Curtis White is a novelist, essayist, and social critic whose work interrogates the culture of late capitalism. In his book, Living in a World That Can’t Be Fixed: Reimagining Counterculture Today, he argues that the Civil War never truly ended but continued under cold war conditions for 150 years. At the core of his critique is the claim that America’s problems will never be “fixed” in the conventional sense.

As a member of the baby boom counterculture, White notes that conversations about counterculture often remain trapped in the 1960s, ignoring both the failures and the unfinished work of transformation begun in that era.

White writes from a place of disappointment but not despair. He is motivated by the desire to offer hope and alternatives in an age marked by polarization, ecological breakdown, and collective disempowerment.

He critiques both the right, with its bootstrap myths of self-reliance, and the left, with technocratic fixes that often reinforce inequality. In his view, both sides uphold a binary that prevents real change.

As an alternative, White calls for embracing counterculture as civil disobedience as a way of life. Drawing on past and present movements—including art, activism, and the LGBTQ+ community—he celebrates playful, irreverent, and improvisational forms of living that defy dominant norms. He sees genuine counterculture as an ongoing practice of questioning and reinvention.

For those who came of age in the counterculture era, his words feel not only relevant but deeply reassuring.

“To hope that this system can be fixed is delusional. But to be hopeless is to die to our own innermost feelings of concern for others and for a world of living things that seems every day a little closer to fatality.”

BOOK: Living in a World that Can't Be Fixed: Reimagining Counterculture Today

BOOK REVIEW: Breaking the Binary of Flawed Narratives

RELATED ARTICLE: Local Author Challenges Readers To Start A New Countercultural Movement

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