The emergence of Hippieism in the USA and then in Western Europe can be traced back to the end of the 1940s when Jack Kerouac introduced the term ‘Beat Generation’ to describe his social circle consisting of norm-breaking and anti-conformist youth in New York City. ‘Beat’, meaning beat down, was subculture slang from the world of those groups who saw themselves in that condition – petty thieves, hustlers, drug addicts, and other ‘down and outs’. However, for Kerouac and others within his circle, such as Allen Ginsberg, another well-known anti-conformist writer who opposed imperialism and traditional forms of sexual morality, ‘beat’ had a spiritual dimension which rejected the materialist and conformist trajectory that US society had taken after World War II. Behind this dimension were nostalgic visions of life in the USA to which society should return. The term faced distortions as it entered the public arena. In Kerouac’s response to these distortions, we get a sense of the meaning behind ‘beat culture’.