to many in the non-mainstream world. While teaching at his school of poetry in Naropa, Colorado, Ginsberg became involved in protests against the nearby Rock Flats Nuclear Weapons Factory. During the Summer of 1978 he was arrested for preventing a shipment nuclear waste from reaching its destination and for numerous other protests against the facility (Miles 474). From these experiences came two poems زNaga...
